Two novice producers Daria Zolotukhina and Elena Novikova created Russia’s first immersive play “Black Russian” and sold 82 million rubles worth of tickets in the first season.

Aspiring producers Elena Novikova and Daria Zolotukhina (from left to right) (Photo: Ivan Gushchin/Company Press Service)

“It is forbidden to watch in this house, but guests still have the right to peek,” says the first rule of Troekurov’s house, where the action of the play “Black Russian” takes place. This is the first Russian production that is positioned as an immersive performance (from the English immersive - “creating the effect of presence, immersion”). Here, spectators are poured a shot of vodka and treated to black pancakes; there is no stage - visitors can freely move among the actors and communicate with them in an old mansion.

In the first season, a ticket to an unusual performance cost 5.6 thousand rubles, two to three times more expensive than the average prices for performances in Moscow. However, tickets were difficult to obtain and usually sold out a week before the show.

“Black Russian” is the debut of producers Daria Zolotukhina and Elena Novikova. They recouped the investment in one season and received 80 million rubles. revenue and 20 million rubles. arrived.

Theater experiments

Immersive performances came to Russia from abroad. In 2003, the world's first and most popular immersive performance, Sleep No More, premiered in London. The production combines Shakespeare's Macbeth with films in the spirit of Hitchcock. The play has now moved to the USA.

There are already quite a few companies in the States that are engaged in immersive theater: for example, Third Rail Projects - the authors of the popular interactive play Then She Fell based on the letters of Lewis Carroll, where only 11 spectators participate; Speakeasy Dollhouse is a New York company specializing in staging shows where the viewer participates in the investigation of a mysterious crime, etc.

Theatrical quests, for example “Moscow 2048” from “Claustrophobia,” are considered a harbinger of immersive performances in Russia. In 2014, as part of theater festival As an experiment, the Meyerhold Center staged the wandering play “Normansk” by Yuri Kvyatkovsky based on the book by the Strugatsky brothers “Ugly Swans”. “Before, quest performances in Russia never became fashionable entertainment; they were always the property of the marginalized, the experimental scene or poor festivals... Made on a grand scale... and with private money, “Black Russian” marks the transition of adventure games from the category of innovations to the sphere of mass production consumption,” wrote critic Roman Dolzhansky in Kommersant.

Dreams about the theater

Daria Zolotukhina dreamed of theater since childhood. An example for her was her father, who made scenery and came up with new artistic programs for the children's theater. Zolotukhina even received a PhD in cultural sciences, but was building a career in a different field. For the last five years, she has been responsible for marketing communications at Yandex.Taxi.

Elena Novikova worked for 12 years as a producer of various marketing and PR projects, and headed the Pelican Event agency, which belongs to BBDO Russia Group. Now Elena works as a producer at the Brusnikin Workshop theater.

Future partners met in November 2015. Daria then studied at the German Sidakov School of Drama, where she met Dmitry Brusnikin, with whom Elena Novikova worked. It turned out that Daria and Elena have a similar desire - to stage an immersive performance in Russia. In January 2016, the partners began work. There were no analogues in the capital, so to begin with, the entrepreneurs decided to study foreign experience: they went to New York for a month, where they watched several immersive productions.

In Russia, the first thing they did was turn to director Maxim Didenko for advice. Daria and Elena described the idea and asked which director could realize the idea. To which Didenko replied that he himself would not mind participating in the project, and brought up his team of specialists.

Deciding on the idea for the future performance was not easy; there were several ideas. Initially, “Dangerous Liaisons” by Choderlos de Laclos and “Masquerade” by Mikhail Lermontov were considered. Daria and Elena were looking for famous work so that even an unprepared viewer understands what we are talking about. After long discussions, we decided to focus on Russian classics. Pushkin’s “Dubrovsky” was proposed by Maxim Didenko and playwright Konstantin Fedorov.

In March, the playwright began work on the script. By May, the first version of the script and scenery sketches were ready. To conclude contracts with contractors and pay fees, the girls registered the company Ecstatic Enterprise LLC.

The girls paid for the first preparatory work at their own expense, but soon realized that it was necessary to attract investment. Finding money, entrepreneurs admit, was the most difficult stage. The third partner and investor in the project was Alexey Zaitsev, owner of the metallurgical company A Group, whom Zolotukhin was introduced to by mutual friends. According to SPARK, Alexey has a 20% stake in Ecstatic Enterprise LLC, and Daria and Elena have 40% each. In total, the partners invested about 27 million rubles in the performance. “Black Russian” also has two philanthropists - co-owner of the Yota company Sergei Adonyev and financier Leonard Blavatnik: they invested about 18 million rubles.

Immersive performances do not require a theater: the entire space of a building acts as a stage. The entrepreneurs rented Spiridonov's mansion on Maly Gnezdnikovsky Lane in Moscow, an urban estate of the 19th century: it was important that the plot fit organically into the setting. The main part of the preparation took place in the summer: the site was converted into a theater; in addition to the scenery for the performance, it was necessary to prepare costume rooms, a makeup shop, a sound shop and other production facilities. In total, more than 25 million rubles were spent on renting and re-equipping the building.

Rehearsals with the actors began in August. The troupe consists of 49 people, these are artists from the Gogol Center, the Praktika Theater, the Theater of Nations, and the Vakhtangov Theater. About 37 million rubles were spent on paying artists for the season.

The immersive theater format turned out to be so unusual that the actors often did not know how to interact with the audience. For example, one day one of the spectators during final scene, when Dubrovsky was killed, she picked up a revolver and shot at the offender. Sometimes there were scenes of jealousy on the show. The fact is that Dubrovsky often flirts with spectators and reads poetry in a whisper in his ear. The gentlemen could not stand it and began to sort things out with the actor.

“Improvisation turned out to be a rather difficult moment for the artists, and for everyone it was a challenge, a challenge. We invited Tom Pearson, an immersive theater director from New York, for a master class,” recalls Novikova. In the summer, Daria Zolotukhina went on maternity leave, so she was able to devote herself entirely to “Black Russian,” and Elena Novikova quit BBDO and combined the preparation of the play with work at “Brusnikin’s Workshop.”

“Black Russian” in numbers

5.9 thousand rubles.— ticket price for the play “Black Russian” in the second season, it starts on February 2

17.3 thousand rubles. compiled an average bill on the project website, many spectators came in groups, some bought all the tickets for the performance to organize a holiday for friends

10 minutes actors stand in the plank position during each warm-up before the performance

1 hour 20 minutes the performance lasts

2 the cast performs two performances a day

Before 80 spectators are present at the show

Source: Ecstatic Enterprise data

The theater is not for theatergoers

Producers promoted the show on Facebook and Instagram, which cost about 4.5 million rubles. But a large-scale advertising campaign was not required. According to Ecstátic statistics, every third viewer made a post in in social networks. In addition to word of mouth, sales were driven by good reviews from theater critics.

The fact is that the show really turned out to be unusual. Each spectator at the entrance received a mask corresponding to one of the storylines as a gift: Masha - a fox, Troekurov - an owl, Dubrovsky - a deer. Masks are included in the ticket price; the organizers spent 1.5 million rubles on them. per month.

For an hour and a half, the viewer could watch one of three storylines - Masha, Troekurov or Dubrovsky. “Each viewer assembles the performance precisely from those episodes that he managed to see, from those interactions with the actors who managed to interact with him,” says Daria Zolotukhina. As a result, some viewers bought tickets again to watch storylines the rest of the characters.

The directors believe that correctly selected smells, sounds, tastes and visual images help the audience to immerse themselves deeper into the experience. art world performance. Therefore, Daria and Elena spent a week filming a video for projections in nature. Then, with the help of Berlin colleagues, a 360-degree video projection was assembled from the footage. Also, special aromas were sprayed in each room - the smell of mahogany, the smell of incense and others.

This is also a gastronomic show. Spectators are treated to black dumplings with cuttlefish ink, purple sausage and fruit. In the kitchen during the performance, pancakes are baked with black flour and black compote of dried fruits is cooked. About 1 million rubles are spent on food. per month. Part of the costs was covered by the partners of the performance. For example, at the entrance the audience is presented with a funeral glass of vodka: the performance begins with Troekurov’s funeral service. The producers managed to attract the Beluga vodka brand as a partner.

“The project seemed interesting to us due to its non-standard creative approach - before this, the phrase “immersive theater” was new to many in Russia, and, of course, because of the work chosen for production. We are pleased with the cooperation, since the project became a major event in the life of Moscow and attracted a lot of attention,” says Maria Nesterova, director of marketing communications for the Beluga brand. According to Zolotukhina, there will be more such partners in the second season.

Producers believe they have managed to attract audiences who don't usually go to the theater. “It was just our dream to bring a new viewer to the theater, create a new case, expand the boundaries of people’s consciousness,” says Elena Novikova.

Photo: Ivan Gushchin/Company Press Service

Black economy

In total, more than 100 million rubles were spent on the creation and promotion of the play in the first season: 45 million rubles. - this is a capital investment in the props and equipment of the mansion, another about 60 million rubles. — operating expenses for the season for salaries, rent and food.

In the first season, the actors performed 175 shows - ten performances a week. In total, “Black Russian” was watched by 14 thousand viewers. The turnover of the first season amounted to more than 82 million rubles. If we take into account the help of patrons, the producers practically recouped all investments and earned about 20 million rubles. profit: operating margin was about 25%.

According to Daria Zolotukhina, the project began as a hobby; she and Elena themselves did not expect such commercial success. The new season of “Black Russian” starts on February 2nd. The producers raised the ticket price to 5.9 thousand rubles. and we are confident that this time the show will be watched by another 15 thousand viewers. If sales dynamics remain positive, the show could become permanent.

However, the play has serious competitors. In December, another immersive play “The Returned” started in an old mansion in Moscow, and an immersive musical “Sweeney Todd” was launched at the Taganka Theater. Both shows are a success.

View from the outside

“Immersive performances attract new spectators into theatrical life”

Alexey Zaitsev, owner and general director of the metallurgical company “A Group”:

“I decided to support the project because it is very interesting and new for Russia. I was impressed by the approach - they invited one of the best, in my opinion, teams of professionals. I'm pleased with the result.

If we talk about competitors emerging in the immersive theater segment, for example the show “The Returned,” then this is only a plus for the development of this format and attracting attention to it, and therefore the popularity of our show. Immersive performances attract new spectators into theatrical life. I would like to believe that Russian theater as a whole will be viewed as progressive. "Black Russian" proved that we can make quality things that appeal to discerning audiences."

“Immersive theater is a three-dimensional performance”

Timur Kadyrov, co-founder of the Claustrophobia company:

“I think immersive theater is wonderful. I was in New York's Sleep no more, and I'm going to attend the Moscow productions. Our quest “Moscow 2048” can also be classified as an immersive theater, although there is much more of a gaming component.

What immersive theater is now is volumetric performance. The viewer has the opportunity to observe what is happening from any point in space, but, in essence, he remains an invisible observer, as in the classical theater. We are interested in creating projects with mixed roles, when the viewer becomes a direct participant in the performance, as happens in “Moscow 2048” or any “Claustrophobia” performance. We plan to continue moving towards theater, creating more projects at the intersection of acting and theatrical performance.”

“The viewer gets everything that is promised to him”

Grigory Zaslavsky, theater critic, acting Rector of GITIS:

“Black Russian” is a huge victory and success of two female producers who managed to convince a large number of people that the performance really costs a lot of money. This is a very honestly done project. The viewer receives everything that is promised to him. You can feel the serious investments and fantasies of the artist, director, and financial ones. However, the theatrical life of Moscow will not change radically, it is just a new pleasure. I would say that the theater has another serious competitor.”

“It’s difficult to surprise or captivate a contemporary with anything”

Vyacheslav Dusmukhametov, producer of the show “The Returned”:

“Will immersive performances change the theater market? frequently asked question. Ten years ago there was extensive and useless discussion and worry about whether the Internet would be replaced or e-books printed publications. Statistics regarding the scale have changed slightly, because these are still different markets and different products. So it is with the theater.

