Red Rust vs Yellow Rust: Metamorphoses of the Soviet Play on Broadway

Abstract

The study focuses on the adaptation of a politically engaged dramaturgical work from Bolshevik Russia — Vladimir Kirshon’s and Andrey Uspensky’s play Konstantin Terekhin (Rust) — to the specific requirements of Broadway, the commercial theater of the USA, and the textual changes of the Soviet original associated with it. The basic principles of the Broadway theater creative and organizational model, drastically different from the repertory theater of post-revolutionary Russia, are defined — the primacy of commerce over artistry, the absence of state support and censorship, a respectable audience that does not accept radical political ideas. On the American stage the Soviet play was produced in 1929, with the changed title (Red Rust), and the text subjected to changes and distortions. The paper considers these changes in the context of American socio–economic life of the Red Thirties. The discrepancy between the original dramaturgical material and the specific requirements of the American commercial theater is analyzed. The free handling of the text from Bolshevik Russia in the US theater is due to the absence of copyright regulations between the two countries. The process of exporting the play to the United States — via Paris and London — is being reconstructed. Three sources that have carried out the textual transformation of the Soviet original are characterized: the authors of the French-language adaptation from Russian (Fernand Nozière and Vladimir Bienstock), British translators from French into English (Virginia and Frank Vernon) and Broadway stage director who previously visited Moscow and sought to introduce into the text what, in his opinion, Soviet censorship would not allow (Herbert Biberman). The study is based on the materials from the Beinecke Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts collections (Yale University), as well as documents from the Houghton Library (Harvard University), the New York Public Library for Performing Arts, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (Moscow), and the museum of the Mossovet State Academic Theater (Moscow). The study is aimed at expanding the understanding of the stage history of the Russian drama in America.