Transformation of the theater: ancient and New European theater, director's theater of the XX century, theater of "social changes"

The modern theater is in motion: the traditional drama theater is being criticized and reinterpreted, the theater in which the director rules the ball is developing further, new forms of theater are being searched for ("documentary theater", "immersive", "inclusive", "social", etc.). "The theater is changing," writes Rimas Tuminas, "but still hasn't changed yet. Every five or six years it goes through some changes, people of the theater are in constant search" ^[26]. "It seems to me," says Marina Brusnikina, artistic director of the Praktika Theater, "the most important thing is to change people's ideas about what a theater is. Even for theatrical people, professionals, these boundaries are very strict, they try to protect the theater from outside interference"^[5].             In connection with this situation, I recall an article by the famous director and theater critic of the beginning of the last century, Alexander (Abraham) Kugel, "The Approval of the Theater" ^[12], in which he discusses the crisis and transformation of the theater of the 20s. This article can be taken to problematize the current situation as well. Kugel, who hates the Moscow Drama Theater, acts as an apologist for the traditional theater, the essence of which he sees in the actor's play (acting), passionately criticizes the director's theater as bringing, in his opinion, the death of the theater due to the dictate of the playwright, the director's imperious encroachments and, as a result, reducing the role of the artist to zero.

"Theater," writes Kugel, "as a game that has existed empirically among all peoples since the most ancient times, meets the human need for acting. And every theater that departs from acting and from the movement in its artistic meaning does not do a theatrical, and therefore completely unnecessary thing <...>

The laws of the theater are the laws of the actor. <…>  Eichenwald believes that theater spoils literature, but we believe that literature spoils theater… The theater is literary ? this is the first reason for the decline of the theater. <…>

the current theater has weaned us from crying and laughing in the theater, has weaned us from getting shocks in the theater, has given birth to a school that is all smart, yes smart, yes looking for "elements", but cannot shake"... Theater, as such, is simple to the point of impossible: touch me or make me laugh. The theater, which is not able to inspire, does not bring the viewer to a kind of trance, does not fulfill its purpose…Feelings have become more complicated, but this does not change the essence of the theatrical impression: it is not in contemplation or observation, but in paroxysms. <…>

what do we see in the theater now? The play is fragmented between many actors. A number of theatrical technicians should be attached to these actors. Of course, without subordination of these elements, nothing but cacophony will come out. Hence the need for the "strong power" of the director, who demands, and rightly so, that everything be imbued with his idea, his understanding, his mood. Under these conditions, acting creativity cannot but fall… Along the current path of increasing complexity, increasing fragmentation, the actor is threatened with death. That's clear. <…>

Theatrical art differs from other arts in that it is a complete identification of the human “I" in relation to the world. While all other arts deal with the world, in general, with its forms and its edification, theatrical art deals only with man, because the very form of this art, its instrument, instrument is a man, i.e. an actor. Everything that has entered the theater from other forms of art may be fine, but it, in fact, interferes with the purpose of the theater, because it prevents us from hearing the pure melody of the human soul" ^{[12, c. 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 22, 23]}.

            What kind of theater is Kugel writing about here? On the one hand, about the contemporary theater of the 20s, where the role of the director has clearly grown, on the other - about the classical theater, the ideal of which for Kugel is Shakespeare. "For me," he notes, "Shakespeare is the most convincing, unsurpassed example of fidelity to the basics of theatrical work and a particularly skillful combination of poetry and life with the laws of theatrical masks <...> Shakespeare is theater, and theater is Shakespeare" ^{[12, pp. 14, 16]}. In addition, Kugel is trying to answer the question of what is the specificity of theater as an art form: in the actor's acting (which is partly true), in "the full identification of the human self in relation to the world", in strong experiences (but do works of other types of art not reveal the human self and should not cause strong feelings?).

For example, L.S. Vygotsky considered strong feelings (catharsis) a sign of any art, not just theatrical. "We," he wrote in The Psychology of Art, "could say that the basis of aesthetic reaction is the affects caused by art, experienced by us with all reality and force, but finding a discharge in the activity of fantasy that the perception of art requires from us every time… All art is based on this unity of feeling and fantasy. Its closest feature is that, by causing us to have oppositely directed affects, it delays the motor expression of emotions only due to the beginning of the antithesis and, by colliding opposite impulses, destroys the affects of content, the affects of form, leading to an explosion, to the discharge of nervous energy. In this transformation of affects, in their self-combustion, in an explosive reaction leading to the discharge of those emotions that were immediately triggered, lies the catharsis of the aesthetic reaction" ^{[6, p. 247]}.  

In general, Kugel's criticism of the director's theater, as well as the analysis of the specifics of the theater, are not very convincing, and that's why. Kugel suggests that he penetrated into the essence of the theater, which is unchangeable, that is, the theater is equal to itself at all times ? the artist is at the center of the theater, the role of the playwright (author) is secondary, especially secondary, and sometimes even destructive, the role of various organizers (interpreters and managers) of the theatrical process (first of all, directors). But, as you know, the theater was very different in different epochs, it changed over time, and during the transition from one culture to another it transformed dramatically.       

