Squaring The Circle

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Event Squaring The Circle
Venue Workers' Art Club (1932-1943), Sydney, NSW
First Date 7 March 1937
Last Date 1937
Dates Estimated Yes
Status Pro-Am
World Premiere No
Description Written in 1927-28, the action of "Squaring the Circle" transpires in the last years of the New Economic Policy epoch.
Since its first production, "Squaring the Circle" has become the unchallenged favourite of the mass of Soviet theatre-goers.

Its amiable exaggeration of the search by Communist Youth for a new code of love, romance and morality- and of the crowded housing conditions under which the search proceeds - touched Soviet risibilities as nothing behind the footlights before or since.

In the new Russia even broad farce has its social purpose. In this case it is two-fold. The play pokes fun at petty-bourgeois notions of marriage and the family.
At the same time it caricatures no less gently silly attempts to discount love as a mere bourgeois prejudice. The scrambled loves and marriages and their facile unscrambling in "Squaring the Circle" are in no sense a realistic picture of domestic relations in the Soviet Union. While either husband or wife may end a marriage at will, there are social and ethical limits to this freedom prescribed by no law but none the less binding.

The play stands as hilarious proof that these earnest young followers of Marx and Lenin are utterly human and no more immune to the thrills and thrusts of love than youth under any social system.
Primary Genre Theatre - Spoken Word
Secondary Genre Comedy
Subjects 1930s
Class Issues
Communism
Organisations
Contributors
Name Function Notes
Victor Arnold Acrobat Abram
Megan Edwards Actor Role: Tonya
Henry Howlett Actor Comrade Flavius
Desmond Rowan Actor Role: Vasya
Betty Wilson Actor Role: Ludmilla
Edmund Allison Director Role: Emilian
Valentine Katayev Playwright
Resources
Event Status Completed
Data Source
Source Description
Programme Dennis Wolanski Library collection at UNSW Library
Programme From archive ML MSS 6244, Box 145x Archive, programme for production
Event Identifier 12200
Dataset AusStage