Convention as Innovation: Asian Staging Inspiring Eastern and Western European Socialist Theatre

Abstract

This article explores, from a historical and comparative perspective, how Chinese and Japanese theatre inspired the revolutionary theatre movement in 1920s and 1930s Moscow, which in turn influenced German theatre. One notable example of this intercultural transmission of aesthetics can be seen in the play I Want a Child! by Sergei Tretiakov. It showcases the impact of Asian traditions, embodying theatre as a Eurasian phenomenon—a style of staging recognised by Brecht and Meyerhold as a means of actively educating the audience. Inspired by the power of this medium in China, Tretiakov who was a friend of Brecht, attempted to develop a theatrical language that would have the strongest impact on the masses with socialist values. The selected play exemplifies art as a communicative transfer zone where Asian, Soviet, and Western theatre traditions converge. Brecht later adopted these aesthetics in relation to gender roles and conventional (“epic”) theatre techniques, with the aim of politicising the audience. The article considers these dimensions, after delving into the context of I Want a Child! and revising Tretiakov’s activities related to his work in China. Finally, it situates the Brechtian alienation effect in the intercultural, Euro-Asian dimension of instructive modernist theatre.

1. Introduction

The American Germanist Devin Fore signifies Sergei Mikhailovich Tretiakov’s (1892–1937) role as a cultural transmitter who has influenced Bertolt Brecht and Alfred Barr, the first director of MoMA in New York (Fore 2015, p. 378). The futurist poet, journalist, photographer, playwright, publicist, radio commentator and screenwriter travelled the Soviet Union, China and a big part of Western Europe before he was convicted of espionage and executed. It was in China that Tretiakov was exposed to what he termed “Asian theatre” (Tretiakov 1924a). He introduced this concept to the Soviet and, as the article argues, German theatre makers. To trace this transfer of ideas, the article highlights some of the aesthetic concepts provided by Tretiakov’s play I Want a Child! (Khochu rebenka!, 1926–1929), his social interactions with Bertolt Brecht and his network.

On his travels, Tretiakov immersed himself in distant worlds that sympathised with the Soviet Union, not only propagating its culture but also absorbing the artistic traditions of these countries that were suitable for left-wing art. While he wrote that Chinese theatre could not be europeanised because it rejected the European repertoire (Tretiakov 1927a, p. 95), the playwright himself introduced Asian trends into the avant-garde theatre of Eastern and Western Europe, such as the role-convention: the model represented a (future) standard not only by its mimic, voice and gesture but also in its social function.

In the openly arbitrary relationship between actor and role, Tretiakov found the desired effect of estrangement, as well as the high attractiveness of theatre as a mass medium. He wanted to implement this status in the Soviet Union, too, by replacing the “theatrical poison” (Tretiakov 1927a, p. 78), which was full of traditional values, with Soviet social roles.

The ritualised “grammar” of Asian staging served the “agitational nature” of spectacles that he envisioned: Tretiakov tried to copy the function theatre had in China and Japan as a mass medium and to develop it further for the cultivation of socialist norms (Tretiakov 1927a, p. 84).

In terms of China, Tretiakov was involved there for at least five years, starting in 1919. He visited China several times, including in the summer of 1922, when he worked as a correspondent for the pro-Soviet newspaper Tribuna in Harbin. From February 1924, he taught Russian language and literature at Peking University for three semesters. There, he intended to finish two plays: one about the partisan war in the Far East, and the other about the Chinese Empire for the Proletkult Theatre and Meyerhold. After his disappointment with the play I Want a Child! (Khochu rebenka!), which had never been staged during his life,1 he stopped writing for the theatre and turned to cinema. However, this was before he believed in the theatre as the most effective mass medium following his experiences in Beijing.

To advocate for the neighbouring culture, Tretiakov wrote several dozen newspaper articles from China, including essays in the popular magazine Molodaia Gvardiia (Tretiakov 1924b, p. 306) and in the journal Prozhektor (Tretiakov 1924a) on Chinese theatre. Based on his journalistic work, he released a collection of travel essays entitled Dzhungo (Zhongguo is the Chinese name for the country), comprising more than 300 pages (the second edition had more than 350 pages) with chapters on theatre and also on the slightly changing role of women, which was important for I Want a Child! (Tretiakov 1927a, 1930). Thus, Tretiakov derived his enthusiasm for what I call “prescriptive embodiment”—the instructive role model effect—from China and its theatre, after observing traditional stagings and political performances in Beijing, as documented in his excessive travel writing (Hofmann 2019).

Upon returning to Moscow, he wrote his most successful play and poem of the same name, Roar, China! (Rychi, Kitai!, Tretiakov 1926b). The play premiered at the Meyerhold State Theatre on 23 January 1926 and was also staged in Berlin, where Bertolt Brecht saw this non-naturalistic performance, directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold. A year later, Tretiakov’s preoccupation with China resulted in the poem Li-Yan is Stubborn (Li-Yan upriam) (Tretiakov 1927c) and likely continued during the years 1926 to 1929, when Tretiakov worked on I Want a Child!, producing two versions of the play and a film script.

The play’s first draft (1926) experiments with the format of an exhibition: competing models of relationships and upbringing are displayed on stage, and the medical and psychological consequences of promiscuity, poor hygiene, and sexual violence are nailed to a “pillory”. While the first version of the play is set in a Moscow dormitory, the second version (1927–1928) focuses on an agrarian environment and metaphor: this setting draws a parallel between child-rearing and the agricultural optimisation of the harvest.

Both versions revolve around a new role model: Soviet Latvian Milda Grignau embodies the New Woman who aims to have a child without committing herself to a stable partnership and maternal responsibilities. Guided by rational criteria that coincide with the forced norms of social hygiene of the time, she looks for a biological father from the working class. Finally, she entrusts the upbringing of her child to a children’s home, where the baby thrives, as the children’s exhibition in the end suggests.

Like several of Tretiakov’s books, the play I Want a Child! was published in German. In fact, it was first published in German (its second version), and was edited by Bertolt Brecht (Tretjakow 1930). However, it remains unclear under which circumstances Brecht edited Tretiakov’s play. It is also unclear why the play was published in two different versions by the same publisher: the first edition was titled Ich will ein Kind haben. The second, Ein Produktionsstück in 10 Scenen, had a slightly different cover and subtitle, Die Pionierin, and was not published as a book for sale, but as a manuscript for theatres.

