«И все мы похожи слегка на детей»: производство публики в советском цирке

Новое литературное обозрение. 2020. № 164 (4). С. 52–64.

Ganzha A. G.

This article examines strategies of working the Soviet circus audience, an audience who expected the circus not to entertain, but to demonstrate social norms and ridicule deviations from them. Building on the concept of the “theatrical public sphere” (Christopher Balme), the author studies the formation process of the Soviet circus as a public institution, which had completed by the 1960s. Playing a key role in this process was the figure of the carpet clown, who transmitted obsolete models of privacy into the public space of the collective and poetic project of modernity.

Keywords: культурная политика, публичная сфера, cultural policy, public sphere, audience, публика, Soviet circus, carpet clown, советский цирк, коверный клоун