The Bathhouse
Mayakovsky in 1930
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| Author | Vladimir Mayakovsky |
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| Original title | Баня |
| Country | Russia |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Play |
| Publisher | Gosizdat |
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Publication date
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1930 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Preceded by | The Bedbug (1929) |
The Bathhouse (Баня, Banya) is a play by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in 1929, for the Meyerhold Theatre. It was published for the first time in the November, No.11 issue of Oktyabr magazine and released as a book by Gosizdat in 1930. The play premiered at the People's House's Drama Theatre, in Leningrad on January 30, 1930. The "6-act drama with the circus and the fireworks" (according to the subtitle), satirizing bureaucratic stupidity and opportunism under Joseph Stalin, evoked strong criticism in the Soviet press, particularly from the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.
Mayakovsky started working upon The Bathhouse right after his return to Moscow from France on 2 May 1929. As well as its predecessor, The Bedbug, this one in retrospect is seen as a logical continuation of Mayakovsky’s late 1920s satirical cycle; several of its themes and sub-plots have been taken from the shorter poems of 1926-1929. "[The play's] political agenda is fighting the narrow-mindedness, opportunism, bureaucratism, and paving the way for heroism, the tempo increase, for the Socialist perspectives," the author told Literaturnaya Gazeta in an 1929 interview.
The Bathhouse's rough version was finished in September 1929, but Mayakovsky continued to make changes to the text while performing the play at public recitals. On 22 September he read the play at home to a circle of friends, the next day at the meeting of the Meyerhold Theatre's Arts and politics council.
Speaking at the discussion which followed, Vsevolod Meyerhold extolled The Bathhouse, rating it as high as the best work of Moliere, Pushkin and Gogol. "[This play] is the greatest phenomenon in the history of the Russian theatre, but we have to applaud Mayakovsky the poet, who's given us the pieces of prose, written as masterfully as the poetry... Without any doubt, Mayakovsky starts [with it] the whole new epoch." The Council's resolution unanimously recommended the play to be produced at the theatre. According to the contract, signed on 5 October, Mayakovsky’s function at the theatre was to be the director's assistant. Judging by the drawings the author made of Pobedonosikov and Optimistenko characters, he also planned to work as a designer.
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