During the author’s lifetime, the play was neither published in the USSR (except for two scenes from the second version of the play in Novy LEF, Tretiakov 1927b) nor staged, despite the fact that he had already signed a contract with Meyerhold and the play had been included in his theatre’s repertoire. In 1976, the play was published in its first edition in German in the GDR (Tretjakow 1976b). Again, Germany was the location where it was first staged, namely at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe in 1980. In Russian, the play was published only during Perestroika (Tretiakov 1988). It was first staged in its original language at the Komedianty Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1989. While the German translation of both editions and staging discussions were provided in 2019 (Hofmann and Ditschek 2019a) and the English translation of the play was published in 2021 (Leach 2021), I Want a Child! has not been played in Western Europe for decades.

Following Min Tian’s argument, the transfer of Asian theatre to Eastern and Western Europe can be considered an “unlocatable ‘dislocated interculture’ or what Barba has defined as ‘Eurasian theatre,’ which is, according to Barba, neither Eastern nor Western but a ‘movement between East and West’” (Tian 2023, p. 240; Barba 1995, p. 42). While Tian mainly relies on Mei Lanfang’s reception by Meyerhold, Eisenstein and Brecht, my essay adds the crucial role of Sergei Tretiakov to this constellation. As Tian has demonstrated—and as is also true of Tretiakov—the use of concepts for one’s own ends is an appropriation of “twentieth-century Chinese-Western intercultural theatre”, which she considers to be “conditioned and dominated by a trajectory of displacements, inter-displacements, and re-displacements of different theatrical forces” to displace Chinese theatre “in accordance with the ‘new’, anti-realist paradigms of the avant-garde” (Tian 2008, p. 237).

2. Transmission from Beijing via Moscow to Berlin

2.1. Asian Theatre

The “interculture” resp. “displacement” begins with the aesthetic principles Tretiakov discovered in China, where he also watched Japanese kabuki theatre. Dramaturgical concepts and respective understandings of representation, time and the role of the audience in traditional Chinese and Japanese on the one hand and Western theatre on the other hand differ fundamentally: Since Aristotles, Western theatre has been strongly influenced by mimetic concepts. At its core is the portrayal of individual characters whose actions are psychologically motivated. Dramaturgy usually follows a causal structure in which conflicts are developed, intensified and resolved. The body, language and emotions are oriented towards an ideal of naturalness, intended to create the illusion of the real world. Stage design, lighting and technical elements support this illusion, taking a back seat to the events being portrayed as far as possible. Audiences adopt an identificatory attitude, becoming emotionally involved in the course of the action (Pickering and Thompson 2013, pp. 59–96).

By contrast, traditional Chinese theatre like the Bejing-opera (Eberstein 1983; Huang-Hung 1966) is based on a highly symbolic, non-illusionistic system of representation. Although the stage design is minimalist, it functions as a polyvalent symbolic space. Plots are often organised episodically and draw on well-known historical or literary material. The formal execution of the scenes is more important than the narrative progression. Performances include singing, dancing, acrobatics and choreographed fight scenes, each of which is strictly codified. Roles are typified and face painting serves as a visual indicator of a character’s morals, social standing and personality. Emotions are not developed psychologically, but represented through conventional gestures, movements and musical patterns. In this theatre, audiences are aware of the artificiality of the action, focusing their attention instead on virtuosity, precision, and performative mastery.

Traditional Japanese theatre (Ortolani 1966) pursues an even more abstract aesthetic, in which plot and external movement take a back seat to temporality, rhythm and atmospheric condensation. Dramatic development in the Western sense is often marginal; instead, a state characterised by repetition, deceleration and formal rigour is developed. Physical movement is highly controlled and minimal, lending even the slightest gesture significant meaning. Masks and costumes have no fixed meaning, but instead unfold their effect through their relationship with other elements, such as perspective, light or movement. Music and singing structure the performance space, creating a ritualistic atmosphere in which emotions are hinted at rather than explicitly shown. The emotional effect arises less on stage than in the audience’s perception of it.

From a comparative perspective, Chinese theatre can be said to focus primarily on external expressiveness, clear symbolism, and performative energy. Japanese theatre is characterised by reduction, ambiguity, and a contemplative use of time. Tretiakov also highlights a significant distinction between the two forms of theatre: facial expression plays a pivotal role in Japanese theatre, as he observed in China. In terms of the use of mimics, it resembles naturalistic dramaturgy, or “mood theatre” (Tretiakov 1924a, p. 32). In general, Tretiakov’s main ideas on Asian theatre are based on Chinese staging.

In contrast, Western theatre privileges psychological individuality, narrative coherence and emotional identification. These differences point to divergent aesthetic paradigms: whereas Western theatre aims to create an illusion of reality, Chinese and Japanese theatre operate primarily as formalised sign systems in which meaning is generated, not imitated.

Taking this up, Soviet political aesthetics broke with the psychologically driven conflicts characteristic of nineteenth-century Russian theatre. Eisenstein “argued that the technical elements of Kabuki were useful to the construction of new Soviet art” (Tian 2023, p. 97) yet his approach slid “in the direction of Orientalist essentialism when applied to Eastern culture and cultural traditions” (Tian 2023, p. 126).

In this context, “Asian theatre”, as Sergei Tretiakov broadly conceptualised it, corresponded to the Soviet Avant-Garde’s programmatic shift away from the subject-centred narration toward functional and collective forms. Paradigmatic for this turn is Tretiakov’s essay on Biography of the thing (1929), where he pleas for setting the life of an object in the centre instead of narration instead of a (fictional) character. The author’s displacement of original Chinese theatre was driven by an aspiration to achieve a revolutionary aesthetic, rather than orientalising idealisation.

By this means, Tretiakov attempted to introduce a theatrical language that would exert the same influence on the masses as Chinese theatre had for centuries, but with socialist values instead of patriarchal and dynastic ones. His play I Want a Child!, originally written in 1926, suggests new social relations and demonstrates the possibility of their procedural implementation through its different versions. Like the author, this play and especially its protagonist also served as a transmitter, or, as I would like to conceive it, as a transfer zone between intercultural understandings of childcare, gender roles and last but not least, theatre aesthetics. The exchange between Tretiakov, Meyerhold and Brecht, who all were involved in the attempts to stage I Want a Child!, contributed to spreading Tretiakov’s perception of Chinese theatrical aesthetics throughout the Soviet Union and the Weimar Republic, inspiring thought-provoking experiments in Eastern and Western Europe that, left aside the ideological impetus, did offer a new staging language including that of a didactic discussion.

