Opening Night in the Gulag: The Soviet Broadway Behind Bars

Dr.Jake Robinson (he/they) renowned cultural historian, educator, genealogist & professional theater artist - uncovers this luminous lost world of art in a sea of darkness, a story of human creativity and human depravity like you’ve never heard before.

Join us as Dr.Jake Robinson (he/they) Traces the lives of Gulag theatermakers themselves, uncovering this luminous lost world of art in a sea of darkness, a story of human creativity and human depravity like you’ve never heard before.

This lecture uncovers the long lost story of how, during the deadliest years of World War II, as millions of Soviet prisoners were being worked to death in forced-labor camps, Stalin’s Gulag experienced a theatrical “golden age.” At the height of the Great Terror, famed celebrities and luminaries of the Soviet stage became political prisoners overnight, exiled to remote camps in Siberia and the Subarctic. Remarkably, in this place of horror at the edge of the world, the Soviet equivalent of Meryl Streep and Timothée Chalamet became stars of a new theater circuit behind the barbed wire. Dazzling musicals and majestic operas delighted hundreds of thousands in the “shadow circuit” far outside Moscow. Tracing the lives of Gulag theatermakers themselves, we will uncover this luminous lost world of art in a sea of darkness, a story of human creativity and human depravity like you’ve never heard before.

Dr. Jake Robertson (they/he) is a cultural historian, educator, genealogist & professional theater artist. They received their PhD in History from Oxford, an MA in Acting from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and a BA in Slavic Studies from Princeton. Jake has taught Russian language, history and theater at Princeton, Oxford, NYU and beyond. Their research broadly examines the relationship between art and authoritarianism, creative expression and repression, culture and colonization in Soviet, Russian and global history. Jake’s career as a theatermaker, improviser, voice actor and drag artist has taken them from Off-Broadway playhouses to queer pubs to Shakespeare’s Globe. Whether on stage or in the classroom, Dr. Robertson remains committed to unearthing lost pages of history, using deeply engaging and human-centered storytelling to build bridges between academia & the arts | jakeaustinrobertson.com

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