Immersion in the performance format is the collective unconscious, what is missing to modern man. A state when you are artificially placed in an environment in which in an hour or two you can experience completely different states, which may not be entirely familiar or have long been forgotten, from horror to admiration, compassion or hatred. It is difficult to surprise or captivate a contemporary with anything, so I am sure that this is exactly the format and the environment that is needed.

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The viewer is not a taste, the viewer is an experience

The spectator experience possible in the theater cannot be reduced to the experience of consumption of another mass. media products. Speaking about the theater viewer, the last thing we can do is turn to the concept of mass taste and correlate theatrical production with this anonymous authority.

In the theater, where “empathy” is possible, that is, physical simultaneous co-presence with the fantasy, fictitious reality being played out (a rather banal and already well-known delimitation of theater from other collective viewings), the viewer gets the opportunity to rehearse various social roles, the viewer finds himself in various random communities, the viewer experiences various emotions of collective life. This experience is generally not repeatable with other viewings. Perhaps this is what keeps theater from disappearing.

The internal structure of the theater as a model of society

The history of theater offers different forms of organizing theatrical space, which entails the implementation in the viewer of experiences that are not reducible to everyday existence. Each form of theater draws attention to a quality of attention or social action that is important for a given social order.

The most general theoretical knowledge concerning the spectator in the mass system. media offers us the statement that the viewer uncritically perceives the conventions of reality offered to him by the channels of information transmission, in contrast to, say, the literary (non-genre literature) conventions of reality or non-mass art, where they deeply contradict the everyday experience of the viewer/reader. The shock of disproportion triggers the mechanism of perception of a particular text, forcing the viewer/reader to rethink the conventions of their own perception of reality, the boundaries of their real world.

By analogy with the perception of literature and art, we can say that various forms of theater activate in the viewer, in the participant, a special emotion and a special role that is not reducible to everyday experience.

In the history of theater and in the topography of theatrical forms existing today, one can identify different anthropological constructions of the spectator. Twentieth-century culture is unique in that it can simultaneously practice different theater systems.

This means that the viewer is actually given the opportunity to combine their sensations and try out different social roles. Festivals or the life of theatrical cities can simultaneously offer the viewer six or seven concepts of social experience of fantastic theatrical reality, given in physical co-presence with him.

Here is a rough description of the theatrical spaces simultaneously present in a large European city. I am only highlighting trends; elements of these theatrical spaces can be combined in one performance. It is important to understand their origins and the spectator role they generate.

The structure of the Shakespearean theater presupposes an experience of going to the theater close to table fun, to common people's leisure. Such an experience appeals to a violent, unrestrained, emotional life.

Theatrical forms of modern times (opera, then operetta), with the concept of a stage mirror, where on stage social conflicts are reduced or dramatized, where the action is addressed to a person with the ability not to have fun and fool around, but to recognize himself as part of a complex society and correlate his conflicts with the stage version. And besides, in such a theatrical device, not only the process of viewing the performance becomes important, but also the demonstration of one’s own prestige before the performance - a performance that is performed by those who come to the operetta even before the performance. In a modern context, playing at aristocratic or bourgeois society is possible in opera houses.

In the circus, where the main theme of the performance is training, the spectator experiences again and again his greatness and power over nature. Self-training, conquest of wild animals, admiration for human capabilities, even the paranormal (in the art of illusionists).

Street theater, by its location, pretends to blend with real life, bringing the passerby as close as possible to the viewer. This form of theater was embodied in the street theater festival in Edinburgh, at Russian space it is rarely practiced.

An invention of the nineteenth century, Cabaret is a theater in a cafe, a theater where, as in the operetta, society is ridiculed, where reflection on politics, vices and habits of compatriots becomes a recreation - the most unaffordable form of theatrical art for the Russian audience. For several years now, this theatrical genre has been steadily replaced by humorous TV shows like Full House. Several attempts have been made to return the practice of cabaret to the real theatrical process; the Stend ab comedie festival was held in Moscow; initiatives for cabaret programs appear periodically, but this direction has not yet achieved mass success.

And finally, the most difficult to describe group of theatrical spaces. Theaters that call themselves avant-garde. Avant-garde art in the theater questions the conventions of known theatrical forms and tests the limits of audience perception. These theatrical spaces are very important, they are laboratories where the viewer can again experience both the role of spectator for the first time and the theater as art for the first time.

Spaces of jubilation and spaces of sadness.

In addition to the image of the viewer (the viewer laughing, the viewer enjoying, the viewer being tested, the viewer interlocutor) and the experience of experiencing a theatrical performance that is not reducible to everyday life, different forms of theater offer to divide solidarity on different grounds, for example, in the experience of a single emotion. The viewer, realized in the performance, acquires a dominant emotion: enjoying - shocked - tormented - provoked - approving - inspired. It is the experience of uniting with other people in emotions, more obvious than the virtual emotional experience when watching television programs, rarely anywhere else in life modern society meets reflection. Emotional outbursts experienced among other people about theatrical events can compete with emotions about public rituals: minutes of silence, festive processions, or emotions about consumer society events: holiday sales, the appearance of new collections, sweepstakes.

The social experience of a theater viewer: spatial, role, emotional, in contrast to the “quality of theatrical production”, rarely becomes a topic for theater critics, which is a pity, since such an approach would allow us to imagine the viewer not as a passive consumer, but to see the events of perception, the viewer’s sensations, the viewer’s participation is a fascinating and important part of theatrical life.

We are used to thinking that a psychologist is a consultant who has insightful conversations with people in his office. He looks for the reasons for a person's problems in his past or in his family history.

However, there are other psychologists who pay attention to deeper individual differences in people associated with the characteristics of their nervous system. At the same time, in their practical work, like all other psychologists, they use various techniques to help a person. These specialists are neuropsychologists. They can subtly combine their knowledge of the functioning of the cerebral hemispheres with art therapy. We asked a specialist in this field, candidate of psychological sciences Svetlana Yulianovna SHISHKOVA, general director of the psychological center "DOM", to talk about how you can solve people's psychological problems using knowledge in such different, at first glance, areas.

OUR ENTIRE LIFE IS THEATER

“The fact that these are different areas of knowledge may seem only at first glance,” explains the psychologist. – To understand what connects the work of the brain and art therapy, let’s turn to the very beginning – to the moment of human birth. When a baby is born, it is very important that he screams. During a cry, his lungs expand and begin to work, and the brain is enriched with oxygen. This cry performs another important function: it triggers the work of the right hemisphere. Neuropsychologists like to say that a child is “born with two right hemispheres”: the left one turns on later.

The right hemisphere is creative, it is responsible for melody and intuition. Parents coo melodiously with their newborn, and receive a melodious hum in response. And when the baby begins to speak and pronounces the first words, his left hemisphere comes into play, because the center of speech is located there.

Nowadays, the number of children who begin to speak late and whose speech is impaired has increased. Their right hemisphere is pulsating, the melody of speech is present, but there is no full-fledged speech: children express themselves in their own “bird” language. That is, the left hemisphere is not fully activated. The left hemisphere is responsible for the sequence of words, the structure of speech, semantic structures, and control. There is an interhemispheric connection between the hemispheres, the impulse between them should pass evenly, but this does not happen.

The work of the hemispheres must be harmonious, and intervention in this area must be done with great caution. Today, techniques that “reveal the functioning of the right hemisphere” are very popular. People want to realize themselves more in creativity, and they resort to such methods. One day a client came to me who “had her right hemisphere opened,” continues S.Yu. Shishkova. – She wrote poetry as a child, but did not become a poet. And thanks to this technique, rhymes began to emerge again, poems flowed like a river, she just had time to write them down. When this woman came for a consultation, she brought with her a whole stack of written sheets. I asked her to read one short poem. She replied, “I can’t do that because there is only one poem written on all these sheets.” Then I invited her to choose any passage from it and read it to me. The client thought for a long time, went through the sheets of paper, but could not settle on anything. Making choices is the task of the left hemisphere. It turns out that thanks to the activation of the right hemisphere, the creative process began, but the client could not give her work completeness or a certain form. That is, the work of the hemispheres turned out to be unbalanced. So such techniques must be used with great caution.

I would like to dwell on one more feature of the work of our brain,” says S.Yu. Shishkova. – Depending on which hemisphere a person has is dominant, it is possible to determine which psychological type, or psychotype, he belongs to. The “left-hemisphere” type is characterized by an optimistic, positive perception of what is happening. For example, such a person looks out the window and thinks: “How wonderful it is that winter is so warm and it’s dry all around”; snow fell - “great, time to go skiing”; it became cold - “well, winter is supposed to be cold.” And the right hemisphere is more associated with negative emotions, with a negative assessment of the world around us. The “right-hemisphere type” looks out the window, outside of which there is a warm winter, and thinks that there is still no snow, there is dirt on the street, and he is gnawed by melancholy. It snowed, which was also bad, because it became cold. That is, the right hemisphere brings with it a depressive state and suffering. Many creative masterpieces are born precisely in moments of suffering: in the throes of love, in experiences of disorder or the meaninglessness of life. When a person is cheerful and cheerful, creations that touch the soul are not created: a person experiences the fullness of life, enjoys his existence, he is already happy, the psychologist emphasizes.

People have long understood what to change internal state Art helps people. Psychologists have included creative activities in their arsenal of therapeutic work and called them art therapy. At psychotherapeutic sessions today, adults and children draw, sculpt, sing, and do pantomime.

– I am especially interested in theater in this sense. It combines all the arts, simultaneously influencing the viewer with the help of image, sound, color, movement, words and melody,” says S.Yu. Shishkova. – In the theater, everyone finds their own symbolism, and, depending on their internal mood, perceives what they see positively or negatively. Therefore, a psychologist who uses theater therapy in his work needs to take into account the emotional state of a person and his psychotype. If the client has a tendency towards depression, it is better to recommend him theatrical performances, which will inspire him, and not immerse him in the experiences of the tragic circumstances of the fate of the heroes. Sometimes it is useful to go not to a drama theater, but to a ballet, where there is no need to delve into a specific text. Just listen to beautiful music and enjoy the plasticity of dance.

Actor, spectator, director
The first time a person acts as an actor is when he is still a child. When guests come to the house, the parents put him on a chair and ask him to read a poem to the adults. He finds himself on a small stage in front of the audience, everyone's attention is turned to him.

– Adults often come to psychologists who feel unhappy because they do not feel that they have been able to find themselves and realize their potential in society. And the question arises, how to help them reveal the potential that was originally inherent in them, says S.Yu. Shishkova. – An art therapist can advise one to acquire the skill of more emotional, more confident speech - that is, to learn public speaking. Sometimes this is enough. For others, it is more useful to study in a theater studio, go on the amateur stage and try to work with an audience. When there is interaction with the audience, a person begins to realize that he is being listened to and understood. He gains self-confidence.

Sometimes parents bring their children to a psychologist, worrying that the child is shy, uptight, and has low self-esteem. He has creative potential, but he cannot reveal it, express himself in society. Classes in a theater club help such a child feel confident in his abilities. The role of the artist performs a psychotherapeutic function.

What is special about an actor's role? He has space for creativity, but it is limited by the given text and the concept of the performance that the director has developed. But there is another role in the theater - the role of the spectator.

For modern children, the problem of communication is relevant. Small children, preschoolers, primary schoolchildren, teenagers want to communicate, but they have little real communication. This is the Internet generation. They sit on networks, correspond with friends there. But such interaction is very different from real communication. When people communicate “live,” one person speaks and the other listens. The ability to empathize, have compassion, rejoice, and the ability to support another comes from the ability to listen. But virtual communication does not develop such a skill. This is where theater can play an important role. In the theater, the child becomes a spectator, an observer, and in this role he develops the ability to listen. He learns to empathize and have compassion, learns to accept information, analyze it and communicate about it with other people.