According to Fore, it was this play that became an influential model for the genre of the didactic play that Bertolt Brecht began writing in 1929 (Fore 2015, p. 394) immediately after working on the translation of the second version of Tretiakov’s I Want a Child!. Apparently, the play has been a transfer zone through which Tretiakov’s cultural “spionage” in Bejing and Brecht’s aesthetics of Epic theatre could fruitfully meet. It is a vivid example of the aesthetic and agitational curiosity towards experimentation at that time, and beyond, with the appropriation of staging concepts from Eastern Asia by and via the Soviet Union. Dealing with this play, the avant-garde perceptions of Asian theatre by Tretiakov, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht intersect in a way that the Cold War and today’s geopolitical walls might put into oblivion, exemplifying the complex dynamics of European modernism’s encounter with East Asian visual aesthetics (Sullivan 1989). These socialist artists and their networks in Western and Eastern Europe have been part of a systematic, strategic search for new, effective means of political persuasion. Hereby, it is not only Japonisme (Wichmann 1980) but also the fascination with Chinese stage aesthetics and revolutionary Soviet theatre that have given important impetus to the German Avant-Garde, particularly to their theatre of conventions (“uslovnyi teatr” resp. Episches Theater).

2.2. Tretiakov and His Plays: Transmission to Germany

German theatre makers encountered Soviet adaptations of Chinese themes and theatrical elements primarily thanks to Meyerhold. In 1930, Meyerhold’s tour with Tretiakov’s play Roar, China! in Berlin attracted widespread attention, and the play remained in his theatre’s repertoire for six years. In 1929 and 1930, the play was published in German in Berlin, and translated and adjusted by Leo Lania under the title Brülle, China! Ein Spiel in 9 Bildern. Only later, in 1930, was it published in Moscow in Russian.

In Moscow, Tretiakov taught a course on rhetoric and poetics at Meyerhold’s studio. Meyerhold combined old Western European and Russian traditions, bringing together Molière, 17th-century Spanish theatre, Italian commedia dell’arte and balagan, Eastern Slavic fairground theatre, the comically grotesque elements of Nikolai Gogol, the symbolist Alexander Blok, and German authors, including Frank Wedekind (Tian 1999, p. 257).

In Meyerhold, Tretiakov saw a pioneer who was emulated by theatre practitioners around the world: like Brecht, he was a great admirer of the director’s talent (Leach 1989, p. 504), and his influence was coined across the Soviet Union as well as Western Europe as “the Meyerholdisation of theatres” (Tretiakov 1926a, p. 69). Likely, he added to Meyerhold’s and Sergei Eisenstein’s inspiration with his reports from China, and together they ‘passed them on’ to the West. By this means, Tretiakov transferred the means of visual persuasion from Chinese theatre to the Moscow and international stage, which resonated with Meyerhold and German playwrights.

With regard to Brecht, his theory and practice are deeply intertwined with Meyerhold’s non-illusionistic work, as Katerina Bliss Eaton has shown:

Some of Meyerhold’s ideas closely anticipated the theory and practice of Brecht. Most notable are those stylistic innovations used to destroy the realistic stage convention: film projections and posters which comment on or announce the action; interpolation of dances, Jazzband style music, and songs; masks and grotesque costuming; emphasis on stage movement and gesture; the combination of realistic and stylized stage set- tings; training of the actor to be both self and character onstage, and finally the attempt to obliterate the social and psychological distance between audience and actors. Beyond the fact that Brecht and Meyerhold were influenced by the same revolutionary milieu, they shared these innovations because they believed in a non-illusionistic art which served the people. Moreover, they were attracted to similar elements in the traditional theatres of the Orient and the West.

(Eaton 1977, p. 3)

Zoran Konstantinovich even noted that Brecht owed most of his concept of alienation on stage to Meyerhold and the formalists with their central concepts of distancing and aestheticisation of everyday facts (Konstantinovich 1985, p. 104). Contrary to him, Min Tian assumes the following: “If indeed Brecht’s ‘A-effect’ comes across as a translation of Shklovsky’s ostranenie, it displaces the Russian formalist aesthetic concept from its original context and at the same time differentiates itself from the Russian concept as the latter is re-placed in a socially and ideologically conditioned new context.” Due to Brecht’s Verfremdung was not only an aesthetic concept but had a social aim and a cognitive function for the consciousness of his spectators, Tian speaks about a translation with “difference and displacement” (Tian 2012, p. 184).

As an “engineer of human souls” (Westermann 2003, p. 40), Meyerhold was guided by a constructivist vision of the world in which the body is likened to a machine and the emotions of the audience are calculable. Like Tretiakov, he was attracted by the Asian theatre: among other things, he referred to the “melodic recitation” in Chinese theatre, which was intended to maintain the audience’s attention (Tian 1999, p. 248). Meyerhold’s theatre and the Chinese theatre, as Tretiakov describes it, carry both a repertoire of specific, well-known meanings of visual and acoustic signs, symbols and masks, being popular, influential and ritualised. Despite Erwin Piscator’s denial of the influence of his Soviet colleagues, especially Meyerhold, he admitted that, like other German directors, he closely observed what was happening on the stages of the USSR (Bab 1928, pp. 221–29).

Alongside Tretiakov, the most important disseminators of ideas between Moscow and Berlin were the Latvian actress and theatre director Asia Lācis, Bernhard Reich, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and the aforementioned Eisenstein (Eaton 1985, p. 14). Piscator was particularly close to Meyerhold and Lācis, who arrived in Berlin in 1922. She collaborated with Brecht and later worked with Benjamin, likely informing them about Tretiakov’s work, which led Benjamin to his famous essay on the author-producer in which he refers to Tretiakov (Benjamin 1934, pp. 98–99). Benjamin’s theses influenced the perception of Tretiakov in both East and West Germany from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s.

Assuming how Brecht encountered the play I Want a Child!, the Germanist Jan Knopf, who wrote a review of the first production of this play in Karlsruhe, suggested (according to our correspondence in 2019) that Brecht became acquainted with Russian culture and probably had already met Tretiakov in Germany at the popular cabaret theatre Der blaue Vogel in Berlin in the early 1920s. Also, through correspondence with a wide circle of colleagues, and newspaper reviews, Brecht was well informed about the Russian avant-garde and its representatives. He developed the closest relationship with Tretiakov, who wrote in German with Brecht (Hoover 1973, p. 42). Only a small portion of this correspondence in German has been preserved (Tretjakow 1976a, pp. 258–72). When Tretiakov became exhausted, he even wrote a poem about him entitled Advice to Tretiakov to Get Well (Rat an Tretjakow, gesund zu warden, 1937).

As documented, Brecht met his colleague on 20th of January 1931, when he attended Tretiakov’s lecture The Writer and the Socialist Village in Berlin (Mierau 1987, pp. 206–11). From December 1930 to October 1931, Tretiakov travelled through Germany, Austria and Denmark as a representative of the All-Russian Writers’ Union and gave lectures on the role of the writer in the conditions of collectivisation, based on his own observations of this process in the Caucasus. At that time, Brecht had already heard about the Soviet futurist and factographer through Lācis, Edmund Meisel, Leo Lania and Benjamin.

