Play
Alexander Volodin, 1958
About what: Once in Leningrad on the occasion of a business trip, Ilyin suddenly decides to go into the apartment where, seventeen years ago, leaving for the front, he left his beloved girl, and - lo and behold! - His Tamara still lives in a room above the pharmacy. The woman never married: her student nephew, to whom she replaces the mother, and his eccentric girlfriend - that's her whole family. Wandering through the fear of misunderstanding, insincerity, quarrels and reconciliation, two adults eventually realize that happiness is still possible - "if only there was no war!"
Why you should read: The meeting of Ilyin and Tamara, stretched over five evenings, is not only a story about the late, restless love of the master of the Red Triangle factory and the foreman Zavgar- Garage manager the northern village of Ust-Omul, but the opportunity to bring real, not mythical Soviet people to the stage: smart and conscientious, with broken destinies.
Perhaps the most piercing of Volodin's dramas, this play is filled with sad humor and lofty lyrics. Her characters always keep something back: under the speech clichés - “my work is interesting, responsible, you feel needed by people” - one can feel a whole layer of hard questions driven deep inside, related to the eternal fear in which a person is forced to live, like a prisoner in a huge camp called "homeland".
Next to the adult heroes, young lovers live and breathe: at first, Katya and Slava look “unafraid”, but they instinctively feel the fear that eats the souls of Tamara and Ilyin. Thus, uncertainty about the very possibility of happiness in the country of "victorious socialism" is gradually transmitted to the next generation.
staging
Bolshoi Drama Theater
Directed by Georgy Tovstonogov, 1959
Zinaida Sharko as Tamara and Yefim Kopelyan as Ilyin in the play Five Evenings. 1959 Bolshoi Drama Theater named after G. A. Tovstonogov One can imagine a little the shock that this performance was for the audience, thanks to the radio recording of 1959. The audience here reacts very violently - laughs, worries, calms down. Reviewers wrote about Tovsto-Nogov's production: “Today's time - the end of the 50s - revealed itself with amazing accuracy. Almost all the characters seemed to come onto the stage from the streets of Leningrad. They were dressed exactly as the spectators who looked at them dressed. The characters, riding out from the back of the stage on the partitioned platforms of the sparsely furnished rooms, played right under the noses of the first row. This required precise intonation, absolute pitch. A special chamber atmosphere was also created by the voice of Tovstonogov himself, who delivered remarks (it is a pity that in the radio performance the text from the author is not read by him).
The internal conflict of the performance was the contradiction between the imposed Soviet stereotypes and natural human nature. Tamara, performed by Zinaida Sharko, seemed to be peeking out from behind the mask of a Soviet social activist before throwing it off and becoming herself. From the radio recording, it is clear with what inner strength and amazing wealth of nuances Charcot played her Tamara - touching, tender, unprotected, sacrificial. Ilyin (played by Efim Kopelyan), who spent 17 years somewhere in the North, was internally much freer from the very beginning, but he did not immediately manage to tell his beloved woman the truth, he pretended to be the chief engineer. In the radio performance in Kopelyan’s performance today, one hears a lot of theatricality, almost pathos, but he also has a lot of pauses, silence - then you understand that the most important thing happens to his hero precisely at these moments.
"In Search of Joy"
Play
Viktor Rozov, 1957
About what: The Moscow apartment of Klavdia Vasilievna Savina is crowded and crowded: four of her grown children live here and there is furniture that Lenochka, the wife of Fedya's eldest son, once a talented young scientist, now a successful careerist "from science," constantly acquires. ". Covered with rags and newspapers in anticipation of a quick move to a new apartment for the newlyweds, wardrobes, pot-bellied sideboards, couches and chairs become a bone of contention in the family: the mother calls her eldest son a “little tradesman”, and his younger brother, high school student Oleg, cuts Lenochkin’s furniture with a saber the deceased father - a war hero. Attempts to explain only worsen the situation, and as a result, Fedor and his wife leave their home, the remaining children assure Claudia Vasilievna that they have chosen a different path in life: “Do not be afraid for us, mother!”
Why you should read: This two-act comedy was at first perceived as a "trifle" by Viktor Rozov: by that time the playwright was already known as the scriptwriter of Mikhail Kalatozov's legendary film The Cranes Are Flying.
