The Bathhouse

Synopsis

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. The play is initially set in the year 1930. An inventor has a functioning time machine, but he is tormented by his era's Soviet bureaucracy. A female time traveler from 2030 invites an expedition to visit her own era, but the bureaucrats are thrown off the Machine.

Text license: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

Details

Type

Book

Release date

January 1, 1930

Genres

science fiction play

Created by

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Countries

Soviet Union