After their meeting in Berlin, Brecht invited Tretiakov to spend several weeks in his native Augsburg. There, Sergei Mikhailovich might have told his colleague about the development of Chinese theatre and his run-ins with the Chief Repertory Committee, which only allowed his emancipatory play I Want a Child! to be staged with reservations.

In addition, Brecht learned about Chinese theatre from various sources, having been interested in Asia since his youth. His admiration for the East can be seen throughout his work, for example in the poem Legend of the origin of the book Tao Te Ching on Lao Tzu’s way into exile (Legende von der Entstehung des Buches Taoteking auf dem Wege des Laotse in die Emigration) and in the play Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (The Good Person of Szechwan) (Onderdelinden 1993, p. 40). Antony Tatlow pointed out that the effect of defamiliarisation (“Verfremdung”) in Brecht’s epic theatre, his contact with Tretiakov and the Russian formalists’ concept of estrangement (“ostranenie”) were not coincidental intersections, highlighting that Chinese theatre has influenced Brecht’s work, especially its artistry with complex content and social attitudes, the physicality, imagery and vividness of Chinese acting, and the depiction of the social subconscious (Tatlow 2003, pp. 190–92). Germany had been actively interested in China since the 19th century, especially after acquiring colonial territories there and reading Klabund’s (Alfred Henschke) translations of Chinese poetry (Arnold-Schuster 2007, p. 13). At the peak of this exoticism, Alfred Döblin published his successful novel The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun: Chinesischer Roman, 1916).

Therefore, various factors contributed to Brecht’s contact with Asian theatre traditions and Russian stage experiments before his meeting with Mei Lan-Fang in Moscow in 1935. First and foremost was his knowledge of Meyerhold’s theatre, whose innovative work on movement (Arefyeva 2026) had been documented in the German press and photographed since 1922 (Tian 1999, pp. 234–35). Brecht also knew Eisenstein, the director of the Proletkult Theatre, who staged Tretiakov’s play Gas Masks (Protivogazy, 1923) there and negotiated in Germany for the production of the play I Want a Child! It is unlikely that Brecht had direct contact with Chinese theatre in the early 1920s, as there are no records of Chinese theatre companies performing in Germany during this period (Bai 1998, p. 401).

When Bertolt Brecht, in the late 1920s, reflected on epic, dramatic, and dialectical theatre as the primary medium of the “new socialist man”, Tretiakov’s norm-setting play I Want a Child! about the “new woman” came in handy, as did the contrasting montage in his successful play Roar, China! and the anti-psychologised formalistic approach. The dramaturgy in Roar, China!, inspired by the emblematic East Asian theatre (Leach 1989, p. 506), rejects linearity.

Tretiakov’s most successful play consists of individual events arranged in a series, bringing to the fore the montage and the facts of the “play-article” as he introduces the first edition of his reportages on China (Tretiakov 1927a, p. 8). They present an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, now rebellious and socialist-oriented China, equating aesthetic innovation with a political programme. Commenting on the play, the first edition of which he knew in a 1929 translation by his colleague Leo Lania, Brecht noted that Tretiakov showed potential and was “on the right track” (Brecht 1967, pp. 204–5).

In terms of Tretiakov’s most unsuccessful play, according to Eduard Ditschek, I Want a Child! found its way to Piscator’s theatre company and Bertolt Brecht through the internationally renowned director Sergei Eisenstein, a friend and colleague of Tretiakov, as well as through the German composer Edmund Meisel, who was commissioned to write the music for the film Battleship Potemkin (Ditschek 2019, p. 244). Their first documented personal meeting took place in 1931, when Tretiakov was in Berlin, but he may have visited Germany before that.

Next, we will examine three points of contact between Chinese and Brechtian epic theatre through this play, based on the main aspects of both versions of the play and the film script: (1) gender roles; (2) techniques of conventional theatre; (3) the politicisation of the audience’s emotions.

2.3. Gender Roles

Tretiakov’s interest in China (Tyerman 2022) was also reflected in the publication of a so-called bio-interview with the revolutionary-minded young man Den Shi-Khua. The factographist compiled the book from his conversations with his student, published it in 1931 in Russian (Tretiakov 1931a) and one year later in a German translation. In this text, he coined a new genre of a radicalised skaz: here, Tretiakov gives voice to the Chinese man to tell a story about his emancipation from the traditional China. Den Shi-Khua frees himself from the expectations of his conservative family to marry and to live in a patriarchal family (Tretiakov 1931a). This sujet finds an echo in the main figure of I Want a Child! as Milda embodies liberation from the female stereotypes in her masculine and goal-oriented character.

Both Milda and Den Shi-Khua carry out the conflict between the old and the new for the struggle for socialist values. Both protagonists represent a critical stance and de-exoticism of the heteronomous family with its gender-related dependencies. In I Want a Child! the duty of motherhood no longer prevents the female protagonist from working nor forces it her into a family structure. Both works attempt to achieve the intended socio-political position in the mind of the audience.

Embodying a future woman, Milda, the heroine of the play I Want a Child!, is a cultural worker in the first version of the play, reminiscent of Tretiakov himself. This figure also symbolises the abolition of gender boundaries, which is typical for Chinese and Japanese theatre, where women’s roles are played by men (Tretiakov 1924a, p. 31). The exemplary nature and strangeness of her role as a woman who has broken with prerevolutionary social roles lead to the central result of defamiliarisation: Milda is called a “workhorse” in the play, and the men mistake her for a man—this perception is somewhat similar to that of the Chinese actor Mei Lanfang. Tretiakov writes the following about him:

His calculated and masterfully executed bows, greetings and steps set the standard for everyday interaction among the Chinese. In terms of skill, they are the flawless role models.

(…)

The actor Mei Lanfang, who plays female roles, is the unattainable ideal of feminine beauty for every traditional, middle-class Chinese girl. He is a master of outward dispassion, manners and social graces.

(Tretiakov 1924a, p. 30)

As Tretiakov observed, the female roles that Mei portrayed represented the ideal woman in terms of both gender and manners. Yet, at the same time, we can assume that Mei’s performance included a fluidity and uslovnost’ of roles, in that the audience could see a biological man embodying a woman on stage.

While Mei Lanfang plays women, Milda embodies a male character through her functional dressing style and her exaggerated rational behaviour. She understands her sexuality only as a means to ensure the birth of children. Neither her professional activities nor her political engagement ought to be affected by motherhood. Milda’s character, composed of purposeful actions rather than feelings, is easy to imagine with a stony face—she wears the role mask of a woman who (over)identifies with her utilitarian social (“obshchestvennaia”) role. Being opposed to the private one, this role also embodies the theatrical idea of a prescriptive role model instead of a mimetic character that reproduces one from outside theatre.

