1. See D. Gerould, ‘Oscar Méténier and Comédie rosse’, Drama Review, vol. XXVIII, no. 1 (Spring 1984) pp. 15–19.
2. On Russian terminology for forms of Kleinkunst see Béatrice Picon-Vallin, ‘L’Atelier de Foregger et le courant comique dans le théâtre soviétique’, in C. Amiard-Chevrel (ed.), Du Cirque au théâtre (Lausanne, 1983) p. 135. For a comprehensive, though not always accurate account, of pre-revolutionary Russian cabaret, see Yu. Dmitriev, ‘Teatry miniatyur’, in Russkaya khudozhestvennaya kul’tura kontsa XIX—nachala XX veka (1908–1917): Kniga tret’ya: Zrelishchnyye iskusstva, muzyka (Moscow, 1977) pp. 191-207. In English, see Anthony Pearson, ‘The Cabaret Comes to Russia: “Theatre of Small Forms” as Cultural Catalyst’, Theatre Quarterly, vol. IX (Winter 1980) 31–44
3. Kholmskaya later claimed that the name derived from the mirror in Andersen’s fairy-tale The Snow Queen; but the homonymous collection of verse parodies by A. A. Izmaylov published by Kugel’ in 1908 is the more likely origin. Ultimately, the source is the epigraph to Gogol’s Government Inspector: ‘Don’t blame the mirror if your kisser’s crooked.’ First-hand accounts of the Crooked Mirror include Kugel’s List’ya s dereva: Vosvominaniya (Leningrad, 1926) pp. 195-209; Yevreinov’s unpublished V shkole ostroumiya: O teatre ‘Krivoye Zerkalo’, in the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of the USSR; Kholmskaya’s ‘Krivoye Zerkalo’, Rabochiy i teatr, vol. IX (September 1937) pp. 52-6; and A. Deych, ‘Vspominaya minuvsheye’, Zvezda (1966) no. 5, pp. 173-83. See also G. Kryzhitskiy, ‘Vospominaniya. Laboratoriya smekha’, Teatr, VIII (August 1967) pp. 110–20
4. C. Moody, ‘The Crooked Mirror’, Melbourne Slavonic Studies, vol. VII (1972) pp. 25–37.
5. E. de Goncourt, ‘Préface à Henriette Maréchal’, in E. and J. de Goncourt, Théâtre (Paris: Fasquelle, n.d.) p. 17. Stanislavsky, who read little science but absorbed ideas that were in the air, popularised Ribof’s concept of ‘affective memory’ as ‘emotional memory’. See E. Bentley, ‘Who was Ribot? or: Did Stanislavsky Know Any Psychology?’, Tulane Drama Review, vol. VII, no. 2 (Winter 1962) pp. 127–9.