Indeed, touching, romantic, irreconcilable to dishonesty, acquisitiveness, the younger children of Claudia Vasilievna Kolya, Tatyana and Oleg, as well as their friends and loved ones, constituted a strong group of “correct Soviet youth”, numerically superior to the circle represented in the play of “acquirers, careerists and townspeople." The schematic nature of the confrontation between the world of consumption and the world of ideals was not particularly disguised by the author.
The protagonist, 15-year-old dreamer and poet Oleg Savin, turned out to be outstanding: his energy, inner freedom and self-respect were connected with the hopes of a thaw, with dreams of a new generation of people, sweeping aside all types of social slavery (this generation of uncompromising romantics began to be called - "pink boys").
staging
Central Children's Theater
Directed by Anatoly Efros, 1957
Margarita Kupriyanova as Lenochka and Gennady Pechnikov as Fyodor in the play In Search of Joy. 1957 RAMT The most famous scene of this play is the one in which Oleg Savin cuts furniture with his father's sword. So it was in the performance of the theater-studio "Sovremennik", released in 1957, and from the film by Anatoly Efros and Georgy Natanson "A Noisy Day" (1961), this is what first of all remained in the memory - maybe because in both productions Oleg played young and impulsive Oleg Tabakov. However, the first performance based on this play was released not at Sovremennik, but at the Central Children's Theater, and in it the famous episode with a saber and dead fish, a jar with which Lenochka threw out the window, was, although important, but still one of many.
The main thing in the performance of Anatoly Efros at the Central Children's Theater was the feeling of polyphony, continuity, fluidity of life. The director insisted on the significance of each voice of this populous story - and immediately led the viewer into a house crammed with furniture, built by the artist Mikhail Kurilko, where the exact details pointed to the life of a large friendly family. Not a denunciation of philistinism, but the opposition of the living and the dead, poetry and prose (as critics Vladimir Sappak and Vera Shitova pointed out) - this was the essence of Efros's view. Alive was not only Oleg performed by Konstantin Ustyugov - a gentle boy with a high, excited voice - but also the mother of Valentina Sperantova, who decided to have a serious conversation with her son and softened the forced harshness with her intonation. This Fyodor of Gennady Pechnikov is very real, despite everything, he loves his pragmatic wife Lenochka very much, and another lover - Gennady Alexei Shmakov, and classmates who came to visit Oleg. All this is perfectly audible in the radio recording of the performance, made in 1957. Listen to how Oleg pronounces the key phrase of the play: "The main thing is that there is a lot in the head and in the soul." No didactics, quiet and enduring, rather for yourself.
"My poor Marat"
Play
Alexey Arbuzov, 1967
About what: Once upon a time there was Lika, she loved Marat, she was loved by him, and Leonidik also loved her; both guys went to war, both returned: Marat - a Hero of the Soviet Union, and Leonidik without a hand, and Lika gave her hand and heart to "poor Leonidik." The second title of the work is “Do not be afraid to be happy”, in 1967 it was named the play of the year by London critics. This melodrama is a story of meetings and separations of three heroes growing up from episode to episode, who were once united by war and blockade in cold and hungry Leningrad, stretched over almost two decades.
Why you should read: Three lives, three fates of war-stung Soviet idealists who are trying to build a life according to the propaganda legend. Of all the "Soviet fairy tales" by Alexei Arbuzov, where the heroes were necessarily rewarded with love for labor exploits, "My poor Marat" is the saddest fairy tale.
The Soviet myth "live for others" is justified for the characters - still teenagers - by the losses and exploits of the war, and Leonidik's remark: "Never betray our winter of forty-second ... right?" - becomes their life credo. However, “days pass”, and life “for others” and a professional career (Marat “builds bridges”) do not bring happiness. Lika manages medicine as an "unliberated head of the department", and Leonidik ennobles morals with collections of poems, published in a circulation of five thousand copies. Sacrifice turns into metaphysical longing. At the end of the play, 35-year-old Marat proclaims a change of milestones: “Hundreds of thousands died so that we would be unusual, obsessed, happy. And we - me, you, Leonidik? .. "
Strangled love here is equal to strangled individuality, and personal values are affirmed throughout the course of the play, which makes it a unique phenomenon in Soviet drama.