The female–male character as well as China also attracted Brecht in his play The Good Person of Sezuan (Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, written between 1938 and 1940 in collaboration with Ruth Berlaus and Margarete Steffin, first staged in 1943), a prime example of epic didactic theatre, and in its fragmentary predecessor, The Commodity of Love (Die Ware Liebe), from 1930. The parable about morality is set in the Chinese province of Sezuan (Sichuan) and criticises religion and capitalism. It foregrounds gender as a survival strategy and thus implies that gender will not have this significance in Socialism anymore.

Brecht’s play follows Shen Te, a poor woman who tries to live as a generous person but is repeatedly exploited because of her gendered role as caring, self-sacrificing, and economically vulnerable. To survive, she invents a male alter ego, Shui Ta, who is rational, authoritarian, and economically ruthless. As Shui Ta, Shen Te gains the respect, power, and protection that are denied to her as a woman. Brecht thus stages gender not as an essence but as a socially enforced role: goodness is feminised and punished, while authority and economic success are masculinised and rewarded. The play exposes how moral ideals are incompatible with social structures that disadvantage women, suggesting that fairness is structurally impossible without abandoning femininity itself.

Anticipating the same basic pattern in his play about new (non-)family relationships, Tretiakov develops a conflict between Milda and the chaotic postrevolutionary society around her. Fritz Mierau points out this parallel, referring to the seventh scene of the play about Sichuan: in it, Shen Te introduces her unborn child to the world. This echoes the ninth scene of I Want a Child!, in which Iakov imagines himself pushing a baby in a pram (Mierau 1975, pp. 240–41).

Overall, variations of the standard socialist woman from the play I Want a Child! in both versions, the play and its film libretto, correspond to exceptional female characters in Brecht’s plays. This can be seen, for example, in the play Mother Courage and Her Children (Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, written with Margarete Steffin 1938/39), in which the heroine sacrifices herself for her children, in the independent protagonist in the Kuhle Wampe; or, Who Owns the World? (Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt? 1932) and in the praise of love for the adoptive mother (and sensible owner of a fertile valley) in the play The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Der kaukasische Kreidekreis, 1944/45).

Robert Leach called the latter a borrowing that expressed Brecht’s acknowledgement of his mentor Tretiakov (Leach 1989, p. 510). The Caucasian Chalk Circle is based on an Old Testament story (the wise decision of King Solomon) and a 14th-century Chinese play by Li Xindao (Hu Lanqi), which the translator Klabund rewrote as Der Kreidekreis. It was staged in Berlin in 1925 and set to music as an opera in 1933 and 1983 (Berg-Pan 1975). Unlike Klabund, Brecht uses the parable of the chalk circle to convey a Marxist-inspired doctrine: social factors alone determine the role of the mother. It is precisely this ideal that Milda embodies in the play I Want a Child!

Tretiakov extols the benefits of raising children in nurseries, orphanages, and kindergartens: his inspection of collective farms in the North Caucasus (1930–1934) convinced him that children in such institutions grew up in healthier conditions than in their own homes (Tretiakov 1931b, pp. 10, 16–28). Families affected by World War I and the Civil War were often unable to provide for their young children. Tretiakov declares the state to be an ultimate, useful and a relatively comfortable educational institution. The framing action of The Caucasian Chalk Circle is reminiscent of the second edition of the play I Want a Child! and the libretto of the film of the same name. The framework of both works shows Milda’s agricultural education as an agronomist, who then, before our very eyes, even ‘produces’ her own proletarian child in the same way as livestock is selected and mated. She gives her baby up for adoption to a children’s home, an institution similar to the foster mother, but on a collective level.

In Brecht’s work, the relationship between mother and child is subordinated to a discussion of land ownership and agriculture. In The Caucasian Chalk Circle, the question of whether a fertile valley will be given to a fruit-growing collective farm or a goat-breeding collective farm that has destroyed the orchards with its livestock farming is brought to the fore. The decision is made in favour of the fruit growers, and the goat breeders have to move elsewhere. The winning collective farm brings the play about motherhood to a conciliatory, dialectically instructive conclusion, expressing gratitude to rationalism and to the harvest of ‘fruits’ that were sensibly sown and grown.

According to Jan Knopf, Brecht saw the play I Want a Child! as a satire on Soviet social experiments (Knopf 2012, pp. 246–47). Indeed, the first draft of the play contains a number of jabs at early Soviet politics: the text humorously criticises the difficult housing conditions in Moscow and hostility towards innovation. Sexual violence is condemned in a serious tone, with factually accurate references to the Chubarov case. The second edition of the play (Brecht was involved in its translation into German), on the contrary, presents Milda’s behaviour without mocking it as a lesson but as a demand for self-optimisation of working mothers.

In the texts of both versions of the play and the film libretto, the stereotypical biomechanical Milda prevails. Dramatically, Milda, a new type of woman, offends other characters and the audience with her desire to have a child from a real proletarian, her ideas about relationships and raising children, and her blunt directness. Along with generalising well-known types of relationships, Tretiakov establishes a standard that should contribute to the development of desirable types of relationships (Tretiakov 1923, p. 214).

Having absorbed the traits of her spiritual father, Milda could be representative of the type of overly zealous cultural worker (in the first version of the play). This positive character stands out sharply from the other characters. Although this kind of mother does not invite emotional identification, she motivates the spectator’s rational assimilation of her behaviour as well as its improvement. This character stands at the historical crossroads between the pre-revolutionary, patriarchal–bourgeois and socialist roles of women. She is repelled by the types that Soviet society is trying to leave in the past: hooligans, philistines, boastful artists, and returning emigrants. Similarly, a disorderly lifestyle and impulsive, unconscious relationships are supposed to be a thing of the past.

In sum, the theatrical practices of Tretiakov and Brecht aimed at creating a “new (wo)man”. Both playwrights shared the same ambition—the maximum social impact through dramatic tools—and considered the possibilities of conventional theatre to achieve this.

2.4. Conventional Theatre

Apart from the fluidity of gender roles, Asian theatre has inspired Tretiakov and Brecht with its core principle of exposing its conventionality in terms of functionality (uslovnost). Both were attracted by the idea of a non-naturalistic theatre.

Epic theatre, as popularised by Bertolt Brecht, is designed to prevent emotional immersion. It usually has an episodic structure consisting of self-contained scenes rather than a continuous, suspense-driven plot. Each of his scenes could stand on its own, outside the overall dramaturgy; events unfold along a curve, logical motivations replace uncontrollable feelings and instincts (Knopf 1980, p. 180). Narration, songs, placards or projections are often employed to provide commentary on the action and offer analytical framing of events. The didactic aim of epic theatre is to promote social and political reflection rather than emotional catharsis. Finally, it emphasises visible theatricality and stylised acting to expose social relations and remind the audience that the performance is a constructed representation.