It is believed that every person should definitely go to the theater, and that it is important to take children there. But theater is only useful in certain doses. Sometimes I recommend going to performances no more than once a season, so that each visit to the theater becomes an event, and the person himself does not turn into a passive consumer of art.

Women love to go to the theater. As a neuropsychologist, I understand why women are fans of the theater, but men, most often, are not,” says S.Yu. Shishkova. – Active men are directors themselves, so they don’t like going to the theater, where they are forced to passively accept other people’s scripts. And if they go there, they do it more for the sake of their beloved woman than for their own pleasure - so they still act according to their own scenario. Well, if the performance the woman brought them to turns out to be interesting and somehow resonates in their souls - even better, there will be something to talk about after the theater.

So we move on to the third theatrical role - the role of the director. He is the creator: he conceives the concept, selects performers, achieves the implementation of his ideas, and the viewer sees the results of his work on stage. Director - creative person, his right hemisphere works intensively. But the work of the left hemisphere helps him realize his idea and ultimately get a product. That is, again, the work of the hemispheres must be harmonized.

Theater space
– They say that theater begins with a hanger. Indeed, the theater is a special space. This perception of the theater can be compared to contemplating a painting in a museum. Each painting has a frame. It limits a certain figurative space. The artists themselves understand how important it is to choose the right frame for the painting. One would suit an ascetically simple frame, while the other would need a gilded frame, lavishly decorated with carvings. Even the icons are framed so that when we look at the icon we feel that we are entering another world. When we enter a special space, we are immersed in a special state - in fact, we are reincarnated.

In the Russian theater school, actors work according to the Stanislavsky system. K.S. Stanislavsky taught actors the technique of transformation, so that the actor did not act, but lived the life of the hero on stage. He helps us, the audience, to enter this special state and experience it. And the space of the theater helps to tune in to a certain mood and prepare for transformation. As Stanislavsky wrote, “the public goes to the theater for entertainment and, unnoticed, leaves it enriched with new thoughts, sensations and requests thanks to the spiritual communication with it of authors and artists from the stage.”

We conducted a study to understand whether any changes occur in the brain of performers while performing on stage. We took their encephalograms before and after the performance. And they discovered an amazing thing. When an artist works according to the Stanislavsky system, after the performance the work of the right and left hemispheres is ideally harmonized, and the electroencephalogram produces a symmetrical picture resembling a butterfly.

And it would be useful to learn this technique of transformation not only for actors, but for every person. After all, each of us wants to convey certain information to others, wants to be understood correctly.

However, working according to the Stanislavsky system has its own difficulties. Actors, transforming into different roles, each time after the curtain falls on the stage, must return back to their “I”. Unfortunately, this does not always happen; the experiences of one role are layered on top of others, and the actor’s own personality is lost. Therefore, it is important not to get too carried away in the theater. K.S. Stanislavsky understood this feature of theater life and reminded the actors about it. Talented actors, no matter what role they play, always remain themselves, preserving their personal “I”.

It is this feature of theatrical life that must be kept in mind when choosing activities for a teenage child. At this time, he is in the process of searching for himself, and it is difficult for him, while acting, to find his own “I”. At this age, it is more beneficial for a teenager to attend sports clubs rather than a theater studio.

How to properly introduce a child to the theater?
– It is very important to listen to your child when you begin to engage in his cultural development. Each child is individual, and for some, for starters, it may be enough to enter a theater space where there is a special atmosphere, see the stage with its heavy velvet curtain, and watch about five minutes of action,” explains the psychologist.

It is a big problem when an immature person is given all kinds of benefits. Out of good intentions, parents show their children the best: they take them to theaters, travel with them around the world, but when satiety sets in with the brightest impressions, satiation with the brightest spiritual values ​​and material wealth, then only the bottom of society remains unknown to the teenager. He begins to explore it, collecting the most base and base sensations. Therefore, it is much easier for a psychologist to conduct psychotherapy with a problem teenager who has not received something in his life, since he still has a lot of unknown and bright things ahead of him, than to work with someone who has been overfed with “this bright” and has not been able to lay down moral and spiritual values.

In order for children to benefit from joining the theater, it is imperative to talk to them. Having gone to the theater, to the cinema, or watched a television production with them, it is very important to discuss it later. And if a child has his own vision of the performance, he needs to be taught not to be afraid to express his opinion. Children really want to talk to their parents, and not listen to their instructions.

The child watched a play or film and was fascinated vivid images, an easy life, his right hemisphere begins to pulsate: “I want to live like this!” Parents should teach children to think, ask questions, and bring thoughts to their logical conclusion. To actively engage the left hemisphere...

Women have their own theater
– The perception of sound is different for men and women. When a woman is not understood, she starts screaming. At the same time, the sound of her voice becomes thinner and higher, and the speed of speech increases. This sound has a destructive effect on the male brain.

Some mothers complain about their teenage sons: “You talk to him, you talk like peas against a wall.” That is, a woman screams at her boy child, but he does not react to her words. The boy became a teenager, his brain matured. If he passes the frequency of his mother’s cry through his brain, then his brain will malfunction into epilepsy and into epilepsy. Therefore - how wisely provided by nature! – his brain switches off. The wave has passed, the flow of words has gone, and the brain is turned on again. This is how a teenager triggers a defensive reaction.

Therefore, by the way, men do not always like opera, because long-term perception of high notes requires a lot of stress from them. If a man or teenager doesn't like the opera, you shouldn't force them to go there. It's better to go to a concert and listen good music. And the woman will watch the opera with her friend.

Life is like a game
– Each person is unique: he is a creator, a spectator, and a performer. And it is important that these roles change throughout a person’s life. You can’t watch others all the time or play a role in someone else’s play. For example, a woman gets married, and in the family the husband becomes the director, and she becomes the performer. She wants to be in tune all the time, to please her husband. Over time, a feeling awakens in her that she has very much dissolved in her husband as a person, that she has lost herself, notes S.Yu. Shishkova. “And when such clients come to me and complain about family relationships, I tell them: “Let’s start with the hanger - let’s remember how you met, what kind of family script you started writing then.” It happens that a woman was awkward, stumbled, a man supported her - and they met. He was attracted by the scenario where he cares, looks after, and the other scenario does not suit him. And over time, a woman becomes confident in herself and no longer needs care. Or, for example, there was a party, the woman was cheerful, bright, and he paid attention to her - she charged him with her energy, gave him the strength to live with her positive attitude. But such a scenario did not imply sadness and melancholy on her part: he himself was often depressed. And now she is in trouble, she walks around gloomy, and her husband is unhappy with this.

A woman must remember the moment when mutual sympathy arose, understand why she attracted her beloved man, what performance he attended at one time. He had some expectations, she had others, and it was important not to break the family system, but to develop it differently. If one spouse changes, he must help his partner change. Theater therapy can be used to work with marital relationships, to resuscitate relationships in a couple that have reached a dead end.

It is important to teach the person himself to understand what kind of performance he is currently performing, what stage he is going on, to teach him to change scripts, change his roles. If a person plays a leadership role at work, it is not necessary to play the same role at home. Having changed the space, it might be worth changing the roles.

That person who wants life to unfold according to his scenario all the time needs to remember that there is someone from above, a more important director than him. You can’t tell other people what to do all the time; you have to learn and be a performer yourself.

Theater therapy is also good for working with children. The first elements of theater therapy arise when we start playing with dolls with a child, he builds a plot and voices his toy. A play space appears, a prototype of a theater. An emotional contact is established with the toy. That's why psychologists always say: play with your children. With the help of such a game, the need for interaction with others and the need for emotional comfort are satisfied and developed.

Finally, theater helps a person understand himself.

In conclusion, I will tell you one parable. A sage approaches a castle during his wanderings. There are guards at the castle. The guard successively asks the sage: “Who are you?”, “Where are you going?”, “Why do you need this?”

The sage was so amazed by these questions that he said to this guard: “Let us come to my service. Your job will be that every day you will ask me these questions: “Who are you? Where are you going and why?

Interview conducted by Olga ZHIGARKOVA

Tyumen State Institute of Arts and Culture

Department of Drama Directing

Course work

in acting

“Features of interaction between actor and viewer”

Performed:

student of RTK-5

Kondinkina Yu.V.

Checked:

Acting teacher

Samokhina E.Yu.

TYUMEN 2002

Plan

Introduction

1. The spectator is the third creator of the performance.

1.1. Theater specifics

1.2. The spectator is an integral part of the performance

1.3. “Energy Exchange”: stage and hall

1.4. Education of the public

1.5. Alone or collectively?

1.6. Atmosphere of feelings

1.7. Types of communication

1.8. Spectator - critic

1.9. Spectator and choice of repertoire

1.10. Small stage and spectator

2. The price of communication: opinions of actors and directors

Conclusion

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION:

The theater is built not only by those who work on stage, even very talented ones; The theater is also created by the will of the audience. Theater is two halves - if safely in one half - this does not mean that everything is safe in the whole theater.

V. E. Meyerhold

So what is theater?

In my opinion, it’s worth looking into the dictionary and finding out:

THEATER is a type of art, the peculiarity of which is the artistic representation of life phenomena through dramatic action that arises in the process of actors playing in front of the audience. In the course of historical development, three main types of theater were identified, distinguished by specific features and means. artistic expression- drama, opera and ballet. The theater originated in Ancient Greece from the holiday in honor of the god Dionysus. The expressive means in the rituals were: coded dance, facial expressions, gestures, singing, speech and pre-theatrical elements: costume, convention, division into participants and spectators. Gradually, complications occurred, and the established order of ritual actions when performing a religious act began to be called a ritual. Initially, performances were staged at the foot of the Acropolis, the seats for spectators were under open air, on the slopes of a hill. Then they began to build rooms for the actors, and on the slopes of the hill they made benches for spectators, first wooden and then stone.

Theater is a synthetic, collective, secondary art. Art can actively influence public consciousness, changing, shaping and transforming the spiritual world of man. Theater is a spectacle. Theater is a holiday. Theater is entertainment. At this holiday they not only laugh, but also cry, worry and suffer, they decide philosophical problems. The festivity, entertainment, and entertainment of the theater are not always expressed in bright colors, sonorous songs and diversity of events. Theater must be a holiday and a spectacle only in the sense that each performance must be exciting and interesting. The theater is smart, but boring - not theater.

The theater is compared to a department, to a school. Like any comparison, it cannot be taken literally. Theater is a school that does not teach in the usual sense of the word. This school does not assign lessons and does not require memorization. There are no students or teachers in this school. From a high pulpit, the stage, contrary to school etiquette, prompts the audience with answers. And the more inconspicuous this hint is, the better the “students” - the audience - perceive the “lesson” - the performance.

Theater is a school where people learn with pleasure, where they learn without noticing that they are learning. As soon as the audience notices that they are being taught, lectured, and repeating the same things that have been taught for a long time, they stop attending such a school. At the theater school they don’t drill anything into you, they don’t tell you anything, they don’t read anything. In this school they only show - they show life.

The first competitor of the theater was cinema, which was born in the 90s of the 19th century. Nowadays, only historians remember that this event gave rise to predictions about the disappearance of the theater. However, this did not happen.

Now, the emergence of various means mass media and the new forms of social communication that arose in connection with this significantly changed the nature expressive means stage art, gave rise to new forms of communication between the theater and the public. The need for theater to compete with other “adjacent” theaters performing arts contributed to both the increased identification of its specificity by some theater groups and its inevitable loss by others. It also demanded new theoretical interpretations of the problem of “theater and the public”, taking into account the current sociocultural situation.

What unique thing can the theater offer today to a film or television lover? Amaze the imagination with scale and entertainment?

N. P. Akimov once said, “There is every reason to believe that absolutely all the possibilities of cinema are available to the theater,” and M. I. Romm said, “Everything that can be done in the theater can be done in cinema, and, from my point of view,” vision, make it in the best quality."

So, the theater can do everything that cinema can do. Cinema can do everything that theater can do and even better. Cinema and theater are two big differences. Two independent professions, completely unrelated to each other. You have to behave differently on camera and on stage. Then it is not clear why and why there are two different types art, if there is a huge commonality between them - is this the object of the image?