Ancient theater. Here, for the first time, the sphere of art is being formed, which is different from other areas of life (work in a broad sense, religion, recreation). Art is characterized by a certain freedom of pastime, communication, the opportunity to observe and reflect on what is happening. Within this sphere, two groups are formed ? art connoisseurs (audience of viewers, listeners, later readers) and creators of her works (authors). If we keep in mind specifically the prerequisites of the theater, it is worth paying attention to the fact that connoisseurs of theatrical action at first represented individual individuals, over time ? a community (for example, citizens of an ancient polis or city), and as a community developed a unified attitude to the theater, playwrights and artists.

It was in antiquity that the communication characteristic of the theater was formed, assuming, on the one hand, visual contact of the audience with the artists (at first there were only one, two or three), a special theater space (stage, rows for spectators, isolation from external noise, etc.), on the other hand, two-part interaction ? the author writes "narrative-history" (drama, comedy, etc.), which he addresses to the artist (originally the playwright himself could act in his role), the artist plays this work in front of the audience. It is important that over time the artist specializes in performing his activities, gradually becomes a master, a professional. In theatrical communication, all three subjects (the author, the artist and the viewer) understood what was being discussed, because they belonged to the same community, had a common vision of reality. This vision was twofold in content: either the author's story concerned the relationship of people with gods, as a rule, represented in myths, or it was told about standard or, conversely, unusual actions of people. For example, Aeschylus in the story of Orestes tells how a person who has realized himself as a person can act (that is, acting not according to tradition, independently, partly going against society).   

"Zeus," writes Anatoly Akhutin, analyzing the Oresteia of Aeschylus, "puts Agamemnon in a situation of purely tragic amechania (that is, the inability to act under the conditions of the need to act. ? V.R.). After hearing from the lips of Calchant the will of Artemis, Agememnon plunges into reflection: "A grave calamity is not to obey; a grave calamity is to cut down his own the child, the decoration of the house, stained his father's hands with streams of maiden blood spilled on the altar. How to avoid disasters?!”It is this, and not the intricacy of fate itself, that interests the tragic poet and the audience: how a person decides, interprets oracles and signs, activates the divine will, what happens to him at the same time and how he “harnesses the yoke of necessity” ^{[3, p. 25]}.

Orestes himself finds himself in a similar situation of amechania, forced to kill his own mother. “In this place, which will no longer be passed, at this moment, which will no longer pass, everything retreats from him: the will of the gods and the cosmic machinations of fate seem to be waiting at the threshold of his consciousness, waiting for his own decision, which no god will tell him in his ear and which will put into action all these immeasurably his superior forces” ^{[3, p. 35]}. The decision to kill his mother “is made by Orestes because this is the only way he can escape from blind obsessions – whether by rage of anger, panic of fear – into the bright field of consciousness. "He acts as he should," B. Otis notes, "but by doing so, he does not claim that he is doing well, he is not harnessed to the yoke of necessity. He acts with open eyes and awake consciousness'" ^{[3, p. 33]}.

In the third part of the trilogy, the viewer enters the "world of investigation, comprehension, the world of the 'logos' (the gods who gathered to condemn Orestes cannot come to a common opinion and therefore leave the hero's act to the judgment of people. ? V.R.)...amechania “is not so much overcome as it acquires a meaningful form of a court established forever, in other words, a court revealed as the eternal foundation of human and cosmic existence. From now on, nothing can be like this once and for all. Everything is subject to jurisdiction, responsibility, responsibility” [p. 39].

   Finally, Akhutin explains why in this case the theater and the court. “The hero, caught in a situation of tragic mania, turns, as it were, turns to the viewer with a question. The viewer sees himself under the hero's gaze and changes places with him. The theater and the city are mutually interchangeable. The theater is located in the city, but the whole city (and in fact, the polis, the ancient society. – V.R.) converges in the theater to learn life in front of the audience, with a witness, in front of the face. This gaze of a possible witness and judge, the gaze under which I am not just doing something bad or good, but for the first time I can appear as a hero, in the aesthetically completeness of the body, face, fate - in a word, in 'who', is the gaze of consciousness, from which one cannot hide. Consciousness is a witness and the judge is a spectator. To be conscious means to be in plain sight, on the square, in disgrace" ^{[3, pp. 20-21] [17, pp. 72-73]}. 

This example allows us to understand one more important thing: a theatrical story is made up of peculiar atoms (cells): first a "situation" is set (later it was sometimes called a "situation"), then a stage response to this situation follows (problem resolution, response, response); scenic in the sense that this response is played by an actor, seen and experienced by the viewer.

The conditions of ancient theatrical communication, as is known, conditioned the performance of the artist in a mask, it was the mask that indicated to the viewer the type of story that the artist was going to play and is playing (in Rome, at first they played without masks, but then they were also introduced ^{[16; 25]}).

                The image on the vase of an episode from the comedy "Frogs" by Aristophanes

It may seem that Kugel exaggerates the role of acting in the theater, because, for example, the ancient artist was hiding under a mask. However, for a real artist, the mask does not replace the game, it is just one of the expressive means, along with voice, intonation, movement, gestures, costume, energy transmitted to the viewer and also what can be called the secret of genuine artistic play. Having entered the role, the artist disappears for the viewer as an ordinary person and appears as the hero of the theatrical narrative. 

