Workers' Youth Theatre, also known as TRAM (the Russian acronym for "Teatr RAbochey Molodyozhi") was a Soviet proletarian youth theatre of the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was established by Mikhail Sokolovsky in a converted cinema on Liteiny Prospekt, Leningrad. The theatre was run as a collective and produced agitprop pieces designed to educate and persuade. The group worked together with the Left Column, a German agitprop group active in Berlin. A number of the group moved to Moscow in 1931. Helmut Damerius led the two groups from 1931 to 1933.[1]
Adrian Piotrovsky was the theatre's principle ideologue, and Dmitri Shostakovich composed some incidental music for a number of its productions.[2] By 1930 the theatre was under attack, accused of "formalism" by its critics from among journalists and rival proletarian organizations.[3]
- ^ Biographical details, Helmut Damerius Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Retrieved December 2, 2011 (in German)
- ^ Frolova-Walker & Walker, p. 373
- ^ McBurney, p. 160