Television allows us to see the work of the best actors without leaving our home. In addition, film and television can bring together constellations of performers in one production that simply do not exist in one theater company.

And the theater, despite the many problems the theater has, each time looks for new forms of expression and completely different means of creating a new world, trying to shock the viewer as much as possible. Secretly, at the same time, envying his opposite double - the lucky favorite of women, the public and sponsors.

What is today's audience looking for in the theater that is not found either in the cinema, or at home, on TV? Communications. Live communication with a living person. This is the unique property of theater that no other form of art can replace.

It is the contact nature of the theater that is one of the most important and, perhaps, the most promising ways of its development. The task of a modern theater group is to create the shortest distance of communication, at which the viewer from a passive contemplator will turn into a co-creator, living fully and deeply in the world of the performance.

1. THIRD CREATOR OF THE PERFORMANCE

You can judge the stalls by the stage, and the stage by the stalls. The orchestra is no stranger to the stage: it is like the chorus of a Greek tragedy; he is not outside the drama, but embraces it with waves of life, an atmosphere of sympathy that animates the actor; and the scene, for its part, is not alien to the viewer: it transports him no further than into his own heart. The stage is always contemporary to the viewer, it always reflects the side of life that the parter wants to see.

A. I. Herzen

1.1. Theater specifics

Art is a confession; it bears the imprint of the soul, language, culture, handwriting, and worldview of the creator. It is the discovery of new expression and new means of creating a new world. The power of art is enormous. Art transforms life stories, facts and faces into sounds and colors, into artistic images, giving them a special meaning and special power. The brighter, fuller and deeper an artist expresses life, the stronger his art. Good art certainly has an impact on the mind, will and character of the audience. The benefits from it are enormous, although they cannot be calculated in tons, rubles, or kilometers.

Different arts have different effects. good song can be listened to countless times. You don’t get tired of looking at a good picture hung on the wall of a room for years. But over time, both songs and pictures grow old. Only theatrical performances do not age. The performance is over and he is no longer there. Tomorrow there will be another performance.

Disputes that theater will die as an art form have arisen more than once in history. Either the church prohibited theatrical performances, or the emerging new art - cinema - was supposed to destroy the theater. And now the theater has an even more powerful competitor in the form of the media and the World Wide Web. Theaters indeed often have to fight for viewers in the most incredible ways - from lowering ticket prices to openly profane advertising. The theater more than once yielded to the tastes of the public and, having begun as a serious event, disappeared into the beaten path of primitive entertainment.

But still the theater survived. And he still attracts audiences. It attracts with what no art has - a living person, the uniqueness of the direct contact of living art with the public, the charm of the fact that the art of theater is unique - only it is created “here”, “today”, “now” - in this moment, instantly in front of the audience.

1.2. The spectator is an integral part of the performance

Theater is an interaction between the stage and the viewer, because the viewer is a creative participant in the performance. The viewer is a very complex and very fickle concept. It is easy to draw a divide between the enlightened part of the merchant public and, for example, the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia, between the spectators of the early and mid-20th centuries. It is much more difficult to distinguish between viewers of our era.

Falling into a hatch, from which a huge tongue of flame flew out, seemed to be a very strong effect not so long ago. He caused horror and shock. Nowadays this won’t surprise even kids.

The present time requires the present truth, the present authenticity. The viewer changes. It cannot be said that the “distrustful” viewer of today has less imagination than the “gullible” viewer of Shakespeare’s time. But this fantasy has become more sophisticated, more perfect, more subtle. Much has simply lost its meaning for us.

What kind of behavior and what is the reaction of the audience during the performance? Of course, it is interesting to find out what remains in the memory of the audience, what conclusions they made after watching this or that performance, but the audience is a collective concept. And what is not funny to the viewer of an almost empty hall is funny when the hall is filled to capacity.

An actor is a performer of roles in the theater, his main person, an independent artist, and one of the features of the actor’s work is constant communication with the audience, communication with which helps the actor critically evaluate his work. The actors know how hard it is to play for a few and how joyful it is for a packed hall. The audience, unfortunately, does not know that their reaction depends not only on the quality of the play and performance, but also to a large extent on themselves. This is the case when quantity turns into quality.

Viewers do not study the history of the theater and cannot determine where and from where this or that director’s technique was “rented”. But they have a great sense of whether it is really new or just a renewed forgotten antiquity.

The auditorium is filled with people of different cultures, different professions, different ages. As a rule, the oldest spectator is the most grateful. For different categories of spectators there should be different versions of “game conditions”. The viewer is a constantly changing and very complex concept. The spectators, despite all the differences from one another, without saying a word, laugh, cry, applaud and cough at the same time. They are different, but they react the same way.

Without modern spectators there can be no modern theater. The modern viewer is an indispensable and obligatory participant not only in the evening performance, but also in this morning’s rehearsal, the plan for the future performance.

I would like to believe that the viewer enjoys participating in the creative process, so the task of the theater and the actor is to captivate him with an unexpected move, an unexpected solution. The degree of involvement of the viewer in the acting process should be very high.

An excerpt from the play “Protocol of a Dispute” by the magazine “Schoolchildren’s Calendar”:

The bespectacled guy: Yes, some works of art can also contribute to relaxation, but to fully perceive them requires significant effort, brain work, and intellect. It’s not without reason that they sometimes say that being a spectator is a profession.

...and this is quite enough. Cinema is a whole industry. Filming is expensive, and therefore the film must certainly make a profit. And the profit comes from the mass audience...

Skeptic : Or he doesn't.

Bespectacled man : That's it. And with our unprepared viewer, the director is often forced to choose: fight for quality or fight for the viewer.

Informal . It turns out that the low level of films is primarily to blame for the mass audience and the low level of its culture?

Bespectacled man :

But, by the way, it is prestigious to go to elite films. And an unprepared viewer, having stood in a huge line for a ticket to Antonioni’s film, then, cursing, leaves the middle of the screening, and at the same time covers up the entire elite cinema and becomes its worst enemy.

...Again, alas! Mass culture, I repeat, is terribly tenacious. AND the best remedy to maintain its vitality - this is still, don’t be offended, a low cultural level of the viewer.

Skeptic : But you must admit, many teenagers, and not only them, go to erotic films just for the sex scenes.

Bespectacled man : So for them it's pornography. Here, after all, a lot depends on the preparedness of the viewer. For some people, fashion magazines that advertise swimsuits can be pornography. And some even perceive Edouard Manet’s Olympia in the same way.

Stanislavsky said that the viewer after the performance should see the world and the future more deeply than before visiting the theater. And it was no coincidence that the principles of the “art of experience” that he developed were based on the “personality of the actor”, his excellent qualities as a creator and creator, which make it possible to educate a true stage artist who brings his creative motive to the viewer. The actor’s feelings, thoughts, his life experience, the range of aesthetic ideas about reality, his worldview are the main material for creative well-being, the material from which a stage character is created.

Stanislavsky defined the laws of creativity always presupposing the identification of the real creative abilities of the actor. “It is not the role, not the genre, not the tradition that gives the laws to creativity, but the personality of the actor, his ability to respond to the world, experience it. The main thing for Stanislavsky was one single law, subordinating all others. This is the law of true stage creativity. This is a creation that is organic to a given actor, who throws into the crucible of creativity not his talent as a pretender, a copyist, but his entire personality, from his civic creed to the originality of his voice and look. True stage action arises as an exact professional form of mastering this particular role by this particular actor on this particular day, evening, when the actor performs it - “today, here, now.” Only these conditions give rise to expedient stage action. The logical chain - “actor’s personality” - “creativity” - “stage action” - is undeniable today.” This is how the constant movement and enrichment of stage action with life, the dialectical interaction of stage and life, actor and spectator, is carried out.

K. S. Stanislavsky said: “The spectator, like the artist, is the creator of the performance, and he, like the performer, needs preparation, good mood, without which he cannot perceive the impressions and main thoughts of the poet and composer.” The theater should not “teach,” but should captivate the viewer with images and lead through the images to the idea of ​​the play. There can be no great art without a great thought and a great viewer.”

“The science of man has made an amazing leap forward, when scientists talk about man in the most subtle and precise terms; directing cannot operate with rough, approximate ideas and knowledge, or rely on old techniques and moves,” says National artist and director Andrey Popov. - ...The viewer needs to be educated, and needs to be trusted. Cultivate trust. Theater is a democratic art, art for everyone, that’s true. But the theater must educate the audience and therefore must be ahead of them... The audience should leave the theater filled with reflection, and not just laughing or crying. We should not make any discounts - we need modern and complex performances. This does not mean that the theater should brush aside the fact that the audience does not understand this or that performance. For this, the theater must be an educator, and a wise one, who knows and can do more than his students. Otherwise he won’t be able to teach anything.”

Thinking about the audience, these thoughts imperceptibly become thoughts about art. And, thinking about art, you return again to the audience. Obviously, one cannot be separated from the other. People and art cannot live without each other.

1.3. Energy exchange: spectator - actor

Art is the most accomplished and contagious form of communication between people. The main and fundamental condition for the emergence of contact between the artist, theater, actor on the one hand and the viewer, listener on the other, is high level art itself. You cannot demand positive responses, excitement, or experiences from the viewer if the artist himself is not a professional in his field.

If an amateur director is completely absorbed in the problem of self-expression, then a professional thinks about how to capture the attention of the audience. If the creator wants to lead the audience in the direction he wants, then he must constantly think about it. During the performance, the spectator sits in the hall, and if he is not taken care of, everyone’s attention will wane, and this is how easy it is to lose the audience.

An actor in a play must convey something that continuously increases the audience's interest so that it reaches its maximum in the finale. Then the audience will be happy.

The story that an actor tells from the stage should have energy that charges the viewer. In a well-told story, the energy builds and transfers into the audience. If the actor succeeds, then at the climax he forgets everything. In a state of maximum internal energy, viewers can reach the peak of happiness bestowed by art - catharsis. But you can’t always count on luck and intuition. “The calculation and structure of the energy of involvement are necessary,” writes director Alexander Mitta in his book “Cinema Between Hell and Heaven.”

A story well told by actors brings live energy to the audience, energy that makes the viewer worry, cry and laugh. The professional storytelling strategy is largely the blueprint by which this energy grows.

Once upon a time, the whole world read the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. To see Chekhov's performances in Stanislavsky's first productions, Moscow youth stood in queues of thousands for weeks. Once in America, the Moscow Art Theater not only stunned spectators and professionals, but also laid the foundations for what has ensured today's American show business dominance throughout the world. The Americans do not hide this. Tolstoy, Chekhov and Stanislavsky were artists on the market. The ideology of contact with the audience was a natural part of their artistic life. They could not imagine creativity without power over the audience.

“To captivate the viewer means to force him not only to understand, but mainly to experience everything that happens on stage, to enrich his inner experience, to leave indelible impressions on him,” wrote Stanislavsky.

The viewer comes to the theater loaded with his own problems, so the task of the acting troupe is to make the viewer forget this world for a while, so that emotions awaken in him from what he sees, being immersed in the theatrical world. To do this, you need to arouse emotions in him, maintain emotions and develop emotions to the maximum extent.

The performance and the actor ask the viewer questions, and bit by bit gives answers to them. Each answer contains a new question. And so, by controlling the information, the actors can maintain the audience's attention. Question - answer, question - answer... The audience likes to create a whole picture from pieces of information.

Alexander Mitta writes that there are several rules that can be used to spark audience interest when telling a story.

Give information in small portions.

Each time, communicate less than the audience wants to know. As long as the actor controls the information, he is the master of the situation.

The most tidbits of information should be withheld until the very end.

Nothing should be given for nothing; the actor's character must fight for every drop of information. The more work put into searching for information, the more valuable it is to the viewer.

In presenting information the most important points There are turning points when a breath of new information turns the entire story in an unexpected new direction. Such turns define the class of history. The more unusual the twists, the more exciting the stories.

