“I had a Ticket to the Banquet in My Hands”. Fyodor Nikitin and “Child Theatre Ring”

Abstract

The material about the teaching activity of actor Fyodor Nikitin in the 1920s deals with the children’s studio called the First Child Regiment of the Young Army of Culture, “Child Theatre Ring”. Young actors staged performances and created paintings; their activities differed from what was offered at that time by state children’s theatre organizations. The influence of avant-garde art of the 1920s is revealed in the works of the studio’s artists. The publication presents Nikitin’s previously unpublished memoirs of his performance on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The comical image in which the actor appeared then was not accepted by the public. A significant part of it was made up of the political elite, since the performance was the concluding event of the 12th Communist Party Congress. The material we publish makes important additions to the portrait of the actor’s creativity and can be an important comment in the characterization of early Soviet culture. It allows us to reconstruct the socio-cultural landscape of the USSR in the early 1920s which formed a specific understanding of childhood culture.

Keywords

• school pedagogics
• children’s theatre
• film actor
• fyodor mikhailovich nikitin
• “child theatre ring”