Since there were a countable number of types of theatrical history in antiquity, all the subjects of theatrical communication were defined and understood each other, the ancient theatrical practice was steadily reproduced for several centuries, so far as we can talk about the "ancient canon of theater". Reproduction of the ancient canon of the theater became possible after the "Poetics" of Aristotle. It not only comprehended and normalized the established artistic reality of the ancient drama, but also found a place for art, and therefore indirectly theater, in the system of knowledge about the world. Art, according to Aristotle, is a reality created by a master, very similar (the attitude of "imitation") to the ordinary world, but taking it in relation to possible existence. In "Poetics", the first essential characteristics of theatrical reality are also outlined (the actor's play as an action demonstrating the character and thought of the hero).

"Epic and tragedy," writes Aristotle, "as well as comedy, dithyrambic poetry and most of the auletics and citharistics ? they are all imitation in general" [p. 646]. "For example, Homer portrayed his heroes as the best, Cleophon as similar to us, and the Hegemon of Tazos, who composed the first parodies, and Nicochar, the creator of the Deliad, as the worst" ^{[2, p. 648]}. "From what has been said, it is clear that the poet's task is not to talk about what happened, but about what could have happened, about what is possible by probability or necessity" ^{[2, p. 655]}. "So, tragedy is an imitation of an important and complete action, having a [certain] volume, [produced] by speech sweetened in different ways in its various parts, [produced] in action, and not in narration, and accomplishing through compassion and fear the purification (katharsis) of such passions <...> Further, since [tragedy] is an imitation of an action, and the action is performed by actors who must necessarily be of some kind by the nature of the way of thinking, then naturally there are two causes of action - thought and character ..." ^{[2, pp. 651-652]}.

Interestingly, Kugel denies the idea of imitation, in his opinion, theatrical reality is an independent area of life, although ideal. "Art, being ideal in its essence, does not and cannot have other forms of expression other than ideal. Everything that manifests itself with the help of everyday concreteness is not art. Moreover, it is elusive in this form. Our spirit perceives and translates what is perceived into the impression of art <...> the aesthetic premise of cinematic art is that, according to the most technical technique, cinema gives its reflected world. Let it be a crude reflection of the world, but a reflection. Whereas the theater strives to be the world itself, substance, corporeality, and in this direction of the greatest corporeality of the stage world, the work of theatrical improvement proceeds" ^{[12, p. 38, 120]}.

In such an assessment of cinema, everything depends on its understanding and use: cinema, which is made as art, is no less art and "life itself" than theater. But the theater can also be used for pragmatic, instrumental purposes, for example, to inspire the masses, to set them up for a certain social action. 

As a matter of fact, we have schematically characterized the ancient canon of the theater here.

The Theater of the New Time. In the culture of modern times, the ancient canon of the theater is being established anew, thanks to humanists who translate ancient Greek texts into Latin and emerging national languages. Anew, because these works are reinterpreted from the point of view of the relationship to the medieval heritage and the social reality of the emerging new age. This attitude was conditioned by the criticism of class society, the reform of the Catholic religion, the shift of interest from the tasks of Christian salvation to earthly realities and problems, the formation of new non-genealogical communities (3rd estate, merchants, townspeople, artisans, servants, etc.), the formation of a new European personality who understands himself as the creator of external reality and his person.

The new social and cultural situation demanded both a new "mirror" for society and a "window" into the opening new world. This need could be solved, first of all, by art, in which the theater played the main role. An illustrative example is the heyday of theater in England, starting from the end of the XV century.  

                             Shakespeare's Theater

"The demand for plays was such that playwrights, despite their large numbers, barely kept up. What was the reason for such an extraordinary flourishing of drama in Elizabethan times? They have tried to find an explanation for this amazing fact many times. The simplest and deepest of them is the one that belongs to academician Alexander Veselovsky and is given in his book "Poetics".

To the question of what are the conditions of “artistic isolation of the dramatic form and its popularity”, A. N. Veselovsky answers: “Personal development and high-profile events of a national historical nature.” Comparing Italy with England, he says: “If Italy has not produced a drama, it is because it has not experienced such events.” “Behind the Greek, English and Spanish drama are: the victory of Hellenism over the Persian East, the triumph of the popular Protestant consciousness, which fills the English society of the Elizabethan era with such cheerfulness, and the dream of a worldwide Spanish monarchy in which the sun does not set” <...> the theater became the mouthpiece of a new perception of life, in which material security and an excess of the rich, poverty alleviation among the working people, huge optimism among everyone. It required a new language and suggested new words. The theater became a place where these new words sounded so that everyone heard and understood them. For they only gave an outlet to what everyone had time to feel for themselves. The theater has become a daily newspaper for the illiterate majority of the people" ^[10]. 

The new socio-cultural situation has predetermined three important consequences for the theater. Firstly, the content of the stories that playwrights write is radically changing, secondly, the audience is changing, and thirdly, the rapid growth of theaters in emerging national states begins.