staging
Directed by Anatoly Efros, 1965
Olga Yakovleva as Lika and Lev Krugly as Leonidik in My Poor Marat. 1965 Alexander Gladshtein / RIA Novosti The reviewers called this performance a "stage study", a "theatrical laboratory", where the feelings of the characters of the play were studied. “On the stage, it is laboratory clean, precise and concentrated,” wrote critic Irina Uvarova. Artists Nikolai Sosunov and Valentina Lalevich created a backdrop for the performance: three characters looked at the audience seriously and a little sadly from it, looked as if they already knew how everything would end. In 1971, Efros filmed a television version of this production, with the same actors: Olga Yakov-leva - Lika, Alexander Zbruev - Marat and Lev Krugly - Leonidik. The theme of a scrupulous study of characters and feelings was further strengthened here: television made it possible to see the eyes of the actors, gave the effect of a spectator's presence in the close communication of these three.
One could say that Marat, Lika and Leonidik at Efros were obsessed with the idea of getting to the bottom of the truth. Not in a global sense - they wanted to hear and understand each other as accurately as possible. This was especially noticeable in Lika-Yakovleva. The actress seemed to have two game plans: the first - where her heroine looked soft, light, childish, and the second - appeared, as soon as Lika's interlocutor turned away: at that moment, a serious, attentive, studying look of a mature woman glared at him. “All real life is a Meeting,” wrote the philosopher Martin Buber in I and You. According to him, the main word in life - "You" - can be said to a person only with his whole being, any other attitude turns him into an object, from "You" into "It". Throughout the performance of Efros, these three spoke to the other "You" with all their being, most of all appreciating each other's unique personality. This was the high tension of their relationship, which even today is impossible not to be carried away and to which one cannot but sympathize.
"Duck Hunt"
Play
Alexander Vampilov, 1967
About what: Waking up in a typical Soviet apartment on a heavy hangover morning, the hero receives a mourning wreath as a gift from friends and colleagues. Trying to unravel the meaning of the prank, Viktor Zilov recalls the pictures of the last month: a housewarming party, his wife's departure, a scandal at work, and, finally, yesterday's booze at the Forget-me-not cafe, where he insulted his young mistress, his boss, colleagues and got into a fight with his best friend, the waiter Dima. Deciding to really settle scores with a disgusted life, the hero calls his acquaintances, inviting them to his own wake, but soon changes his mind and goes with Dima to the village - on a duck hunt, which he has been dreaming about all this time.
Why you should read: Victor Zilov, combining the features of a notorious scoundrel and an infinitely attractive man, may seem to someone to be the Soviet reincarnation of Lermontov's Pechorin: "a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development." Appeared at the beginning of the era of stagnation, a smart, thoroughbred and eternally drunk ITEA member engineers- engineering and technical worker. with energy worthy of a better application, he consistently rid himself of family, work, love and friendship ties. Zilov's final refusal to self-destruct had a symbolic meaning for the Soviet drama: this hero gave rise to a whole galaxy of imitators - superfluous people: drunkards who were both ashamed and disgusted to join Soviet society - drunkenness in the drama was perceived as a form of social protest.
The creator of Zilov Alexander Vampilov drowned in Baikal in August 1972 - in the prime of his creative powers, leaving the world one not too weighty volume of dramaturgy and prose; Duck Hunt, which has become a world classic today, with difficulty overcoming the censorship ban, broke onto the Soviet stage soon after the death of the author. However, half a century later, when there was nothing Soviet left, the play unexpectedly turned into an existential drama of a man, before whom the emptiness of an arranged, mature life opened up, and in a dream of going hunting, to where - “Do you know what kind of silence it is? You're not there, do you understand? No! You have not yet been born, ”a cry was heard about a forever lost paradise.
staging
Gorky Moscow Art Theater
Directed by Oleg Efremov, 1978
A scene from the play "Duck Hunt" at the Gorky Moscow Art Theater. 1979 Vasily Egorov / TASS The best play by Alexander Vampilov is still considered unsolved. Vitaly Melnikov's film "Vacation in September" with Oleg Dal in the role of Zilov came closest to her interpretation. The performance, staged at the Moscow Art Theater by Oleg Efremov, has not been preserved - even in fragments. At the same time, he accurately expressed the time - the most hopeless phase of stagnation.