These elements of theatrical education in behavioural ‘algorithms’ were familiar to Tretiakov from his work with Meyerhold and Eisenstein. They have their roots in Tretiakov’s very first and already highly enthusiastic account on Chinese theatre:

Chinese theatre is based on conventions. Audiences do not look for correspondences between gestures, tones or psychological states. This theatre uses signs, symbols and masks that have strictly defined meanings. For example, a white spot on an actor’s forehead indicates that they are playing the role of a villain. A red spot indicates a good hero. If an actor holds a whip, it means he is riding a horse. The alphabet of theatrical symbols is magnificent and complex. It is a grammar that every Chinese person knows, and thanks to which they can read a stage play as easily as we read a children’s story. Woe betide the actor who contorts their face into a grimace of ‘real’ pain or joy instead of performing a movement intended for that purpose and determined by the course of the drama.

(…)

There is no “inner voice”, no “inspiration”, no “ecstatic frenzy”—every step is calculated, every gesture elegantly choreographed. The actor is under extreme tension, and it is the actor’s will that transforms this energy into expressive artistry.

(…)

The manner of performance and a whole range of scenic arrangements in Japanese theatre are also determined by conventions.

(Tretiakov 1924a, pp. 30–31)

Tretiakov also notes that initially, Chinese theatre, like Japanese theatre, was a folk spectacle and a holistic, prolonged experience, similar to a ritual church service with the character of “eligious-aesthetic hypnosis” (Tretiakov 1924a, p. 30; 1927c, p. 77–79). This format did not imply a strict distinction between everyday life and art: it overcame the separation between the viewer-consumer and the artist-producer—both on stage and in front of it, a public social theatre took place simultaneously. People went to the theatre for the whole day, taking breaks from the performance to eat and exchange opinions with other spectators. Employees of any shift could visit the theatre at a time of day that suited them. Tretiakov compares it to a “spiritual” canteen: “Chinese theatre is as popular as a snack bar” (Tretiakov 1924a, p. 30; 1927c, p. 78).

It was precisely this function of mass media, entertaining and educating models of the struggle for socialist principles, that left-wing theatre aspired to. Theatre should serve the entire population, not just the elite. At the end of I Want a Child!, the future parents were supposed to come on stage and accompany Milda to her educational lecture on childbirth. Then, as Tretiakov insisted, a controlled discussion with predetermined conclusions should take place. Thus, the ideas of the play would then carry over into life outside the theatre. Like Tretiakov, who regarded I Want a Child! as an intentional dialogue with the audience, Brecht frequently interrupted his performances to address the actors on stage.

The stage and the showcase building designed for I Want a Child! helped to get the audience as involved as possible in the play that turned into an interactive exhibition of new relationships between colleagues, neighbours and family built on the basis of equality. Accordingly, the set depicting the dormitory where Milda lives consists of a series of small, identical rooms separated by screens, without a front wall. Since the residential building in the play is being rebuilt, the characters, following the director’s instructions, can move both vertically and horizontally, creating simultaneity in time and space on stage.

References of such a stage design can be found to both the modernist Western European theatre of the 1920s and to Asian theatre. While simple sets were common in China, Japan used sliding structures that could be a precursor to simultaneous, synchronised scenes: “These scenes were usually set in a Japanese house with the screens in the foreground removed and sliding to the sides, revealing ladders, rafters and columns. Alternatively, it could be the area in front of the house”. (Tretiakov 1924a, p. 32)

Transformative scenery reached its peak with Piscator, Brecht, and Meyerhold. Film projections, parallel scenes, rotating stage circles, conveyor belts, and movable bridges were characteristic of Piscator’s productions in the 1920s. Such stage constructions allow for simultaneity to manifest itself in parallel episodes that disrupt the linearity of the action. This effect is supported by the coincidence of various equivalent means of communication.

Plurimedia is also characteristic of Chinese theatre: it features an orchestra, props and strictly defined movements, make-up, and costume colours that replace the former masks. Make-up determines which of the five categories of protagonists a character belongs to (Tretiakov 1927a, pp. 90–92), and this determines the types of speech and singing, with singing playing a central role (Tretiakov 1924a, p. 30; 1924b, pp. 308–9; 1927a, pp. 90–94). Thus, montage, simultaneity, and the active introduction of multimedia effects become the means of socialist dramatic staging beginning in the 1920s. This revolutionary theatre was both an aesthetic and political innovation, as both dimensions were intertwined around one goal: a political guidance of the viewer’s affective reactions.

2.5. Politicisation of the Viewers’ Emotions

The calculated appearance of Asian, especially Japanese, actors, their role masks, the standardisation of their functions, as well as the use of voice, impressed Tretiakov as a means that allows for political governance of the viewer’s emotions: “It is a calculated and masterfully crafted sound gesture whose dramatic persuasiveness is not diminished by this ‘artificiality’, but which instead makes one wonder how much more effective and convincing the ‘artificial’ laughter of our clowns and eccentrics is than that of actors.” (Tretiakov 1924a, p. 32).

The Soviet avant-garde artist has already been occupied with an agitative “sound gesture” that he has developed together with Sergei Eisenstein in Moscow (Tretiakov 1922, p. 13). In their understanding, thanks to the concise and stunning use of the word, voice and body language, the rational will of the masses instead of individual subjectively would become the driving force behind physical and verbal expression. Both Sergei Mikhailovich defined the Proletkult theatre as a “theatre of attractions” in order to charge the audience with revolutionary energy, which they defined as “any calculated pressure on the attention and emotions of the viewer” and “any stage combination that has the property of condensing the viewer’s emotions into one or another aspect dictated by the purpose of the performance” (Tretiakov 1924c, p. 54).

In addition, both of Meyerhold’s students, Tretiakov and Eisenstein, further developed his biomechanical movement training (Meyerhold 1998). The system of physical techniques, rhythmic movements and gestures was intended to replace uncontrolled emotions. Following the book Ausdrucksgymnastik by Bode (1922), evidenced by their theoretical paper “Expressive Movement”, they intended to develop a type of speech and body regulation that would be suitable for acting that rewires usual affective reactions (Tretiakov and Eizenshtein [1924] 2000, p. 302).