The authors of dramas and comedies are now interested in the relationships between people, their actions. Stories of love, rise and fall, deception and betrayal, the relationship between masters and servants, human actions that change his fate ? these and similar earthly events concerning people are described in dramas and comedies. Awareness of the purpose of such stories is expressed in the ideas of showing "character", "type", "mental movements".

"The form of theatrical art," notes Kugel, "has always been and is, and will remain the same: the depiction of the emotional movements of tragic heroes; that everything else is a matter of convenience, technique and habit, but not as the basis of art" ^{[12, p. 40]}. "What were the images that Shakespeare showed to the people? Pushkin said, still thinking about his "Godunov": "I imitated Shakespeare in his free and broad portrayal of characters, in the careless and simple composition of types" ^[8].

The viewer of the new age is completely different from the ancient one: with their earthly interests and social status, they are completely different types (for example, in France ? aristocrats, representatives of the third estate, the first intellectuals who graduated from universities, townspeople, merchants, artisans, merchants, servants, etc.). Another distinguishing line ran along the borders of emerging nations. The new time is the time of the formation of national states in Europe, within the framework of which large "national audiences" of viewers were formed. As a result, the European theater is rapidly multiplying, national theaters are being created in England, France, Italy, Germany, Russia and other countries. They differ significantly from each other: playwrights, viewers, stories, theatrical canons. Consider, for example, the French theater of the times of Louis XIV and Racine.  

"The beginning of Racine's activity (1639-1699) coincided with the most progressive stage of the reign of Louis XIV. The anxious years of the Fronde were over ? the princes of the blood and the parliament were finally subdued. The young king, after the death of Cardinal Mazarin (1661), became a full-fledged ruler ... The cult of the king was ubiquitous: he was idolized by the nobility, who lived at the expense of the state treasury; he was loved by the bourgeoisie, who saw in centralized power the key to the prosperity of the country's economy; the people looked at the king with hope, vainly expecting from the young monarch relief of their bitter fate; and, Finally, many thinkers and artists sincerely believed in the good will of the king, who believed that this young man, moderately reasonable and extravagantly amiable, could eventually become the true personification of an enlightened and humane ruler."^[9]

At the same time, the time of Louis XIV is the absolutism of the royal power and the first period of the formation of the French nation. Louis, nicknamed the "King of the Sun", adored theater and dancing. "He clearly felt like a God and wanted his subjects to see him as a God. I think this was overlaid with the image-ideal of the Renaissance man, who believed that if he wanted to, he could become a cherub (angel)… But how was God conceived? He appeared to his subjects, dazzled them with his beauty and majesty, demonstrated life and deeds, after which he solemnly left. It was beneath his dignity to turn his back to the audience, bow down in front of them, generally act like everyone else, usually. On the contrary, his every movement should be filled with beauty and expressiveness.

This was the anthropological image and ideal that, judging by the testimony of contemporaries, possessed the young Louis. At the same time, he understood that he did not live on Olympus, and although a royal person, but still a person. This conflict and problematic situation is resolved by Ludovic due, on the one hand, to art, on the other hand, to the restart of physicality (he puts on and performs dances in which he most often acts as Olympic gods, and trains every day, learning new movements and poses). It is here that it begins to take shape (to be invented) the “bodily canon", which Mikhail Fokin writes about (“the legs must observe five positions and all movements must consist in a combination of these positions and be limited to it; the arms must be rounded, with elbows pushed to the side; the face must be turned to the public, the back must be straight, the legs turned to the side, heels forward” ^{[1, p. 3, 9]}), and later a more complex version of it with images of flight, weightlessness and acrobatics. Gods and cherubs appear and disappear, soar, show beautiful faces and figures, perform deeds, as a rule, set forth in myths and elegant literature.

Creating a new kind of dance, Louis XIV, the Sun King, together with his assistants (we would say today, the directors of dances and performances), found a number of new artistic means (music, costumes, scenery, stage, etc.), helping to assemble new images of the body and movement into a single whole ("artistic reality"). Especially interesting here is the role of music written by famous composers, for example, Lully. As a temporary art, music made it possible to organize in time and temporally link new units and gestalts of physicality. How can musical events, free from specific subject associations, express (set, describe) actually "dance events" ^{[18, pp. 76-77]}.

 For the playwright Racine, the first and main spectator of the theater was, of course, Louis XIV. Then the audience consisted of: the court of Louis, the enlightened citizens of Paris and other French cities, and finally, all other citizens and non-citizens. The stories composed in his dramas were created under the influence of, firstly, ancient Greek theatrical works, secondly, the belief that the royal power is from God and its purpose is to ensure order and a reasonable, just life of subjects, thirdly, the recognition of human weaknesses (passions) which are opposed to the human mind and often negate the good intentions and deeds of the king. Racine considered man to be the arena of the struggle of morality and passions. If the royal power seeks to educate a person, to make him moral, then the passions raging in a person resist these efforts, destroying the personality. Realizing that ancient Greek tragedies are unlikely to be understood by the French, Racine "modernizes" them by remaking tragedies, saturating them with modern events, as well as hints that, as he thought, the audience could easily decipher. These features of Racine's work can be seen in his famous tragedies "Iphigenia" and "Phaedra".