The artist David Borovsky came up with the following image for the performance: over the stage, like a cloud, a huge plastic bag hovered, in which there were felled pine trees. “The motif of the preserved taiga,” Borovsky told critic Rimma Krechetova. And further: “The floor was covered with tarpaulin: in those places they walk in tarpaulin and in rubber. He scattered pine needles over the tarpaulin. You know, like from the New Year tree on the parquet. Or after funeral wreaths…”
Zilov was played by Efremov. He was already fifty - and the longing of his hero was not a midlife crisis, but a summing up. Anatoly Efros admired his game. “Efremov fearlessly plays Zilov to the limit,” he wrote in the book “Continuation of the theatrical story”. - He turns it inside out in front of us with all the giblets. Ruthlessly. Playing in the traditions of the great theatrical school, he does not just denounce his hero. He plays a person who is generally not bad, still able to understand that he is lost, but already unable to get out.
That's who was deprived of reflection, so it's the waiter Dima performed by Alexei Petrenko, the other most important hero of the play. A huge man, absolutely calm - with the calmness of a killer, he hung over the rest of the characters like a cloud. Of course, he has not yet killed anyone - except for animals on the hunt, which he shot without a miss, but he could well knock out a person (after looking around to see if anyone sees). Dima, more than Zilov, was the discovery of this performance: a little time will pass, and such people will become the new masters of life.
"Three Girls in Blue"
Play
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, 1981
About what: Under one leaky roof, three mothers - Ira, Svetlana and Tatyana - while away the rainy summer with their always fighting boys. The disorder of country life forces women to swear day and night on the basis of everyday life. A wealthy boyfriend who has appeared takes Ira to another world, to the sea and the sun, she leaves her sick son in the arms of her weak mother. However, heaven turns into hell, and now the woman is ready to crawl on her knees in front of the airport duty officer in order to return to the child left alone.
Why you should read: The play still amazes contemporaries of Three Girls by how accurately it captures the era of “late stagnation”: the circle of domestic concerns of a Soviet person, his character and type of relationship between people. However, in addition to external photographic accuracy, the inner essence of the so-called scoop is also subtly touched here.
Leading a dialogue with Chekhov's "Three Sisters", Petrushevskaya's play initially presents her "girls" as three variations on the theme of Chekhov's Natasha. Like the petty-bourgeois Natasha at Chekhov’s, Ira, Svetlana and Tatyana at Petrushevskaya’s are constantly caring for their children and waging war for the dry rooms of a dilapidated dacha near Moscow. However, children, for the sake of which mothers quarrel, in fact, are not needed by anyone. The play is permeated by the weak voice of the sick son of Ira Pavlik; The boy’s world is full of fabulous images, in a bizarre way reflecting the realities of his frightening life: “And when I was sleeping, the moon flew to me on wings” - no one hears and understands the child in this play. The “moment of truth” is also connected with her son - when, realizing that she could lose him, Ira turns from a “typical Soviet person” into a person capable of “thinking and suffering”, from Chekhov’s Natasha into Chekhov’s Irina, ready to sacrifice something For others.
staging
Theater named after Lenin Komsomol
Directed by Mark Zakharov, 1985
Tatyana Peltzer and Inna Churikova in the play "Three Girls in Blue". 1986 Mikhail Strokov / TASS This play was written by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya by order of the chief director of the Lenin Komsomol Theater Mark Zakharov: he needed roles for Tatiana Peltzer and Inna Churikova. Censorship did not miss the performance for four years - the premiere took place only in 1985; On June 5 and 6, 1988, the performance was filmed for television. This record still makes a very strong impression today. Stage designer Oleg Sheintsis blocked the stage with a translucent wall, behind which silhouettes of branches are visible; in the foreground is a table, on it is a bouquet of dried flowers, and in a tin basin, hoisted on a stool, there is an endless washing; squabbles were arranged around, flirted, confessed. Each was ready to get into the life of another, and not just get in, but thoroughly trample there. But this is only a superficial participation: in fact, everyone did not care deeply about each other. The old woman Fedorovna (Peltzer) mumbled her own, indifferent to the fact that a sick child lies behind the wall. Instantly inflamed in a fit of hatred for the intellectual Irina and her son Svetlana (actress Lyudmila Porgina): “He reads! Read up!” And Irina herself - Inna Churikova looked at everything with huge eyes and was silent as long as she had the strength.
