The Arbuzov Studio (1938–1945): Gaideburov’s Trace

Abstract

This research focuses on the influence that the pedagogical work of P.P. Gaideburov and N.F. Skarskaya, the directors of the Peredvizhny Public Theatre, had in the 1920s on the activities of the Moscow State Theatre Studio run by Aleksei Arbuzov and Valentin Pluchek (or, as it is more informally known, the Arbuzov Studio). The Peredvizhny Theatre existed in St. Petersburg — Petrograd — Leningrad for 23 years. During this period, its directors Pavel Gaideburov and Nadezhda Skarskaya trained many students, including the playwright Aleksei Arbuzov. At the age of 17, he was trained at the Palaestra, a studio of the Peredvizhny Theatre, in the socalled “Skarskaya method”, a system of developing creative thinking in actors through improvisation. In the late 1930s, A.N. Arbuzov and V.N. Pluchek reproduced this method in their own way while working with the students of the Arbuzov studio. The result was the play A City at Dawn, telling the story of the construction of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, written collectively by the students on the basis of improvisational etudes. The article is the first to publish the exercises of N.F. Skarskaya’s method, practiced in the Palaestra, as well as the sketches of the Arbuzov studio. This allows us to analyse how the memory of the destroyed culture was preserved in the USSR during the period of the Great Terror (both the Peredvizhny Theatre and the Palaestra were liquidated in 1928), as well as to build a sequence from the theatrical experiments of the Silver Age to the playwrights of the Thaw.

Keywords

• peredvizhny theatre
• p.p. gaideburov
• n.f. skarskaya
• palestra
• city at dawn
• a.n. arbuzov
• v.n. pluchek
• studio
• improvisation
• group work
• sketch method