Another deeper level of the viewer's emotional involvement in the actor's performance is empathy. It grows out of curiosity, and arises in the viewer when the characters are close and understandable, when they have common moral values ​​with the heroes on stage. Empathy gives rise to identification when the viewer, sitting in their seats, lives and acts together with the characters, experiences with them, their problems become close and understandable, and the viewer wishes them victory. Identification occurs largely on a subconscious level. The collective unconscious of our “I” encourages the audience to feel sympathy and care for heroes who are understandable and close, and have common moral values ​​with us.

Brilliant psychological works have been written on this topic, for example, by the German scientist Carl Jung. But even without philosophy it is clear: the more understandable the character, the more understandable his anxieties and problems. Among the firm rules of a “well-told story” is this: first the actor must show the attractive qualities of the hero, help the viewer to love him or experience sympathy, and only then draw the audience’s attention to his shortcomings.

Identification is the main trump card of the entire performance, because it determines whether the audience's emotions will have a chance to develop or everything will freeze at the point of simple curiosity.

Suspense is the moment at which the audience's involvement in the film is most fully realized. Suspense is pure English word. Language experts say that "tension" is an imprecise and incomplete translation. More precisely, it means “tense, unbearable anticipation.” Suspense occurs when danger threatens a character with whom the viewer empathizes.

Suspense is the viewer's reaction to what is happening here and now. It arises if the audience and the character have a moral community, if the audience and the character have the same emotional charge. If the viewer cares about the hero - so that he does not die, does not suffer defeat - suspense arises.

This is because suspense brings the audience into a state of extreme excitement. He is an incredible energy generator for the audience.

1.4. Education of the public

The viewer is the creator, without whom performing arts will remain dead. But any art requires certain preparation, a range of knowledge, and mental attitude. The viewer must be talented, sensitive to the social atmosphere of the theater and performance, able to guess and tune in to the “point of view” of the author and actors of the play, and understand what is being said.

Any theater would be immensely happy if a “well-educated spectator” came to its performances, one who knows how to be a spectator. This is the layer of people who are educated and developed aesthetic feeling and a sense of beauty that understands and feels artistic originality work and author.

For example, in the Russian Academic Youth Theater in Moscow, former Central children's theater, is one of the oldest domestic theaters for children. This is a theater that, in addition to the actual theatrical tasks- the tasks of art, I always set myself pedagogical tasks. It was in this theater that, more than 70 years ago, a pedagogical unit was organized that tried to solve the difficult problem of educating young spectators.

In the theater, immediately before the performance, initiations into the audience are held. During the holiday, those who came to watch the performance do not immediately go to the auditorium, but first go on a tour of the theater. They are met by members of the theater activists in costumes of fairy-tale characters, they form groups of 11-15 people and talk about how to behave in the theater, what they are called. For this purpose, a special exhibition was set up - a mini-theater museum, where you can see with your own eyes how many people take part in the creation of a performance, and what the theatrical professions are called. On the day of the holiday, the performance is preceded by a special interlude “Initiation into the Spectator,” and after the end of the action, the little spectators stand up and, together with the Spirit of the Theater, solemnly take the oath of a “true theatergoer.”

The spectator and the theater are inseparable. The theater educates its audience and shapes their tastes. And when he lags behind the audience he himself raised, then a crisis ensues. The crisis of the theater, but not of the audience.

The viewer, undoubtedly, needs to be educated, first of all, through performances, and not through lectures. If we begin to prepare children in schools to perceive theater in the same way as they are still taught to perceive Russian and foreign literature in schools, then the results will be just as dismal.

Aesthetic education, as we know, is also ethical education, should be carried out through direct contact of a person with all types of art. It's a shame that in Lately many children's theaters create performances in which they want to bring the theater for children closer to the circus, acrobatics, saturate it with all kinds of technical tricks, instead of staging (precisely!) children's performance, based on realistic acting, on the movements of the human soul. It would be good if it again became “fashionable” to play a fairy tale for children in such a way that good and evil on stage are shown not in the form of symbols, but in the revelation of a living human essence, as it is in life.

The true preparation of the viewer always occurs outside the theater, although any steps in the fight against ignorance and distorted brains are precious.

In the West, theater directors often help the audience with well-made programs, equipped with a lot of information about the performance and around the play itself. The viewer is heterogeneous and sometimes represents a motley inert mass. Compressing it into a single team, pulling it along with you through the complex labyrinth of modern stage construction, knocking it off the usual “forecasting”, surprising it with a whole series of extremely unexpected, but infinitely truthful human movements - this is what the theater should be interested in in the first place, and playing “to the public” - bad style.

1.5. Alone or collectively?

The relationship with the audience is a special, exciting world, woven from exorbitant praise and a furious roar of mutual claims.

In his book, Mark Zakharov, artistic director of the Moscow Lenkom Theater, writes: “The viewer only pretends to be an angel when he enters the theater, he also secretly dislikes us, to say the least. And he doesn’t necessarily dislike specific individuals, sometimes he dislikes all of us at once, the entire acting fraternity. It’s not for nothing that people have a mocking intonation: “Well, you’re an artist!” The intonation is not based on kindness alone. Very often, the adoration of the idol is replaced by outbursts of almost hatred. Like in a family, between close people. Relations with colleagues and distant acquaintances are usually smooth, but a loved one can be accidentally killed. From love to hate one step. Right. But we are good too! There is also an “explosive mixture” in us, and we sometimes talk too arrogantly about our breadwinner. There is no need to settle accounts with all the bad inclinations of the audience at once; it is better to take one of his diabolical inventions, for example, a targeted performance, and, giving your reasoning an extremely objective character, try to at least slightly discredit this chimera of the 20th century.”

A performance in a theater is an undoubted blessing, an undeniable achievement, happiness both for an industrial enterprise or institution that completely purchases tickets to the theater they liked, and for the theater itself, which sold a full set of tickets at once for a lump sum, usually exceeding the normal total cost of all tickets sold for an ordinary performance.

Theatergoers have strong arguments in their favor. It is worth agreeing, first of all, that a collective campaign against theatrical performance- an event that is well remembered by trekking participants, regardless of the quality of the performance watched. In general, everything is remembered as a fun affair, like noisy and festive outings into nature with their own meals, joint mushroom picking, song rides on pleasure boats, friendly dinners, lunches, and so on. Indeed, it’s nice to immediately after work or study, without leaving, the whole team rush together to a theatrical and entertainment establishment and rejoice that everyone is around, that there is not a single stranger, that not only in the foyer, but also in any other public space you can make a joke to everyone at once, wave from the stalls to the balcony and back, discuss last news, talk casually with management...

However, some organizers of this kind of outings do not stop there and try to set additional tables in the office premises, gradually turning the viewing into a kind of evening of relaxation, a celebration of an entire department or a separate team on the occasion of what they saw on stage.

Obviously, the professional (service) homogeneity of the auditorium is a very difficult psychological barrier for the individual viewer, which most often cannot be overcome painlessly. And it doesn’t matter who exactly is in the hall. Even if only theater experts, workers in other fields of activity or medical specialists gather in the theater, the result will still be approximately the same. At the end of the performance, any actor will probably want to go on stage and say: “People, forgive us if you can, and please come to this performance again, but only as simple, normal, ordinary spectators! You will see a different performance!”

On the same topic, Oleg Tabakov said in one of his interviews with the media: “...It is not difficult to make the viewer come to the theater - if he is interested in the theater, sooner or later he will come there at least once. What needs to be done to make it happen a second time is the question. It’s a shame if the bet is placed on a “one-time” viewer or even a traditional visitor who comes to the theater every time as if for the first time. I don’t want the theater to be talked about only as a theater. We’ll definitely see what happens.”

In Russia, the entertainment industry is not yet sufficiently developed, and many people are still poorly versed in the system of collective recreation; people want to relax in a variety of ways, sometimes in large groups, and not all accumulated traditions in this direction are good. It is no secret that many Russian catering facilities, for example, have been turned into mixed-use enterprises.

Well, if you still decide to go to the theater alone, alone or with someone, then you need to follow some rules. Try to arrive half an hour before the start of the performance. The point is not only that entering the hall late can disturb other spectators, but also that a lot can be missed. Theatergoers say that in order to feel the atmosphere of the theater, before the start of the performance you need to slowly walk around the foyer and buy a program; it will help not only to find out the names of the author and actors of the play, but also to better navigate the play. The program is a “piece” of the performance.

The play is over. Whether you liked it or not... You shouldn’t rush to a final conclusion, maybe you should think about how the theater achieved success? To achieve success in the theater, not all means are good!

1.6. Atmosphere of feelings

The most active participation of the viewer in theatrical performances was in those days when spectators threw rotten eggs and rotten oranges at the actors. And when now there is absolute silence at performances in a full hall - isn’t this active participation? Such silence is the most precious thing for a theater troupe, just as it was once precious for the old Moscow Art Theater.

It is known that art in general relates to the sphere of feelings, the atmosphere is the heart of every work of art, and, therefore, of any performance. Among actors there are two different ideas about the stage on which they spend most of their lives. For some, it is empty space. From time to time it is filled with actors, workers, scenery and props. For them, everything that appears on stage is visible and audible. Others know that this is not true. They experience the scene differently. This is a small space for them - the whole world, saturated with an atmosphere so strong and attractive that they cannot easily part with it and often spend more time in the theater than necessary, before and after the performance. And old actors probably spent more than once nights in empty dark restrooms, behind the scenes or on stage, illuminated by a duty lamp. Everything that they have experienced over many years rivets them to this stage, always filled with invisible enchanting content; they need this atmosphere of the theater. It gives them inspiration and strength for the future. In it they feel like artists, even when the auditorium is empty and silence reigns on the night stage.

And not only the theater, but also the concert hall, the circus, the booth, and the fair are filled with a magical atmosphere. It excites both the actor and the viewer equally.

A theatrical performance, as a synthetic product, having arisen from the joint efforts of many specialists, lives life to the fullest only in interaction with the viewing audience. And the growth and improvement of both the theater and the viewer depend on the quality of their interaction. The viewer should not delve into the psychology of the actor; the actor is simply obliged to reveal his role and create an atmosphere.

An actor can give himself over to the atmosphere in each of his performances; he can and should enjoy new details of his acting. The space, the air around the actors, supports lively creative activity in them.

The actor who knows how to maintain a sense of atmosphere knows well what unbreakable bond is established between him and the viewer if they are engulfed in the same atmosphere. In it, the viewer himself begins to play along with the actor. He sends him waves of sympathy, trust and love across the ramp. The audience could not do this without the atmosphere coming from the stage. Without it, he would have remained in the realm of reason, always cold, always alienating, no matter how subtle his assessment of the technique and skill of the actor's play. A performance arises from the interaction between actor and spectator. If a director, actor, author, artist, musician has created the atmosphere of a performance for the viewer, he cannot help but participate in it.

During a performance, two atmospheres at odds with each other cannot exist simultaneously; individual feelings and the atmosphere opposite to them can not only coexist together, but they usually create spectacular moments on stage, giving the viewer aesthetic satisfaction. Between an individual feeling and an atmosphere, if they contradict each other, the same struggle occurs as between two warring atmospheres. This struggle creates tension in the stage action, attracting the viewer's attention. If the struggle is resolved by the victory of the atmosphere over individual feeling, or vice versa, the victorious side increases in strength and the public receives new artistic satisfaction, as if from a resolved musical chord. It goes without saying. When the individual feelings of the hero on stage are in conflict with the general atmosphere, the actor, as the performer of the role, is fully aware of and experiences this atmosphere.

A performance devoid of atmosphere inevitably bears the imprint of mechanicalness. The viewer can talk about such a performance, understand it, appreciate its technical perfection, but he will remain cold - the performance will be “heartless” and will not be able to capture him entirely.

Laughter in the audience is a welcome guest. But it can be caused not only by genuine wit, but also by vulgarity, obscenity, stupid, offensive jokes of bad taste. Such techniques have nothing to do with art, and not a single serious actor or director uses them. At a good performance, the audience usually laughs or cries. But the laughter and tears of the audience in themselves are not a guarantee of a good performance.

