Художественная культура (Mar 2024)
Vasily Gushchinsky — the Last ‘Tramp’ on Stage
Abstract
The article examines the establishment and development of stage feuilletons in the 1920s-1930s on the example of Vasily Gushchinsky. On the pre-revolutionary stage, couplet singers performing as ‘tramps’ were very popular. After the revolution, Vasily Gushchinsky (1893–1940) continued the traditions of the ‘ragged genre’, trying to adapt it to the challenges of new times. Gushchinsky managed to preserve the language and speech style of ‘tramps’ and appeared in the image of either a militant renegade dissatisfied with innovations and the Soviet order or a plain fellow, an active member of the society under construction. Theatricalism and clown tricks helped to enhance the artistic expressiveness of the performed repertoire, while complex props allowed remaining within the framework of the attraction-feuilleton and the created image, playing on current events. Basically, those were poetic feuilletons in the form of rayok and couplet songs combined into ‘evenings of satire and laughter’. The years of the first five-year plan posed the question of new content even more acutely for Gushchinsky. He began to perform mostly free poetic feuilletons. They continued to expose the true face of an average man, a tradesman, and a former nepman, and at the same time, glorified the pathos of heroic deeds and positive changes in the construction of a new society, which was the first step towards the general trend of creating a positive feuilleton. In the 1930s, the image of an average man lost its acuteness. The variety art was forced to raise the subjects of historical changes and a new person. In search of a new feuilleton form, variety artists started to attract ‘partners’, thus artificially creating a conflict and performing ‘false dialogues’.
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