"The rejection of the civil theme and its replacement with a moral one undoubtedly affected the genre of tragedy, which acquired a number of features of a family drama. This affected both the plot structure of “Iphigenia” and the portrayal of characters. Agamemnon, Achilles, Iphigenia are endowed with an idealized, but quite everyday psychology, the image of Clytemnestra expresses the pathos of the family hearth. The action consists of everyday events: a rival appears, to whom Iphigenia is jealous; misunderstandings typical of the comic genre, false intrigue and confusion of the characters play a big role in the plot.

Racine could not remain at the level of Euripides, active citizenship was alien to him…Only the moral seemed certain. human perfection. Only in the virtue of people Racine could look for a guarantee of the truth of political beliefs ...the poet thought only about raising more kind fathers, loving mothers, devoted friends and noble children, he was sure that with good people it would be possible to improve life ^[9]. <...>

In fact, only Corneille and Racine managed to bring the ancient writers and the French public closer together, only in their tragedies Greek and Roman plots were filled with lively content and excited the theater halls.

Following the example of the ancients, Racine wanted to turn his theater into a school of morals. The poet valued this feature of ancient art above all else. "Their theater," Racine wrote in the preface to Phaedra, "was a school in which virtue was taught no less than in the schools of philosophers... We should wish that our works were as significant and as full of useful instructions as the works of these poets.”

In an effort to make the characters and situations of his works believable, Racine skillfully diversifies the psychology of his characters with features that violate their absolute ideality or absolute depravity... In order to achieve verisimilitude, Racine constantly expels fabulous situations from the plots of his tragedies: in “Phaedra” he forces Theseus, instead of descending into the underworld, to travel to Epirus, to The poet substitutes “Iphigenia” for the miraculous rescue of the heroine with a completely plausible disclosure of a misunderstanding. <...>

Racine's heroes are always obsessed with passions. They either surrender to their current or struggle with them and, struggling, perish… The poet dreamed of an art in which the harmony of morality and passions would triumph. He dreamed of recreating the great ancient theater and in his last tragedies violated the rules of unity, put into action the choir, music and people, but to restore the Hellenic tragedy was clearly an impossible task" ^[10].

The new tasks that the playwrights solved caused the need for a new game of actors. The patterns characteristic of the formation of ballet were partially repeated here. In general, they led to the formation of classicism and its canons. "Classical dramaturgy forced the actors to completely change the manner of their acting…The subordination of the drama theater to the activities of Racine, who personally taught actors roles in his tragedies, had a particularly sharp effect. <…>

Theatrical creativity was now called "l'art de la d?clamation" ? the art of declamation, which included noble poetry reading and elegant gestures. Classicism demanded that the acting be deliberate and beautiful. The two main provisions of Boileau's "Poetics" ? the principle of intellectual creativity and the principle of ennobled nature ? were quite applicable to stage art. The main condition for creative work is the mind, the actors are first of all required to clearly understand what they are saying and be able to consciously work on their roles. <…>

this ideal form became an absolute canon, since it simultaneously satisfied the requirements of Nature and Art. The actor's acting was subject to strict artistic laws that disciplined acting and transferred it from the field of free amateurism to the field of professional skill…

All these movements and gestures obeyed the law of plasticity, not only ordinary poses were forbidden on stage ? legs parallel apart, legs with inward concave socks, a protruding stomach, etc. ? but it was impossible to clench your fists, snap your fingers, rub your hands, make a grimace of suffering, cry loudly or run hastily. An actor, performing any role, must be noble and majestic. He has a firm, energetic step, his legs are placed in a ballet position (the right heel is pressed against the left, socks apart), the hand moves starting from the elbow, and then only unfolds completely, the fingers are arranged like antique statues. The bow is made only with the head ? the body is motionless, but when it is necessary to kneel, they bend only on one leg and follow the picturesque arrangement of the folds of the cloak.

Despite the constant appeal to the ancients, the plastic of the classicist actor had nothing in common with the natural grace of antique sculptures. It was borrowed from court ceremonies and palace ballets. Speaking of ancient greatness, they meant modern pomposity" ^[10].

            A similar analysis of the theater can be done with respect to other countries (nations), for example, the A.N.Ostrovsky theater in Russia, although this is already the middle of the XIX century.  And although the national theaters of different countries have common features, which was not surprising, the theaters in each country differed significantly.            

Director's Theater. The essence of this theater is that if earlier the author of a theatrical production was a playwright or an artist, or both of them, now these rights have passed to the director, who determines all the main points of the production. The second important feature is that the director considers the artist as one of the "expressive means" along with others (music, scenery, theatrical clothing, symbols, etc.). "Gordon Craig," explains Kugel's directorial position, is the son of a famous English actress, Helen Terry. Craig, so to speak, was born behind the scenes, and as a director is a student of the famous Irving. Craig takes the final theoretical step. Theatrical art, in his opinion, is a new kind of art for which the play, actors, scenery, costumes are the same as paints for a painter. The creator, the artist of theatrical art is, therefore, the director. And in order to separate the new director from the old one, Craig requires that the director combine a writer, an actor, a musician, a painter, a dance master, etc. For all these branches of art are separate colors in the spectrum that is called theater" ^{[12, p. 32]}.

