I Want a Baby is a 1926 play by a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 Sergei Tretyakov

Sergei Tretyakov

Sergei Mikhailovich Tretyakov was a Russian constructivist writer, playwright and special correspondent for Pravda. He graduated 1916 from the department of law at Moscow University...

.

Plot

Milda, a cultural

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

 education worker, decides that she wants to have a baby — without a father or a family, bred from best proletarian stock of her choice. The child is to be raised by the communal child-rearing organizations that Milda herself is helping to establish as part of the Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

’s effort to construct the ideal socialist state

Socialist state

A socialist state generally refers to any state constitutionally dedicated to the construction of a socialist society. It is closely related to the political strategy of "state socialism", a set of ideologies and policies that believe a socialist economy can be established through government...

. Doing her best to ignore the meddling and scorn of the unruly co-tenants in her crowded Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 apartment block, Milda sets out to complete her mission. Eventually she fulfills her dream after a laborious, comic, melodramatic, and tragic journey.

Comments

Divided into 14 episodes, the play is constructed following the principles of “the Montage of Attraction.” Prismatic or kaleidoscopic in structure, it centers on an overcrowded apartment complex in urgent need of renovation. Conceived as a “discussion play”, the planned productions in Moscow and Leningrad

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 were censored

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

, re-censored, and finally indefinitely postponed due primarily to the graphic depiction of violence and unrest in Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 society, as well as the play’s sexual explicitness.

External links

• I Want a Baby, scenes performed at Swarthmore College
  Swarthmore College
  Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....