Addressing young actors, Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky said:

“Theater is the most powerful weapon, but, like any weapon, it has two ends: it can bring great good to people and it can be the greatest evil. ... The evil brought by a bad book cannot be compared with the evil that the theater is capable of bringing, neither in terms of the power of infection, nor in the ease with which it spreads to the masses.”

1.7. Types of communication

“The best way to communicate with the audience is through communication with the characters in the play” K. S. Stanislavsky.

Stanislavsky attached exceptional importance to the live interaction of partners on stage. But while developing his system, he did not immediately come to a correct understanding of the nature of stage communication. If earlier the understanding of communication was such that an actor spoke a text intended for a partner standing next to him into the audience and could quite calmly stand with his back to the viewer, then all this was revised and written by Stanislavsky in his book “The Actor’s Work on Oneself,” in the chapter “Communication” . Where is it said about the organic connection between soul and body, physical and mental in the actor’s work? Fortunately, these thoughts did not satisfy the author. After the adjustments were made, the definition of the nature of communication turned out to be like the interaction of partners in the process of stage wrestling.

The actor needs to take care of the continuity of the process of communicating with partners with his feelings, thoughts, and actions. The organic nature of the interaction is sometimes lost completely unnoticed by the actor himself, for example, through frequent repetition of the role, when the internal connection with the partner is dulled and leads to overacting, which the audience is sensitive to.

“Communication is artisanal - it goes directly from the stage to the auditorium, bypassing the partner... Such communication is a simple actor’s self-show, a play…” - said Stanislavsky.

The actor is given the right to use all types of stage communication, and by the way the actor communicates with partners on the stage, the “rules of the game” by which the actor plays become clear to the viewer.

The most common and classic way of communication is the “Fourth Wall”, when the viewer is an outside observer of the story being played out on stage. Apart (from French aside) means a stage monologue (short remark) that is spoken “to the side” for the audience. Usually, according to the authors of the plays, it is “inaudible” to the partners on stage.

And finally, the most original type of theatrical communication is a happening (English: happening) in which the event and action are an end in itself, and not part of a dramatic plot. Mixing various theatrical elements and combining them with life objects and phenomena is the hallmark of a happening. Equally characteristic is the lack of plot and logical connection between its individual parts. Like color in abstract painting, the episodes in a happening relate to each other compositionally or emotionally rather than obeying logic. Unlike a play, a happening often presents several images or theatrical episodes simultaneously, each with its own “idea.” Sometimes acting is included in a happening, but not with the goal of creating a fictional character acting in fictitious circumstances: the meaning and purpose of the performance lies in itself. Like a lecturer, a circus performer or a football player, the actor in a happening remains himself and in the same circumstances as the audience.

Happenings take place in galleries, train stations, squares and other places not intended for performances. They can also be staged on a regular stage. However, often the emphasis is on the environment, the setting - and then the stereotype “spectator - stage” is broken. The Happening, in essence, rejects the concept of “audience”. The actions that are performed in front of spectators are done solely for the sake of self-expression of the performers.

During the Soviet period in the USSR there were such experimental productions in which the audience bought a ticket, after which they were promised something enchanting if they put on signs with some inscription on themselves, then went down into some catacomb, etc. In the end, the spectators who agreed were taken out of the theater to those who did not agree to the first condition, therefore, did not go through the following stages, this was the end of the performance. For example, Tairov more than once used the connection of the stage with the hall, in his sensational production - “The Yellow Jacket” by Hazleton, in the operetta by S. Lecoq “Day and Night”, in the play by S. Semenov “Natalia Tarpova”, but he was always opposed to playing hall He believes that the spectator in the theater should be given the same role as in other forms of art, that the spectator should remain a spectator, and not actor, - “Bridges across the orchestra, made-up actors running through the stalls and exiting the stage into the audience create not a cathedral action, but nonsense and chaos. The viewer, fortunately, tactfully remains a viewer, but the theatrically made-up and dressed extras who appear next to the audience simply insult the theater, turning it into an anti-artistic mess. Long live the ramp!” - Tairov.

1.8. Spectator - critic

All those who create the performance - the playwright, director, actors, artist, musicians and many technical theater workers - are certainly interested in what the audience thinks about their creation.

And how offensive it can be when, at the audience conference, after the end of the performance, smart, good people, which, by all indications, mean the correct and even deep thought, can't express it in simple words, they wise up, repeat reviewer cliches they read somewhere, and, without really saying anything, embarrassedly leave the podium. Theater exists for the people, to whom everything belongs, including art. But in order to understand it well, you need to know its laws and correctly imagine the work of those who create performances. The viewer can greatly help the theater with his criticism if the criticism is specific and based on knowledge of two aspects: the vital basis of the play and the specifics of art drama theater.

Connections with the audience can be and are varied. Mark Zakharov said that in his theater audience conferences are still traditional, which have been held twice a year for more than twenty years. These conferences are very popular, the hall is always crowded, there are people standing in all the aisles and along the walls. At these conferences, conversations with the audience are business-like and extremely frank; the public has the right to ask any questions, and the theater must be able to answer all questions. Another form of communication with the general public is theater balls, which we hold three times a year, and our guests at them are the most active spectators, friends of the theater. “Lenkom” sees in these balls a continuation of the tradition of the Moscow Art Theater “cabbages”.

The “exchange” of emotions experienced during the performance into thoughts, conclusions and generalizations occurs in different ways, sometimes quickly, more often slowly. But the stronger the feelings evoked by the theater, the more food the audience’s minds receive. And even later, new thoughts push the audience to new actions, new actions. Spectators can remember for the rest of their lives the performance they saw, individual scenes or words, their feelings and experiences. The trace left in the viewer's soul, a splinter driven by the theater, remains forever. The distance from the spectator's emotion to the action that is committed under its influence is immeasurable. After all, the impressions from the performance are multiplied by new impressions and life events, they come closer and further away depending on thousands of thousands of people, meetings, facts, books, which reduce or increase the power of the watched performance.

An artist is obliged to listen to any criticism, not to reject it outright, to “try it on” and check everything, to agree with what is fair, and, of course, not to accept erroneous advice. And the viewer-critic, expressing critical remarks about the play, must remember that before making this or that decision, the creators of the play thought about it and worked on it for months (and, sometimes, years!) - the audience’s impression is formed in minutes . Therefore, it is not always possible to speak in a categorical tone, but one must argue with reason and respect for the opponent.

1.9. Spectator and choice of repertoire

A question that is also directly related to the interaction between actor and audience is how does the audience influence the choice of play, the distribution of roles and the rehearsal process?

Sometimes you look at the reports: which plays were played, how many times, in how many theaters, and you don’t know whether you should cry or laugh? Why, for example, did a primitive detective take such an honorable place in the summary? Are the spectators to blame? Or maybe theaters? No, artists have no right to blame the audience. We need to think about how to live on, how to correct the mistakes of the past, how to prevent them from happening in the future. After all, the bad thing is not that a certain part of the audience is not sufficiently educated aesthetically. This is a difficult matter, but it can be fixed. Universities of culture and arts, folk theaters, hundreds and thousands of musicians, poets, artists, and painters have already taken up aesthetic education. And the results of this noble work are obvious. It’s bad that the audience, their culture and tastes are growing, but the art masters’ idea of ​​the audience is not changing.

The selection of the repertoire, the distribution of roles is always like a plan for a general battle: where will he go this platoon, this company, this regiment, this unit. When forming a repertoire, the theater must undoubtedly satisfy the tastes of all categories of the public. If the theater wants to conduct a dialogue, it must first of all choose a play that will provoke the activity of its partner - the viewer. If somewhere, in some cities, in some theaters, the audience demands only entertaining performances, then this is the theater’s big fault. Justifying himself by the “demands of the viewer,” he followed the path of least resistance.

Once upon a time, when Nemirovich-Danchenko was asked who you are first of all - a theater actor or a director, he answered: “First of all, we are the theater of the author.” Indeed, the problem of text, drama, and choice of play is a problem of culture and theater. The problem is no plays! Yes - no decent ones modern plays. Then why don't they stage it? modern prose? Dovlatova, Sokolov, Limonov... Such dramatizations can be done on one hand. Alfred de Musset, Théophile Gautier and Thomas Mann are dramatized! The thing is that more often than not directors don’t need plays at all. They need performances. Almost all of our theater directors are brought up on theatricality. Actually, this is their profession. They are not literary scholars or writers. They're not even critics. So there is no need to think that they need a play. They need a reason to stage. No more. They say that theaters are now inundated with plays by beginners. That this is a graphomaniac boom in drama. Alas, to our great regret, these plays are overwhelmingly of a low level. And not just in dramatic terms, but simply in language. The language in the play should be sophisticatedly everyday. That is, not too abstruse and dry, but not too low-key either.

Falsity spread subtly throughout the text. Involuntarily, you see in the author a very highly qualified liar and everything in you resists his passionate desire to deceive you.

Author's insincerity. In the play there are two or three situations familiar from life, perceived almost unambiguously, but the author’s moral accents in assessing these events are somewhat shifted. And further in the text the author, who is clearly not a stupid person, pretends that nothing happened.

I'm unpleasant myself main character. That is, the hero is not Ostap Bender - one, not Hamlet - two, not Treplev - three. That is, if the hero is not humorous, free from any doubts and not a creative person or, more broadly, not in search, he is almost always unpleasant. The author must be very smart and very talented in order to demonstrate the toughness of the hero without contrasting him with the viewer or reader. But smart and talented authors are not interested in such heroes. It is not for nothing that only “Rozov’s boys” and Vampilov’s “eldest sons” remain in modern drama.

"Ladies" play. The common problem of our playwrights is that they have practically no men. The second drawback is that if there are more than two heroines, then they are practically indistinguishable. But, nevertheless, the ladies' play is always lyrical and elegiac, and not as soulless as others. A woman playwright will always feel sorry for someone, at least for herself.

If we analyze what repertoire is successful with audiences, we can see that in many theaters the greatest success is not entertaining, but very serious, deeply meaningful performances with high drama.

When distributing roles, production directors do not always follow the path that the viewer expects. Directors, when accepting a play for production and taking into account the previous experience of a particular theater, are ready to say in advance which actor can play which role. Although some try not to follow this practice. The most interesting thing is to give an actor a role similar to which he has never played before, but has the psychological and physical characteristics for it. This distribution of roles is interesting both for the director and for the actor himself. And if they are lucky, it becomes a pleasant surprise for the audience.

“Today there is a generation of people sitting in the hall, for the vast majority of whom literature is, at best, Akunin. Such spectators expect from the theater the same degree of frankness that they are accustomed to receiving in television series, “Behind the Glass” games and endless talk shows. Today people pay a lot of money for a ticket. So the theater needs a person who knows how to invite a notorious deputy, an “overexposed” new Russian, a pop star into the audience. And the viewer is rightly ready to pay a hefty sum, because, on the one hand, he receives information coming from the stage, and on the other hand, he can tell in his office that he met Zhirinovsky at such and such a premiere or how Pugacheva was dressed and she was with or without Kirkorov,” this is the opinion of Boris Lyubimov.

1.10. Small stage and spectator

The spectator and the actor are captives of a certain type of theatrical convention, a certain type of thinking or idea - people come to the theater because it is a necessary attribute cultural development- a stamp that imposes another stamp - the social ladder. This is the idea of ​​Jerzy Grotowski, a Polish director, like his predecessor Ludwig Flaschen, which arose from the dream of a theater in which there is some kind of connection between people, rather than an established relationship.

“In the theater, both the actor and the spectator perform an act of self-disclosure, establish contact with each other and with themselves. A clash of thoughts, instincts, subconscious. The art of theater is autonomous, it only starts from literature, and does not illustrate it; theater comes into contact with the viewer not through literary fabric, but through the condensation of feelings, the spontaneity of acting. Therefore, it is necessary to educate a new actor who plays with full physical and psychological dedication. And at the same time he was endowed with a sense of self-control and discipline. Therefore, it is necessary to study the laws of spectator perception,” urged Jerzy Grotowski.