First, I will explain how a playwright or an artist in the old days could be the owners of a theatrical production. They could, because they believed that the content of the drama (comedy) is unambiguous and they can express it in theatrical action. A playwright, since he composed this work himself, an artist, since it was he who embodied it on stage. Olga Kuptsova explains the reasons for the transition to the theater of directing as follows.  "The unity of action in dramaturgy was being destroyed, and in the acting art, hierarchy was being destroyed in connection with this. This meant that instead of the story of one main character ? and therefore one actor-the premiere on stage ? there were several parallel developing stories and several main roles. Instead of a clear three-stage structure (actors-premieres, minor and third-rate actors), the idea of an ensemble came, soloing different actors at certain moments. Such a dramatic construction excluded the spontaneous “directing” of the actor-premier, who was more busy on stage than others and willy-nilly became the “axis of action”. Several competing centers were now emerging in the play.

The playwright's right to authorship in the theatrical process was also shaken. The conflict situation was created by the new, growing role of the decorator. The playwrights did not want to give in: in particular, in the "new drama" they significantly increased the remarks, direct author's instructions, through which they tried to dictate the artistic will not only to actors, but also to theater artists" ^[13].

 But in connection with what have all these changes been outlined? Is it because they happened because the idea of a single rationality and a single reality (nature) is disappearing?  These beliefs, which have been active since Plato and Aristotle for more than two and a half millennia, are replaced by ideas about the existence of many realities and different forms of knowledge. Within the framework of this new worldview, it becomes unclear what meaning the author has put into the work of art, because different viewers now reveal different meanings in it ^[14].

The work becomes not equal to itself, as Bogomolov seems to have said, a modern play ? this is when we don't know what kind of play it is. This is where the director comes in, taking on the mission to reveal the true meaning of a work of art. Of course, in fact, he creates this meaning, but not arbitrarily, but based on the text of the artwork. Again, at the same time, the director does not forget himself: revealing the meaning of a work of art, he realizes his aesthetic aspirations, solves his own problems ^[19].        

In order to reveal the meaning of a work of art, the director creates a concept of its content, partly imitating the way the composer acts ^[20]. The latter, operating with expressive means (rhythm, melody, harmony, themes, dramaturgy, etc.)  builds and works out the musical reality (its events, their sequence, beginning, culmination, completion, etc.). Entering this reality, the composer suggests, the listener should experience not only the feelings and thoughts that the composer experienced, but also his own, different from those laid down by the author of the work. By the way, the feelings laid down by the composer may not survive, but only his own. The composer builds a piece of music as a complex building in order to solve these tasks, although, of course, he most often realizes this creative process differently ? as composing music that sounds in his soul. 

But the director also has his own expressive means ? artists, music, symbols, clothes, scenery, drama, themes, etc., using which, together with a new form (creating it), he builds the artistic reality of the performance.  The artist performs here in at least three guises: he is an expressive means in the hands of the director, a living subject (personality), betraying energy to the viewer and feeding on energy from him (which Mikhail Chekhov drew attention to), and the center (source) of events. He does not disappear into the director's theater, as Kugel thinks, but on the contrary, creates a tense field of meanings, communication and actions. While the artist is on stage and in the theater, the original communication (communication) of the audience and the creators of works of art, coming from archaic times and religion, is preserved.  

Directing is very difficult, because building a theatrical reality, a world in which the viewer can fully live, experience events that are often impossible in ordinary life, is a real super task. For example, the brilliant director Rimas Tuminas builds an artistic reality in the play "Eugene Onegin". The music is wonderful, the artists are wonderful, but three solutions, in my opinion, are questionable, the audience does not understand them, more precisely, they cannot adequately recreate the events conceived by Tuminas and played by the artists. The first decision is to introduce two Onegins and two Lena.

"On stage," writes theater critic Alexander Minkin, "there are two Onegins: young and old. The young man hardly speaks. The old one talks a lot. Old Onegin has become wiser (everyone is strong in hindsight), softened (the steep slides rolled away) and remembers his outrages (they once seemed to him witty fun): “How wrong I was! How punished!” His serpent of memories, his remorse is gnawing…

To old Onegin, these thoughts of the 23-year-old Pushkin are just right.

And Lensky has aged. Smiling, he looks at himself young (there are also two Lenskys) and remembers himself sympathetically, but also with irony:

A fan of Kant and a poet!

Yes, he died young; Onegin killed him, so it happened. But, I'm sorry, the soul is immortal, and what prevents it from going on stage in the XXI century and remembering its youth (think about it ? only 200 years have passed)" ^[15].

All this is fine from a literary point of view, but it does not explain why Tuminas split Onegin and Lensky after all. Not only do viewers get confused in the Onegins and Lenskys, forgetting who is where, the question arises, are these heroes still themselves? Let's take a closer look, for example, at the old Onegin. Not only did he get smarter (by the way, Pushkin's Onegin didn't get much smarter, judging by how he's trying to get Tatiana), Onegin was fed up with Pushkin's own thoughts.