A recognized master of stage effects, Zakharov built several reference points in the performance, adjusted like a ballet. One of them is when Nikolai's summer boyfriend kisses Irina, and out of surprise, she does an almost clown somersault. Churikova at that moment almost falls off her chair, leans on Nikolai's shoulder, immediately bounces off him sharply and, throwing her knees high, makes her way to the door to see if her son saw the kiss.
Another scene is the tragic culmination of the play: Irina crawls on her knees behind the airport employees, begging to be put on the plane (the child was left alone at home in a locked apartment), and hoarsely, hoarsely, does not even scream, but growls: “I may not be in time!” In the book Stories from My Own Life, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya recalls how once at a performance at that moment a young spectator jumped up from her chair and began to tear her hair out. It's really scary to watch.
Consider the main trends in the development of domestic drama in the 1950s-1990s.
1950s-1960s
In the 1950s and 1960s, the genre range of dramaturgy significantly diversified. Comedy, socio-psychological and historical documentary dramas are developing. To a greater extent than in prose and poetry, there is an increased interest in the young contemporary, in real life in its sharpest contradictions.
The socio-psychological plays by V. Rozov, such as "Good afternoon!", were especially popular. (1954) and In Search of Joy (1956). "Good afternoon!" and is currently being staged on the stage.
Increasingly, dramaturgy paid attention to the everyday problems of ordinary people. Exploring the psychology of human relationships, playwrights place characters in recognizable life circumstances. The dramas of A. Volodin, E. Radzinsky are dedicated to love.
Turning to the theme of war, the playwrights of the 1950s and 1960s moved away from publicism, they viewed such problems as duty and conscience, heroism and betrayal, honor and dishonor through the prism of moral values. One of the best plays in the repertoire of those years was the play by A. Salynsky "The Drummer Girl" (1958).
Dramaturgy of the "thaw" period
During the "thaw" theatrical art developed in close cooperation with poetry. On the stage of the Drama and Comedy Theater on Taganka, poetic performances were played, the dramatic basis of which were the poems of the classics V. Mayakovsky and S. Yesenin, the works of contemporaries - A. Voznesensky and E. Yevtushenko. The theater under the direction of Y. Lyubimov gravitated toward expressive forms of imagery, and thanks to the “Iron Curtain” that had opened at that time, the artistic culture of the country partly came into contact with Western European and American art. In particular, the direction of Y. Lyubimov was influenced by the work and theoretical concepts of B. Brecht.
The work of M. Shatrov, who showed the image of Lenin in an unusual perspective, is connected with the “thaw”. In the documentary-historical, political dramaturgy of Shatrov, the documentary fact, and not the myth about the leader, created by political ideologists, is subjected to analytical research. His most successful play of the "thaw" period is "The Sixth of July" (first edition - 1964, second - 1973). In it, the playwright explores the problem of the relationship between the goal, even if it is high, and the means to achieve it. M. Shatrov turned to the image of Lenin in subsequent decades. He himself defined the genre originality of his plays as "journalistic drama" and "journalistic tragedy". There is every reason for this: open publicism is inherent in such acutely conflicting plays by M. Shatrov of the 1970s and 1980s as "Blue Horses on Red Grass" (1977) and "So Let's Whiten!" (1981).
Dramaturgy in the late 1960s - 1980s
The end of the "thaw" demanded other heroes and an adequate assessment of reality and the moral state of society, far from the supposed ideal. In the late 1960s, there was a decline in the development of dramaturgy. Obviously, this was the reason for the active appeal of theaters in the 1970s to the works of domestic prose writers F. Abramov, V. Tendryakov, Y. Bondarev, V. Bykov, B. Vasilyev, D. Granin, V. Rasputin, Y. Trifonov, B Mozhaeva, V. Shukshina, Ch. Aitmatova.
In the same 1970s, the study of the most acute problems of the socio-economic. moral and psychological nature was engaged in a journalistic pointed production. or sociological drama by I. Dvoretsky, G. Bokarev, A. Grebnev, V. Chernykh and others. A. Gelman's "production" plays were especially popular.
Over time, the tone of the social and socio-psychological drama also changed. V. Rozov, A. Volodin, A. Arbuzov. A. Vampilov and other authors tried to understand the causes of the moral crisis of society, the changes that occur in the inner world of a person living according to the laws of the double morality of "stagnant time".