Not all spectators were allowed to attend the performances of his “Theater of 13 Rows”. In “Acropolis” 50 people took part in the action, in “The Steadfast Prince” 35, in “Apocalypse” only 30 were allowed in. The task of Grotowski’s theater was to reconcile man with the world and man with himself. Critics called Grotowski’s team a religious community, a laboratory, a “psychoanalytic hospital”, where spectators-patients are shaken up, returning the original magic and ancient catharsis to the theater. Others called the “13 Rows Theatre” a “psychodramatic social system” in which an attempt was made to create a “therapeutic-creative collective.” Grotowski's performances were like some unfinished work of art, but always a living process, only now being created. Therefore, spectators who saw the same performance were assured that there was a completely different performance in front of them.

The small stage, which the Jerzy Grotowski Theater used in its productions, is a useful thing in many respects, in any form. It is legitimate to create such scenes in a room for fifty spectators and for a wider audience, provided that there is someone to work there. “The viewer should be fascinated by our complex, nervous existence next to him, and say to himself: “Yes! It is extremely interesting to watch them, to empathize with them, because I, the viewer, do not know what will happen to these actors in every subsequent second of their stage existence. The relationship between an actor and the audience is a relationship between a confessor and a believer; you cannot open a role without being able to open yourself; the actor, as it were, sacrifices his self,” said one of the actors in “13 Rows.”

The actor must penetrate into himself, reveal himself in front of the viewer, give him his inner world, recognize and learn to use all your capabilities. Grotowski defined his spectator as having his own spiritual needs, wanting to analyze himself through the performance, he overcomes the endless process of self-development, seeks the truth about himself and his purpose in life. This is a creative process of self-discovery that is not available to everyone.

The Helsinki City Theater has a small hall that can be transformed in any way you like. It can be used as an arena where spectators sit around, as an amphitheater and as a traditional hall with a stage box. In general, a theater can exist in any room, as long as there is someone there to do their job. For example, performances that are played in rural clubs are actually performances of a small hall.

In our theaters, in their conditions, small stages can be lively and useful if they become successors to the traditions of the Moscow Art Theater studios. Considering that a number of theaters have large companies and many young people in them who have little work, it will probably be useful if these young people begin to play plays in small halls, in theater lobbies and anywhere else.

The success of small stage performances is largely due to the special role played by the audience during the stage performance. In fact, a person, having purchased a ticket to a small stage performance, involuntarily feels that he is “chosen”. He is a participant in a special ritual, involved in some narrow circle, isolated from the general mass of the public, which in itself gives rise to a certain comfort of behavior and imposes certain obligations. He seems to be not just a spectator, but an honored guest. By inviting an equal partnership, the small stage seems to return to the audience the feeling of being chosen that they had lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and the viewer greatly appreciates this alone. The viewer is trusting, he wants to think that for the sake of meeting him, the theater so sharply limited the space of communication and, discarding all this noisy mass of the public, invited him for an individual interview.

The opinion that the small stage in current conditions provides the shortest path to the mind and heart of the viewer is far from indisputable. What is indisputable is that the small stage creates favorable conditions for mutual understanding between the actor and the audience, but this mutual understanding is possible within a wide range. At one pole there is high art, the magic of empathy, and at the other there is philistine delight and interest in the “living actor”.

2. THE PRICE OF COMMUNICATION: OPINIONS OF ACTORS AND DIRECTORS

Artists of color, sound, chisel and words chose art in order to communicate with all people through the medium of their artistic creations. So, the final, main goal of art is spiritual communication with people. Therefore, creativity, as a means of communication between the artist and the crowd, must have the property of being transmitted to the public. In other words, creativity must be scenic.

K. S. Stanislavsky

For quite a long time the artist cannot understand the objective value of his next creation. Sometimes it seems to him that he has created a masterpiece, and critics and spectators silently pass by him.

Every honest artist, starting new job, is sure that people will need it, tries to imagine the future viewer and guess his reaction. But when the creative work is completed and put on display, time and people correct or overturn the artists’ assumptions and, much more accurately than the authors, determine the lifespan of films and performances, paintings and songs.

On sleepless nights, when the performance you have released has not yet been separated from the creator, when he can still determine whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, he compares his work with the best he has ever seen.

And he thinks, thinks, thinks...

Why are viewers happy when they look at something? Why don't they like this? Why, from the director's point of view, is a weak performance successful? A good performance Doesn't always attract a full auditorium? When the assessments do not coincide with the viewer's assessment, who is right - the artist or them?

The dialogue between the artist and the public often spills over onto the pages of magazines and newspapers, and during these discussions, some theater workers express dissatisfaction with the public and believe that last years The consumer attitude towards theater as an indispensable entertainment spectacle has become normal. At the same time, viewers say that the theater does not always please with artistic discoveries; it has become less passionate, emotional, and has lost its imagery and tendency to experiment.

Back in 1921, A. Ya. Tairov wrote: “To find out what role the viewer should play in the theater - the role of the perceiver or the creator - this means answering to a large extent the question of what should be the entire structure of the modern theater and the theater of the future.” Tairov himself assigned the viewer the role of a passive participant, however, creatively perceiving the performance. In those same years, Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold was looking for ways to activate and directly involve the viewer in the stage action. K. S. Stanislavsky, as you know, considered the viewer “the third creator of the performance.”

Well, of course, there are differences between viewers and viewers. Among them there are both narrow-minded and uncultured, very old and very young. Some came to the performance by chance, others waited a week for it. Another saw this play more than once and came to compare the young performer with the famous artist of the beginning of the century, while another became acquainted with the theater and playwright. What should I do? Who to target? What to show? Who to listen to and what to believe?

First, we need to understand how the actors and directors themselves characterize the viewer and the audience. Albeit abstractly, but quite accurately, the artistic director of the Moscow Tabakerka Theater and the Theater-Studio named after. Tabakova - Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov: “The auditorium generates such a lifting force, which can only be compared with the wings of a modern hang glider, carrying a person into the sky. It would seem that nothing could be more wonderful and absurd than a person who puts on this strange metal structure with wings covered with canvas or plastic. However, pushing off from the ground and flying into the air, it presents the most amazing and beautiful sight.”

Natalya Gundareva, an actress of the Vladimir Mayakovsky Theater, once said in an interview with the Trud newspaper: “Do we even care about the theater?! In these most difficult times, in the most theatrical of countries. Exactly! And in the theaters, meanwhile, spectators still cry and laugh. People want to go to the theater. The thirteenth season is being watched with us “Lady Macbeth” Mtsensk district" and cry. If they need these tears, then they need theater. Yes, the theater is full for Lady Macbeth. From my place on the stage I have the opportunity to see the entire hall. And all the actors usually ask me: “Natasha, is there a spectator on the balcony?” “Yes,” I answer. “Is there any on the first tier?” - “And on the first tier.” But that's today. I do not know what will happen tomorrow. And no one probably knows. But no matter what happens in life, we will immediately hear it from the theater stage.

Theater should not be a reflection of life. When life is forcibly placed on the stage of theaters, spectators run away from the audience. People rush to the theater to see beauty, even if Hamlet with five murders is playing - these are still noble, lofty, beautiful feelings. Therefore, I am convinced: theater is theater, and life is life.”

They talk a lot about the theater and everyone, good and bad, is trying to help, to keep this very theater afloat, despite the fact that the Soviet Drama Theater is seriously and seriously ill, it is in a state of half-life. This is what Sergei Yurievich Yursky thinks. “Mutants have appeared. The theater has become a restaurant stage, a fashion show, a striptease, monologues by an entertainer, a rock ensemble, circus clowning, performances by professional athletes, entertainment by an entertainer, a park attraction - everything, everything calls itself a theater. So it’s flattering to be a theater person.

The mutants are furnished with all the external signs of the theater. Sometimes, on the wave of success, they say smugly: “We new theater, the old one died, he gave birth to us, we took the best from him and moved on. We are already far away." And the audience also runs to the mutants, forgetting their previous attachments. The viewer himself becomes a mutant. Stars flare up and go out, replacing each other with great speed. And in this whirlwind suddenly... sometimes... from memories, from half-forgotten childhood impressions, from the stories of parents, acquaintances, random people we meet, as if alive, an image of what a real theater is: with actors, artists who have an incomprehensible gift of transformation - transformation into another person.

The high wave of dramatic theater has already passed. This time is not so far away, and yet far away. Almost all film celebrities were stage actors. They could confirm their professional competence, the ability to communicate directly, the ability to control the auditorium, they influenced art: their job was to create images,” this is the opinion of Sergei Yursky, one of the most famous and professional people in the theater.

“It seems to me,” writes Mark Rozovsky, “that the viewer who is sitting in the hall today is in some ways the same as he was probably in the early 20s, and to some extent the same as he was in the late 50s - early 60s, when a new generation of intelligentsia began to join the life of the theater. In culture we are dealing with the slow degeneration and desiccation of the theater. I don't think the public is stupid. The audience that comes to my theater is not stupid. And the audience that goes to “blue” performances based on Chekhov, the director of which talks about the love between Solyony and Tuzebakh, is probably not very smart. Such performances are of little interest to me. My hair stands on end - I don’t want to watch Chekhov like that. And I won't watch. I think that your children and my children should not watch such Chekhov either. I do not speak personally about my colleagues and do not evaluate the quality of their work - I respect everyone. You don’t have to see it to judge: reviews are enough for me. I don't want to see this. And someone, apparently, wants it - that’s his right. The viewer is offered substitutes, surrogates, opuses not of the hard-won avant-garde, but some semblance of something that supposedly represents something. And the viewer, like a hungry fish who has seen little, takes the bait. They pay money, they invite theaters, they fill the halls, then they spit...

I don’t really understand the division of art into “commercial” and “non-commercial” - there is art, and there is non-art. Our theater is for the chosen few, and the beauty is that these chosen ones can be anyone. Mass culture is anticulture, a means of duping. Thanks to mass culture, a great deformation of the viewer’s consciousness occurs. Thanks to the huge amounts of money that are invested in it, thanks to what is called “show business,” mass culture has slowly but surely accustomed everyone to the idea that this is the very art that people need. Meanwhile, when after “Uncle Vanya” an unfamiliar viewer grabs me by the elbow and says: “Thank you, today I visited heaven,” - for me this is more valuable than all the reviews in all the polished magazines combined.”

Are the creators satisfied with the audience? It is difficult to answer unequivocally. It all probably depends on the theater and even on the performance. If the director and actors failed to captivate the audience, then “feedback” will tell us that they themselves and their theater are to blame.

Without a doubt, there is a certain percentage of the public who in the best possible way prepared for the theater experience. Often the viewer is spoiled by non-fiction products that he “absorbs”. But, just as in music, when sometimes you understand a piece only the third time, so in performing arts you can learn the language of theater and cultivate in yourself the desire to speak it fluently.

Natalya Triblekh has been an actress at the Film Actor Theater for many years, and she simply adores her audience. “Our audience is amazing! Constant, grateful: even in the summer, the theater is full, and at the end of each performance the actors are regularly showered with flowers... And these are not premieres at all, but already some hundredth shows! From the very beginning of the theater's existence, we immediately had our own, very loyal and friendly audience. I know people who watch their favorite performances ten or fifteen times. You physically feel the support of such spectators. Sometimes you go to a performance sick, broken, or even with a fever, you can barely drag your feet in the subway... And then the performance begins... I overcome the first act with difficulty, then I begin to feel that strength is coming from somewhere, and By the end of the day, I'm absolutely healthy! Without this close connection with the audience, it is almost impossible to do anything worthwhile on stage. Although sometimes there is an audience with a negative attitude - you play and feel: what a heavy hall it is today! But we, in the end, promote such a seemingly impenetrable hall - at the expense of our own veins, as they say... More often than not, our audience is responsive and grateful. We turn on the audience, and they turn us on with their positive emotions. For an actor, success is public recognition. She is the one who puts everything and everyone in their place. It’s worth a lot to surprise and captivate today’s spectators, spoiled by all kinds of spectacles.”