Who has lived and thought, he cannot

Don't despise people in your heart;

Who felt, that worries

The Ghost of Irrevocable Days:

There are no charms for that,

That serpent of memories,

That remorse is gnawing…

Such an old Onegin directed by Tuminas, in my opinion, has nothing in common with Pushkin's Onegin, even at the very end of the poem. I think that the wiser Lensky is not much like Alexander Sergeyevich Lensky" ^[21].

 The second solution is to introduce a scene with a bunny. One of their viewers writes the following. "The character "bunny" ? I don't remember this from Pushkin at all, I need to reread it. An aunt runs out on stage, in white tights, in a white tutu, in a large white cap with long bunny ears (do you remember how we dressed up three-year-old children in kindergarten?). So, here such an overgrown hare ran onto the stage with some secret mission.

Everyone was laughing. My son is also lucky here.

And I didn't understand at all ? what kind of hare and why the fuck is he needed here..." ^[24].

The third solution is the wanderer, who resembles a medieval wandering artist; she often accompanies the heroes of the production. 

After thinking about it, I reconstructed all three solutions of Tuminas. "Why, for example, two Onegins? And the fact is that Onegin at the end of Pushkin's poem has changed so much that, from the point of view of theatrical action, he is a different person. Of course, if Tuminas, like Pushkin, believed that a person develops and therefore changes, then he would have to think about how to express the "development" of the hero on stage. He went the other way: he depicted only the beginning and the end, besides, this decision gave a lot in visual terms, as well as images of character. True, it is unlikely that a person's character can change so much, but if Onegin is only the material for Tuminas' creativity, and not a real person, then why not? However, there were no special reasons for the split of Lensky.

The plot with the bunny is placed by Tuminas in the event of Tatiana moving from the village to Moscow. The move divides the events of the poem into two parts (stories): in the first, Onegin rejects Tatiana's love, the second ends with Tatiana rejecting Onegin's courtship. But then a natural interpretation suggests itself: the plot with the bunny is a caricature of the development of Onegin's relationship with Tatiana (the hunter is young Onegin at first, and old at the end). Why is it caricatured, why, by the way, is the accordion or why is Tatiana tossing on the bed and dragging her around the stage, why is the village hospitality at Tatiana's name day mocked, so Onegin is forced against his will to drink one cup of milk (cranberry water?) the other one? Probably because Tuminas is a postmodernist (hence, irony, deconstruction, humor, detection of simulacra) ^{[4; 14]}.

But the plot with the bunny makes it possible to understand a very important thing: this narrative is "reflexive" (the analysis of "Eugene Onegin" suggests), but Tuminas inserts it into artistic reality as one of the events. How to understand, in the unfolding relationship between Onegin and Tatiana, which has not yet been completed (completion is still ahead, at the end of the poem), a reflexive description of these relations, as already completed, is inserted. The whole is inside its part! But isn't it so often that a piece of music is built: some motive, melody or theme is just being outlined, they begin to be developed, but suddenly they are interrupted by a fragment in which the whole is viewed, up to the code.  

And the story with the wanderer is reflexive. To understand its meaning, let us recall that in "Eugene  Onegine" Pushkin is the most important narrator, and he addresses his reader ^[22]. But in poetry, as we have said, this author-narrator relationship is not visually represented, it is implied, read by an enlightened reader. You can't do that on stage: go guess what old Onegin says not just like that, into space, but to someone, and to whom, I ask? So Tuminas introduces the wanderer into artistic reality. She not only closes the characters' monologues on herself, but also makes the viewer think "who is this", whether he is himself, "what is this", perhaps an indication of the nature of communication" ^[21].

But your humble servant came out to such an explanation, while most of the audience (we read reviews for the performance) remain perplexed. Does this not mean that these decisions are unsuccessful? Nevertheless, the performance of Tuminas makes a strong impression on many viewers, probably other successful solutions overlap the three considered here, not quite successful.  Analyzing the director's theater, Mikhail Chekhov wrote: "Comparing the extremes of Meyerhold and Stanislavsky with the theatricality of Vakhtangov, we eventually come to the conviction: everything is permissible, everything is possible in the theater" ^[13]. Indeed, in the modern theater, everything seems to be permissible: the possibility of misunderstanding the performance by the audience, and the director's rewriting of the author beyond recognition, and the viewer's participation in the creation of theatrical stories, and the demonstration on stage of events that should not be publicly shown at all. Another thing is how to treat it, maybe it indicates the decline of the theater?

The theater of social change. An example of this theater is the documentary theater and the theater of complicity. "Documents, interviews, diaries remain at the center of the performances, but next to the personality of the "donors", the artists and the audience themselves begin to occupy an important place, appearing not just as transmitters of the truth and its recipients, but as equal participants in the event. Such a theater takes on the features of a "post-documentary". ^{[7, p. 132]}. “Documentary theater is a consequence of art's striving for authenticity not in a mimetic, but in an ontological sense,” wrote theater critic K. in 2010. Matvienko, bearing in mind that the theater needs documentary material not just for a greater "reality effect", but for a real connection with reality, a conversation about it and proof of its right to this conversation" ^{[7, p. 133]}.  Here are two illustrations.

