“A Man of Soviet Orientation” — American Impresario Sidney Ross

This study focuses on the activities of the American impresario Sidney Ross, whose work has been little studied in both the USA and Russia. During the interwar period, Ross sym- pathized with the USSR and dedicated himself to organizing overseas tours for leading Soviet directors and theatres, including Vsevolod Meyerhold and his Moscow State Theatre, Constantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre, Alexander Tairov and the Moscow Kamerny Theatre, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Music Studio at the Moscow Art Theatre). For the first time in Russian and American theatre studies, a brief creative biog- raphy of Sidney Ross is presented. The study is based on materials from the collections of both Russian archives (State Archive of the Russian Federation — GARF, State Archive of Literature and Art — RGALI, Moscow Art Theatre Museum) and American archives (Houghton Library at Harvard University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts). The documents identified allow for a reevaluation of Sidney Ross’s role in organizing the GosTiM tour in Paris in 1930 before the planned trip to the USA, as well as a reconstruction of the process of organizing this visit to the New World, which ultimately never took place. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the reception of Soviet theatre abroad and clarifies the picture of cultural relations between our country and the United States during the interwar period of the twentieth century.