Russian Futurist theatre blazed brilliantly but very briefly. It lasted little more than twenty years, flourishing on either side of the 1917 Russian Revolution. It was the creation of a mere handful of practitioners, who included playwrights like Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov, Sergei Tretyakov, Vasily Kamensky, Ilya Zdanevich, Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky; stage designers such as Kasimir Malevich, Lyubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky; and directors like Sergei Radlov, Nikolai Foregger, Sergei Eisenstein, Igor Terentiev and of course, above all the others, Vsevolod Meyerhold.

Starting with small-scale, but noisy and disruptive, performances both inside and outside theatre buildings, continuing with wild experiments in circusisation, transense language and Constructivist extravagance, the Russian Futurist theatre by 1930 could be seen to be responsible for some of the most challenging and profound plays and productions of the twentieth century. Appallingly, it was cut off in its prime by political fiat and merciless tyranny, its practitioners silenced (more or less brutally) and its achievements buried in unmarked graves. For long it was forgotten, and only towards the end of the twentieth and in the early twenty-first centuries was it (to some extent) resurrected, and its genius acknowledged.

This book is perhaps the first to attempt an overview of this extraordinary phenomenon. It tries to tell the history of the Russian Futurist theatre and to understand its driving motivations. There have by now been scholarly studies of virtually all the subjects which this book addresses, and many brave productions of its works, but a similarly comprehensive survey and assessment has not, so far as I am aware, been essayed. I am conscious, however, of treading in the footsteps of finer scholars and practitioners than myself.

I became interested in the Russian Futurist theatre when I was investigating the seeds of Bertolt Brecht's theatre. Brecht's contact with some of those who had visited Russia in the 1920s, such as Bernhard Reich, Asja Lacis and Walter Benjamin, his friendship with Sergei Tretyakov, and so on, had opened to him a dazzling world of ambitious and trailblazing theatre work. It seemed worth inquiring into this source of inspiration.