Mobs, Real and Imagined: Maxim Gorky and The Riotous Premiere of Children of the Sun

Maxim Gorky was hugely popular Russian writer and political activist whose short stories catapulted him into success near the end of the 19th century. Born Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov, he chose his psuedonym "Gorky" ("bitter" in Russian) as a reflection of his experience as a young man in Russia. Gorky was orphaned at 11, spent his adolescence working various menial jobs, then -- after a failed suicide attempt at 21 -- he walked across Russia as a tramp, doing all kinds of odd jobs.

He published his first short story in 1892, and by the 1900s, he was being mentioned in the same breath as Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekov. His writing often revolved around people struggling at the very bottom of the Russian social structure and contained strong critiques of capitalism and the Tsarist regime. An outspoken Marxist, Gorky spent seven years in Italy in political exile, returned to Russia for a time, then left again to spend a decade in Germany and Italy, during which time he hosted many Russian writers and artists. Over the course of his 40 year career, he published an impressively long list of successful novels, stories, and plays, as well as an autobiographical trilogy that is hailed as one of the best autobiographies of Russia.

Gorky wrote Children of the Sun in February of 1905 while he was briefly imprisoned in St. Petersburg during the 1905 Russian Revolution. The play is set during a 1865 cholera outbreak, but it was abundantly clear to readers as a reflection of current events, featuring furious workers and peasants rising up violently against the privileged and self-important upper class. The play was so controversial, in fact, that it was banned as soon as it was published.

Finally, in October of 1905, the play opened at the Moscow Art Theatre, which was founded by that most exalted of theatrical practitioners, Constantin Stanislavky. At the end of the play, the estate is swarmed by an angry mob of peasants, and at the premiere Stanislavky staged the actors playing the mob to stream in from all sides of the audience and storm the stage. A gunshot is heard, and the character of Pavel is meant to fall to the ground. However, the political climate at the time was so tense that the audience panicked, believing the actors to be actually in danger. The crowd leapt to their feet, screaming and pulling out pistols, which prompted the much-beloved actor Kachalov (who was playing Pavel) to quickly spring "back to life" and walk to the edge of the stage to reassure the audience that everything was fine.

Despite its violent ending, Children of the Sun is actually described as a dark comedy - in a way that feels familiar to how Chekov categorized much of his work as "comedic." The play was not the most popular of Gorky's works -- his short stories and memoirs garnered more acclaim than his theatrical writing -- but it has been adapted multiple times over the years, most recently in 2013 by Andrew Upton, and remains remarkably (and unsettlingly) relevant to modern audiences.