In China, Tretiakov’s interest in politically useful emotion management coincided with the local theatrical aesthetics. He paid great attention to the energy of gesture in Chinese theatre, drawing a parallel to the Proletkult theatre:

The arms are positioned in a strictly organised manner. (…) Expressiveness in movement is achieved through sudden frozen tensions, accentuated visually and rhythmically by the drum. The most expressive and impressive moment is a frozen jerk that slowly discharges into the next movement. The audience’s positive reaction is evident in their shouts of approval and chaos when the actor freezes in this position as if in a living picture. The general definition of motor-expressive moments is to startle and freeze in a tense position. (…) The forms of motor expression in Chinese theatre are closely related to the techniques used in Proletkult theatre to construct movement and plan action, such as buffoonery, acrobatics, and parades.

(Tretiakov 1924a, pp. 309–10)

The Soviet author insists that, to this end, it is necessary to continue studying how theatre affects the audience through the power of words and gestures (Tretiakov 1926a, p. 68). He also himself demonstrates the intense, shocking function of gesture in his film libretto based on the play I Want a Child!. In it, the personified “five (fingers)” become a grotesque attraction—the moving hand intensifies the atmosphere of threat to women as objects and pushes Milda towards a sensible decision:

She throws down the book and lies down on the bed. A new vision appears to her: monstrous bedbugs with human hands crawl out of every crack and climb onto her body. She struggles to brush them off. She wakes up, rushes to the table, grabs the newspaper and searches the ads. She underlines something with a pencil. “Basmannaya consultation for pregnant women.”

(Tretiakov 2018b, p. 203)

Thus, biomechanical-inspired theatrical aesthetics combined left-wing art together with Tretiakov’s and Meyerhold’s fascination with Chinese theatre. Constructivist ideas, such as the pursuit of industrial design pioneered by Boris Arvatov and Alexander Bogdanov, combined utilitarian aesthetics with the organisation of all spheres of life in order to foster a mastery of the body that would enable complete control over the emotions of actors and audiences. If classical rhetoric assumed that the use of linguistic embellishments had a more intense emotional impact, the creative duo of Arvatov and Bogdanov bet on the opposite: the stronger the symbolic condensation in speech gestures and the greater the involvement of the body in action, the less need there is for spoken text and stage presence. According to them, movements on stage should be in economic unison with the organisation and material aesthetics of the time (Zalambani 2003, pp. 73–77).

Concerning Chinese techniques, Meyerhold was particularly impressed by the following, which formed part of his concept of biomechanics: gestures expressing the highest power of life in a single movement; playing with objects; movement accompanied by music; rhythm forming the basis of the movement process; the importance of introductions, pauses and rejecting unnecessary elements to reinforce the image; the actor reflecting on themselves during the performance; the use of two scenes; the significance of screens, posters and exclamations during tense action, as well as handkerchiefs held by the actors (Shakhmatova 1997, pp. 99–100; Tian 1999, p. 245).

After five years of collaboration with Meyerhold, Tretiakov strongly supported the mission of the October Theatre to energise new customs. Performances should not immerse the audience in fictional worlds, but rather stimulate their active energy, motivating them to transfer the postulates from the stage into everyday life. If theatre had not been pushed into the background by literature and cinema, but had risen to its calculated impact, Tretiakov and Eisenstein would have more successfully fit into the then-current trend of reflexology around Vladimir Bekhterev and Ivan Pavlov, eliciting programmed reflexes of thought and behaviour in the audience.

Tretiakov, like Arvatov, Bogdanov, and Meyerhold and like the Chinese theatre that the travel journalist had experienced, strove for a well-thought-out, calculated expressiveness of details and the overall impression of the work. This work compelled all media and genres, including his reportages, that tried to capture the effective improvement of economic and cultural organisation. As a result, Tretiakov had automated his own body, intellect and writing into a disciplined moving machine between Asia, the Soviet Union and Western Europe.

The instructiveness of the Asian theatre is what appealed to Tretiakov the most. If Chinese theatre is “a school of manners, a school of all the conventions of everyday life, propriety, and ceremony” (Tretiakov 1924a, p. 30; 1927a, p. 79), the socialist theatre, with its “attractions”, “sound gestures” and constant anti-psychologisation, could also be used as an emotional strategy to ritualise and publicly instruct social roles. Thus, while in Beijing, Tretiakov became convinced that theatre has the power to set socio-cultural standards that are absorbed by the general public. In other words, the audience reads a kind of social code from the stage, whether it be old norms or new socialist ones. In his article on Asian theatre, he suggests that theatre was the first form of mass media, comparable to the invention of the alphabet (Tretiakov 1924a, pp. 30–31; 1927a, pp. 87–88).

In the second edition of Zhungo, the author further emphasises his view that theatre is the most powerful means of agitation:

The endings of Chinese plays can be compared with the definitive conclusions of ancient tragedy (the triumph of fate), Christian liturgy (the victory of the holy deity) and American films (the triumph of business acumen, as well as intellectual and financial exploitation). This consistency in the impact of plays on the audience and the complete absence of realistic arbitrariness, is indicative of the propagandistic nature of Chinese theatre. Rather than reflecting, it manipulates the audience through spectacular means.

(Tretiakov 1930, p. 128)

In terms of the endings, Tretiakov noted that open ones are unthinkable in Chinese plays: they conclude with a clear message (Tretiakov 2018a, p. 83). Similarly, in the final scene of I Want a Child!, we are told that choosing a partner based on lust is as good for the child as choosing a partner based on class—childcare provided by the state compensates for biological and social disadvantages. Both children (Milda’s and her rival Lipa’s, who did not choose a proletarian father for her child but followed her desire to have a lover) receive a prize at the orphanage for the best development. In the first version, the final scene invites the audience to a lecture as Milda turns to explicitly educate them: “If there are men who want to be fathers and women who want to be mothers, come here, and from here we will all go to the club for a lecture” (Tretiakov 2018a, p. 135).

In the second version, the lecture disappears as the play itself is much more like a lesson. By the end, the well-equipped kindergarten seems perfect, with Milda finding fault only with one poorly hammered nail. This new approach to creating family-like collective structures is based on predictable choices of a rationalised society. Seen as a form of emancipation, it was supposed to replace ideas about motherhood as female self-exploitation with Soviet egalitarian reproduction styles. In both versions of the play, the ending conveyed the same message.

2.6. Brecht’s Alienation Effect and the Euro-Asian Instructive Theatre

Against this background, I Want a Child! can be called an instructive play that corresponds with Asian theatre traditions and a “Lehrstück” in the sense of Bertolt Brecht. According to Brecht, in such a piece, the actor does not identify with the role, but rather performs it, putting their actions up for evaluation by the audience. In writings penned after meeting Mei Lanfang in Moscow, he openly draws a connection between his own concept of theatre and the Chinese one, especially in the articles Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting (1936) and On the Theatre of the Chinese (1940), which he later repeated and changed (Bai 1998, p. 389).