Anatoly Praudin begins his performance “Donetsk. The second platform" (2016) begins by warning the audience in the foyer (theater "Shop", St. Petersburg) that the performance is unlikely to appeal to adherents of any of the political flanks, that the vision of a real person who remained on the second platform in the shelled Donetsk will be shown here, and the actor Ivan Reshetnyak is playing the play and the artist Igor Kanevsky, who went there on an expedition to make a performance. The play is played at closed screenings: information about it cannot be found on the theater's website, only in subscription. The performance itself consists in the story of Zheka about how he moved to Donetsk from Kherson, because here at the chemical plant they gave a good salary and promised an apartment, and how with the war the paradise place turned into a survival platform, where “his own” can be stopped on the street and taken to the unknown, where one workshop continues to work, and we are very grateful to the foreman for his work, but you will not get to Russia for a salary, where you are used to hail…

At the end of the performance “Donetsk. The second platform” Ivan Reshetnyak suddenly "steps out of the role": he takes off his hat, removes the accent, mate, naturalistic intonations, characteristic gestures and speaks from his own face. With the artist Igor Kanevsky, he turns out the door with a crooked tin sheet, transforming it into a dome, and tells about the church on the neighboring "site", whose priest lost his mother during the shelling (his heart stopped from fear), but continues to serve, where instead of domes there are clippings on which the sexton plays ("I don't play I will, I won't succeed, but he really comes out very beautifully”), where during the Easter service, which was attended by more people than the church can accommodate, another shelling began, but no one left, and two hail that flew into the building did not explode. Then a young actor from St. Petersburg suddenly heard what was being said and sung at the service, and clearly understood the commandment – “love your neighbor as yourself.” He began to pray not for himself, relatives and acquaintances, but for "strangers to him" – Zheka, Tasya, Valera, Rosa, Igor ... – those who will remain in the war zone when he is in peace, those whose outlines at each performance are displayed in the background by the artist" ^{[7, p. 136]}.

"One of the landmark performances-promenades was the "intervention performance" Vsevolod Lisovsky's “Implicit influences" with the actors of the Theater. doc (2016). The venue of the performance changes every time, the audience will recognize it the day before the performance. Together with the actors, they walk around the city in a crowd, looking into various corners (central streets, subway crossings, tram tracks, residential courtyards, museum steps, garages, market), not discussed with anyone in advance. Artists along the way, sometimes looking ahead, read excerpts of texts of different genres – from documentary monologues to proof of the existence of God and just poems. The order is determined by the tokens, which are randomly given to the audience and then also randomly picked up by the actors, so it is impossible to predict which passage, philosophical or household, with or without swearing, will get to which urban space. As it is impossible to predict what exactly will be perceived by the townspeople as a provocation...

Because a group of 40-50 people does not have any official paper with them, you are accompanied by constant suspense and even anxiety: will they call the police, can we be here, and how will they react? And the police are indeed periodically called, the guards are trying to drive away from the roofs of those reading poetry and just spectators from the courtyard" ^{[7, pp. 139-140]}.

I will comment on the ideas of complicity, the new "coupling of theater with reality", "authenticity not in a mimetic, but in an ontological sense." Does complicity differ only in degree in the modern theater? Is theater possible without the participation and co-experience of the viewer? Of course not. But complicity to complicity is discord. When the audience begins to dictate decisions or interpretations to the author or director, do they thereby destroy the artistic reality, because they are not professionals and do not understand the laws of the construction of a work of art? Or is their role in something else: to show the author or director what the viewer cares about or what he does not understand?  In addition, the viewer's intrusion into artistic reality can be partially taken into account by creating "framework solutions" (for example, staging the route and actions of Theater actors.doc, taking into account possible audience interventions).

Now about the "coupling of theater with reality." The new theater often realizes its mission as "socio-pedagogical". But didn't the ancient theater create a new man ? an ancient personality, and Moliere ? a bourgeois individual? Yes, the production of Proudin makes you think about what is happening, but this is one of the functions of the theater (utilitarian, pragmatic, social). But the theater has another function ? it is an art form. The question is, does the theater of social change remain a theater as an art form? And another ? how much has the understanding of art itself changed today in the postmodern era? ^[23]

In my opinion, despite the very unusual appearance, the documentary theater and the theater of complicity continue to be a theater (remember what Tuminas said, "The theater is changing, but it hasn't changed yet"). In both examples, the performance is kept at the expense of the actors' play, a second, full-fledged world of artistic reality is created, although the audience takes part in the constitution of what is happening, they nevertheless remain spectators at the same time, observing and experiencing events that arise not without their participation. These three points ? firstly, the artist, secondly, the construction of an artistic reality that allows you to develop an attitude to ordinary life or a possible life, thirdly, the viewer not only as a kind of co-author, but also the viewer himself, living the events of artistic reality - may form an invariant ("genome") of the theater, persisting at all times. But, of course, in addition to an unprepared spectator, on whom, alas, one has to count, the modern theater is in dire need of an enlightened spectator who is guided not only in the classical theater, but also in the new one. Currently, it is hardly possible to fully understand and experience the performance without serious work of comprehension, which includes deciphering the author and director's plan, and analyzing the actors' play, and thinking through incomprehensible places, and promoting oneself in terms of revising existing ideas, as well as clarifying new ideas and images.

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