Sergei Radlov (1892-1958) is remembered today chiefly for his inventive Shakespearean productions of the Thirties, during the last period of theatrical experimentation in Stalinist Russia. Yet, Radlov was largely responsible for the growth of an entirely new performance mode in the Soviet theatre—Constructivism. During the years 1920-1922, Radlov's Petrograd group, Theatre of Popular Comedy, drawing its inspiration from Yuri Annenkov's production of The First Distiller (September 24, 1919), popularized many of the performance concepts of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's “Variety Theatre Manifesto.” Within a few months, however, Radlov began to introduce changes that would radically alter the development of Soviet theatre.

Like Annenkov, Radlov received his earliest training in the pre-Revolutionary studios of Nikolai Evreinov and Vsevolod Meyerhold. By the winter of 1918, after organizing the agitational group, The First Communal Troupe in Petrograd, Radlov mounted comic reconstructions of ancient Greek and Russian farces under the auspices of the Theatre Department of the Ministry of Education (TEO).