One of the main issues Brecht discusses is the position of the audience. His instructive plays aim to analytically engage the viewer, encouraging them to draw socially meaningful conclusions from distance instead of identification with the performer:

The performer wishes to appear alien to the spectator. Alien to the point of arousing surprise. This he manages by seeing himself and his performance as alien. In his way the things he does on the stage become astonishing. By this craft everyday things are removed from the realm of the self-evident.

(…)

To look at himself is for the performer an artful and artistic act of self-estrangement. Any empathy on the spectator’s part is thereby prevented from becoming total, that is, from being a complete self-surrender.

(Brecht 1961, p. 131)

Hence, the dramaturgy is constructed in such a way that viewers gain new beliefs, primarily according to the author’s intention, but with the impression of their own choice, which might lead to political useful evaluations of right and wrong.

Brecht called his goal “V-Effekt” an abbreviation of “Verfremdungseffekt” (the effect of alienation/estrangement)—, he seemingly appropriated this notion from the Soviet Avant-Garde (Lachmann 1970, pp. 243–47). Brecht’s staging increases the length and difficulty of perception, making it “strange”, different, and therefore artistically novel. This originally formal, non-political definition was formulated by the formalist literary scholar Viktor Shklovskii as the core of his concept of “ostranenie” (Shklovski 1929, p. 13). For him, estrangement constitutes the distinguishing function of literature, and, following his argument, art in general. The techniques of selection and combination bring together elements in a narrative sequence, surprising the reader and the viewer. Similarly, in instructive theatre, staged estrangement can raise awareness of societal issues.

The idea of defamiliarisation was first introduced by Shklovskii in his 1914 work The Resurrection of the Word and, three years later, in his 1917 article Art as a Technique, which appeared in the 1919 collection Poetics (Shklovskii et al. 1919). Likely, Brecht learnt about “ostranenie” from Meyerhold and Tretiakov, which had a strong influence on him (Willett 1959, pp. 163, 209; Konstantinovich 1985, pp. 104, 106; Jestrovic 2002, p. 45). In his writings on alienation in Chinese theatre, Brecht acknowledges that Tretiakov and Meyerhold were already familiar with the concept, yet he denies any connection between his work and theirs and the Chinese theatre, claiming that he developed his methods independently: “in the experiments of the new German theatre, the alienation effect was developed quite independently. The influence of Asian acting was nil.” (Brecht 1961, p. 134).

The parallels persists as Brecht’s “epic theatre” avoided the catharsis established by Aristotelian theatre. This approach had already been tested and refined in Soviet modernist theatre, for example by the “montage of attractions”, fueled by Tretiakov’s reports and also by Boris Pilniak’s impressions on the ritualised nature of Japanese theatre (Savelli 2011). While Meyerhold’s interest lay in (“uslovnyi”) theatre of conventions, primarily for the sake of innovation itself, Tretiakov and Brecht focused on influencing the audience, a feat that Chinese theatre had mastered.

Moreover, Brecht had been not only—directly or indirectly—appropriating Russian formalism, Meyerhold’s reinterpretation of Western theatre aesthetics, and central aspects of Asian theatre but also the understanding of the irony of Vakhtangov (Konstantinovich 1985, p. 107) and the idea of the theatricalisation of everyday life that Nikolai Evreinov, the enfant terrible of Russian theatre in French exile, expressed in his books Theater as Such (1912) and Theater for Itself (1915–1917). This supports Devin Fores conclusion that Brecht’s theatrical aesthetics consist of a “system of synergistic properties” and that his plays are products of “collective thought processes” (Fore 2015, p. 394). Among this collective thinking, the influence of aesthetic concepts that were virulent in the Soviet Union have been largely overseen.

In summary, theatre in Eastern and later Western Europe developed a “distancing” approach to staging, performing and speaking. Leftist theatre in the Soviet Union and, later, the Weimar Republic aimed to introduce this new theatrical language to turn the entertained viewer into an analyst who would recognise socially unacceptable forms of behaviour and prompt the correction of exploitative class relations.

In terms of the transfer of ideas, Chinese and Japanese theatre was productively adopted by Russian-speaking artists first, and then by German directors. By replacing naturalism with this approach, they replaced bourgeois values with socialist ones. In their quest for a new theatre for the “new (wo)man”, Tretiakov’s play I Want a Child! connects both. Their instructive aesthetic integrates intercultural staging devices, such as non-illusionist performance and spatial–temporal simultaneity, as well as a narrative structure consisting of episodes with a stage designed for the simultaneity of spaces. Audiences were confronted with new standards through the theatre’s window, and expected to initiate this transformation within themselves after the performances.

Tretiakov admired Brecht, who, in turn, named his Soviet colleague as his teacher in the poem Is the People Infallible? (Ist das Volk unfehlbar?, 1939), written after his friend’s arrest. Although Brecht acknowledged that he had learned from Tretiakov, he still wanted to appear as a master rather than a student. Lars Kleberg asks in bewilderment why Brecht, who refers to his friend his teacher (“mein Lehrer”) did cross out the name “Tretjakow” following the word “Lehrer” in the manuscript of this poem and, furthermore, he asks “What did Tretiakov actually teach? What did Brecht learn?” (Kleberg 1993, p. 142). This article has provided possible answers to the question of how Tretiakov and his cultural milieu might have inspired Brecht.

These thoughts may have undermined the perception of Bertolt Brecht as a genius to some extent. Finally, his plays like Mother courage and The Caucasian Chalk Circle proved conspicuously contradictory to his theoretical considerations as they did move the audience emotionally (Tian 2012, p. 208).

Nevertheless, drawing parallels between his Episches Theater and the work of Tretiakov and Meyerhold enriches our view of the German theatre maestro. He was involved in a wider Euro-Asian movement: the invention of socialist revolutionary theatre, which understands itself as a worldwide valid concept, has drawn its radical approaches of estrangement from international sources such as Chinese theatre, as well as from Formalism. By emphasising the intercultural dimension within the transfer of ideas from China via the Soviet Union to Western Europe during the interwar period, the essay reminds us of the historical encounters between Tretiakov and Brecht, their correspondence, and their mutual acquaintances like Lācis. It also highlights their collaboration on Tretiakov’s play I Want a Child!, focusing on the core ideas of reshuffling gender roles, the politicisation of audiences, and the implementation of the theatre of conventions (uslovnyi teatr), featuring instructive role models, planned discussion narratives, and didactic endings. Overall, the essay suggests continuing a postcolonial perspective on theatre aesthetics with its appropriation dynamics. Future research should delve deeper into how Soviet and Western cultures have adapted ‘Asian theatre’ as understood by Tretiakov and, later, by Brecht. While their own aesthetic concepts became closely associated with their names, their work was a collective and intercultural process of exchange.