To the question: do you feel the hall, and does it have the opposite effect on you, the most scandalous Moscow director Roman Viktyuk answered: “Of course, and very strong. The gym is always very difficult. And it’s difficult in different ways. In different halls you touch different centers: when the hall needs to be raised, then you do it physically, when it is already flying with you, then you exist differently. It’s all complicated, and at the same time very interesting: it’s almost like arguing with the audience to love it.”

The Viktyuk Theater is a director's theater. That is why his name is included in the name of the theater; it attracts the public. If we use the viewer’s language, we can say that he goes “to Viktyuk,” regardless of which theater the performance is shown in.

According to Viktyuk, Moscow is the coldest city. The most reserved, the most snobbish-minded are the Moscow public. The Moscow viewer does not have any hunger for information, and the Moscow viewer does not have any kind of hunger - maybe it is precisely because of the absence of this hunger that they calmly sit down and calmly watch, and few people can be torn away from the back of the chair.

But what about the viewer who lives in the outback? Is he really the same as the Moscow viewer? This question was asked by journalists to Sergei Yursky.

“To Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, or dozens of other cities - for so many years now I have been presenting them with my concert programs, performances, we toured another 48 cities of Russia with the play “Iron Class”, about 30 cities with the play “Chairs” in for many years. We come on tour to one city and play one or two performances in it. This means that this is a special layer, an intelligent layer, a theatrical layer that goes around knowing what to do. Sometimes it happens that they come to “Chairs” to watch Aunt Shura and Uncle Mitya from the film “Love and Doves”. I am happy for such people because I love this film very much. But they get something different. Next time they will either not come at all, or they will come already knowing that they will be watching something else.

The fact that there are still enough spectators is my greatest joy, which makes me say that there is no despondency in me now. If the viewer leaves, yes, you will have to be sad.”

A different opinion about the viewer is expressed by playwright Oleg Bogaev and composer Oleg Paiderbin. For a long time they lived in Germany and collaborated with German drama theaters, they say that the German audience is more grateful than the Russian one. He will never speak loudly during a performance, drink beer and rustle bags of chips, and will not fall asleep during a performance, even if he is no longer interested. And here in Russia, according to them, a critic can come to the premiere and fall asleep in the front row, in front of the actors. Then he will wake up and talk about the performance. Let's just say what's most amazing! Our viewer has not yet had enough of video, home cinema, computer games, disco clubs, restaurants, but the German viewer has already had enough. And he returned to the theater.

Honored Artists of Dagestan, Leading Actors Academic Theater Drama of the city of Lipetsk Peter and Lyudmila Konovalov said on Theater Day: “We wish all theater groups more spectators in the hall. After all, you can rehearse a lot, stew in your own juices, but if there is no audience... And if there is one... Then the mood for creativity appears completely different. I would also like to wish that artists create and look for new forms of work, because now the theater does not stand still. Forms - mass. Just make sure it was done professionally and not fake. To make it interesting for the viewer to watch. It always seemed to us that if we play well, the audience will come to us. Nowadays the viewer may not go to even the most ingenious production; he still needs to be brought. Without this it is impossible. In a word - we all need a viewer!!!

CONCLUSION

Any actor or director will say that the audience is worth worshiping. Sing praises. Not even the smartest theater critic can give an actor the kind of happiness that an ordinary viewer gives, not an advanced, finely organized connoisseur, but our most “dark,” novice, “primitive” fan, from whom a wave of unearthly gratitude suddenly begins to emanate. Thank you for this wave, a wonderful creation of earthly civilization! Thank you, viewer! If you only knew how much we all adore you and how sometimes, sometimes, very rarely, in isolated, uncharacteristic cases... we don’t love you either!

Bibliography:

1. Soviet encyclopedic Dictionary. M, 1987.

2. “Natalia Gundareva: her own island” and “Natalia Triblekh: a recipe for success.” "Trud", No. 34, 2000.

4. K. Bogomolov “Interview with Bogaev and Paiberdin.” "Ural", No. 7, Ekaterinburg, 2000.

5. P. Kapsheeva “The World of Adventures of Mark Rozovsky.” March 22, 2001 http://www.natura.peoples.ru.

6. “Roman Viktyuk Theater” April 2000. http: www.theatre.ru

7. B. Nicolescu “Peter Brook and Traditional Thought” M. 1994.

9. S. Kryukov “Myths of the Moscow winter” story

10. A. Shary “Face to face” Sergey Yursky. Recording of a conversation on Radio Liberty dated March 10, 2000.

11. A. Deinega “Russian Drama Theater named after. Gorky. City of Lipetsk.

chapter “The theater must be promoted” L. 1999.

12. I. Vinogradova “Which road leads to the Moscow Art Theater?” Recording of a conversation with Oleg Tabakov. http: www.theatral.smotritel.ru, August 2000.

13. K. Bogomolov “Interview with Bogaev and Paiberdin.” "Ural", No. 7, Ekaterinburg, 2000.

14. S. Melnikova “I am for search and disorder” Conversation with Yulia Rutberg. "Petersburg Theater Magazine", No. 20 March 2000.

15. M. Zakharov “Contacts on different levels" M. 2000.

16. G. Tovstonogov “Mirror of the Stage” - 1 volume. M. 1974.

17. A. Mitta “Cinema between Hell and Heaven”, chapter “Involvement Strategy”. "Horseshoe" 2000.

18. M. Chekhov “The Path of an Actor. Life and meetings”, chapter “Atmosphere”. M. 2001.

19. Magazine “Schoolchildren’s Calendar” 1991, Politizdat.

20. Christy. G.V. Education of an actor from the Stanislavsky school. M., “Iskusstvo”, 1968.

21. N.K. Cherkasov “Notes of a Soviet Actor”, chapter “Actor and Spectator”. M. 1953.

22. K. Smolina “One Hundred Great Theaters of the World.” M. 2001.

23. N.V. Kiseleva, V.A. Frolov “Fundamentals of the Stanislavsky system”, textbook. Rostov-on-Don, 2000.

24. V. Sakhnovsky - Pankeev “Rivalry - commonwealth. Theater and cinema. Experience of comparative analysis”, chapter “Theater and Cinema”. L. 1979.

25. “Moscow Art Theater in the Soviet era.” Materials and documents. M. 1974.

Theater and spectator

The topic is eternal and very important. Eternal because each era gives rise to its own problems. It is important because it is necessary to teach the viewer to perceive art, and so far very little has been done in this area.

I think, our dear viewers, some of you would look with bewilderment at the person who, in response to your message that you and your wife are going to the theater in the evening, would say: “Yeah, that means you’re going to work!” Meanwhile, from the moment the lights in the auditorium begin to go out until the end of the performance, you, willingly or unwillingly, are involved in the work, because you empathize with us, helping us, sometimes getting in the way, sometimes resisting, and then again giving in with your whole being or some part of yourself - in a word, the magic of the theater comes into play. Do not be embarrassed that I am combining contrasting words - “work” and “magic”. In this case they are compatible.

Of course, all of this happens on the evening when we, the theater, are at our best: when the play is strong, the performance is powerful and we have something to tell the audience. We always want to be like this, and it’s not our fault, but the trouble if we don’t always succeed! But be that as it may, we do not exist without you: we cannot perform a play in our room. If every night on the other side of the ramp thousands of people do not empathize with us. superfluous person(this is the best figure for a drama theater), our art simply did not take place.

That is why such indisputable provisions as that the artist creates for the people, that the people are the highest judge of art, were perceived by our guild not as abstract formulas, but in the most concrete, vital way.

Your role in the final formation of the performance is enormous - after all, with your arrival in the auditorium, a new, most important stage in the life of the performance begins - its maturation, so to speak, on the viewer; it is adjusted taking into account those visible and invisible signals and currents that come from you to the stage. After all, it’s not just laughter and applause that is the audience’s reaction. And the silence? Yes, one can count several variants of silence, because there is silence of spectator interest. Alas, there is silence from boredom. And, finally, that magical silence of the highest order that arises in the auditorium in response to a miracle happening on stage. At the moment of acting transformation, shock, for the sake of a few minutes of which a three-hour performance is sometimes performed. And this is also the magic of theater!

You, the audience, must be respected - in the name of this indisputable truth, for example, the tradition of taking bows has developed, when at the end of the performance we bow to you, thanking you for your coming and saying goodbye to you.

But, of course, no bows will help if, for example, you have a negative impression of a weak play, sloppy acting, sloppy makeup, poorly pronounced text, dirty scenery and other troubles that are unacceptable in the theater, but still no, no, yes happen. We are fighting this with all possible rigor, listening to your complaints, oral, written, at audience conferences, etc. The issue of audience respect for the theater is less discussed, and I need to say a few words about this right now, when I am telling you about how much you mean to us. So, first of all: are we friends with each of you, the audience? Who are you today, the thousand people sitting in front of us? How many of you are those who love and understand theater, and how many are casual spectators? These are not idle questions. If we are legitimately proud of the growth of the cultural level of our Soviet audience, if we are true to this formula - “The people are the highest judge of art,” does this mean that every viewer is an indisputable authority in the field of art, ours in particular? After all, both the art itself and the perception of it can be talented and less talented, mediocre! Moreover, it is known that the most categorical judgments, and not only in art, but in all areas of life, often come from the least knowledgeable people! Who, for example, is the spectator whom I remembered for a long time, bowing once after the play “Dear Liar” in our theater? I remembered him because he stood out for his dull stillness in a group of animatedly applauding people. He did not humiliate his palms with clapping, and his whole pompous and condescending appearance seemed to indicate that he made us happy with his visit. I don't want to see him in the auditorium anymore! And not because he didn’t clap - he simply might not have liked the performance - but because he condescended to the theater! It’s fortunate that there are few of those who, wittingly or unwittingly, interfere with us.

Our repertoire included the play “The Goblin” - this is the first version of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” which you all obviously know. I played Georges Voinitsky in it - the prototype of the future Uncle Vanya. The role, I would say, is of high tension, especially in “The Leshy”, where Georges Voinitsky commits suicide. And I needed an empathetic viewer! More than ever! And before each performance, I always peered into the auditorium, trying to determine from the faces and behavior of the audience who I could first trust today with my most intimate feelings and thoughts from the stage? And who will I be forced to fight with today, to fight for Chekhov?! Maybe these two are mine? No, no, I can already see that they are random. But these two were probably going to the Satire Theater; they wanted to laugh, but for some reason they came to us - luckily we were nearby. And objectively, these may be lovely, cheerful people, but today, here, are my enemies - they will interfere with me if I fail to “remake” them somehow into Chekhov! Here are mine! I'm sure they bought tickets specifically for Leshy, they came to see Chekhov! In appearance, these are not at all some special, “Chekhovian” people. He is in the military, she is maybe an engineer or a party worker, I don’t know, but they are mine, I feel it! And these are mine, and these are... I don’t know how many times I hit the mark in these fortune-telling, how many times I was wrong, but I just needed to imagine such an audience. After all, the subtlest poetry of Chekhov’s drama requires the viewer’s preliminary attunement to a special “wave” - without interference.

The spectators who came specifically to see Chekhov are not heard during the performance, or are heard in a special way - it is from them that concentrated silence that I spoke about comes. You can hear other, casual spectators thirsting for something funny. They are the ones who laugh boisterously when a shot is heard behind the scenes at the moment of my suicide, they think that an electric lamp burst in the wrong place, and they fall silent when my niece says: “Uncle Georges shot himself!” It is they who are in complete friendship with me throughout the 1st act, where I joke and say funny phrases several times, and it is they who I disturb in the 2nd act - as I have always clearly felt this - because there I sit at night at candles in heavy thought, demanding empathy from the viewer. Thus, the question of educating the viewer is one of the most important.

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