Russian audiences in the late 30s

The Russian theatre owes much to the Russian audience. I do not think there is anywhere else where there is so close and intuitive a correspondence between stage and house. As the curtain rises, utter silence settles like a lid over the assembly. There is no shuffling of feet, no whispering, no shifting in one's seat. No late comers are admitted. The spectators, all eyes, all ears, are no longer part of the daily world. They are beyond the frontier of the footlights, in whatever setting the scene is laid, living intensely lives that are not their own and their absorption in the characters in the play, so unmistakably felt by the actors who impersonate them, in turn sustains and inspires them.

The extraordinary, almost religious atmosphere atmosphere resulting from so perfect an understanding between the actors and the audience was new to me.

Inside Stalin's Russia: Memories of a Diplomat 1936-1941 by Harold Eeman. 1977. Page 61.