About the work
Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy is Mayakovsky's first play, written in the summer of 1913 and premiered on 2/4 December 1913 at the Luna Park Theatre in St Petersburg, directed by and starring the 20-year-old author himself. The play was originally to be called "The Railway" or "The Uprising of Things", but a censor mistook the author's name for the title, and it has been known that way ever since.
Plot
The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky appears as a fragmented central figure amid a crowd of grotesque characters — cripples, puppets, masks. Objects break free of their ordinary function and disrupt the human order; there is no conventional plot.
Cultural significance
With this play Mayakovsky staged Futurist theatre's programmatic break with naturalist and symbolist tradition. The premiere caused a scandal: the audience reacted with bafflement before warming over the course of the evening, while the press was largely hostile.