The turning point in the dramaturgy of V. Rozov was reflected in the play "Traditional Gathering" (1966), dedicated to the theme of summing up life results, which contrast with the romantic aspirations of the heroes of his dramas of the 1950s. In the plays of the 1970s and 1980s, Capercaillie's Nest (1978), Master (1982), Boar (1987) and others, Rozov turned to the theme of the gradual destruction of an initially promising personality. Human values became the subject of reflection in the plays of L. Volodin and E. Radzinsky. Both authors used parable forms for the purpose of philosophical comprehension of timeless situations, problems, characters.
A. Arbuzov's plays of the 1970-1980s are devoted to the problem of internal degradation of an outwardly successful personality. The pathos of the denial of "cruel games", in which both adults and children are involved, deprived of parental love in their time, is marked by his dramas dedicated to the theme of mutual responsibility of people for what happens to them. The playwright created the Dramatic Opus cycle, which includes three dramas - Evening Light (1974), Cruel Intentions (1978) and Memories (1980).
The mental and spiritual infantilism of a contemporary is the key theme of A. Vampilov's dramaturgy, which appeared on the stage in the 1970s. In the words of the critic L. Anninsky, the playwright created a type of "average moral" hero, whose character is so dependent on the proposed circumstances that it is impossible to understand what he really is. Such is the hero of Vampilov's play "Duck Hunt" (1970) Viktor Zilov. The name of A. Vampilov is associated with the strengthening of the role of symbolism and the grotesque in Russian dramaturgy.
Dramaturgy 1980 - 1990s
The discovery of the “heroless” hero A. Vampilov is perceived as a milestone in the development of Russian drama in the second half of the 20th century. The work of the authors of the “new wave” who came to dramaturgy at the turn of the 1980s and accepted the experience of Vampilov was defined as “post-Vampilov drama”.
This concept of drama combines the work of playwrights L. Petrushevskaya, V. Arro, V. Slavkin,
A. Galina, L. Razumovskaya and others, differing in style, but united by the pathos of addressing the negative that has accumulated in the everyday, private life of people who have lost the concept of home from the value field, the image of which has long been a key image in Russian literature. Thus, the "post-Vampilian theater" declared in full voice that the human personality is not reducible to a single socio-professional function. And a contemptuous attitude towards personal household and family problems is fraught with serious moral vices as a result.
During the years of perestroika, at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, the artistic journalism of the “sociological” drama gave way to journalism proper, and the actual dramatic works were replaced by dramatizations of memoirs. In the productions of works by V. Shalamov, E. Ginzburg, A. Solzhenitsyn, the theme of totalitarianism was studied in a psychological way. In the late 1980s, Kazantsev used the same material to write a dramatic anti-utopia “Great Buddha, help them!” (1988), which is set in "an exemplary Commune named after the great Ideas". The playwright examines the theme of the totalitarian regime in the plane of the problem of the individual and the state.
In Russian dramaturgy of the second half of the 20th century, the postmodernist feeling did not manifest itself as early as in other literary genres. Not least, this is due to the fact that the theater as a public phenomenon was primarily under the close attention of censorship.
The most obvious postmodern way of comprehension of reality manifested itself in Wen's unfinished play. Erofeev "Walpurgis Night, or Steps Commander!" (1985). The content of the play is based on a comparison of life with a madhouse: the reasonable in this life turns out to be abnormal, and the abnormal turns out to be reasonable. Thus, in the postmodern drama "Walpurgis Night ..." there is no pronounced conflict, the plot is fragmented, the system of characters is devoid of hierarchy, the gender-genre boundaries are blurred.
Postmodern dramas of the last decade of the 20th century by N. Sadur, D. Lipskerova and others are associated with the traditions of the theater of the absurd. The ideas of postmodern consciousness about the world and man are expressed in modern dramaturgy by such means as the absence of cause-and-effect relationships, the interdependence of characters and circumstances, plotlessness, spatial -temporal deformations, isolation and alienation of characters.
On the other hand, in the 1990s, an opposite trend emerged in the development of domestic drama. In the plays by M. Ugarov, E. Gremina, O. Mikhailov and others, nostalgically bright pathos for a distant, idyllicly beautiful past dominates. The playwrights create a poetically sublime way of life for the characters, whose speech is literary normalized and replete with quotations from Chekhov's comedies. This creates the effect of reflecting different eras in each other, which has at least a double meaning. Either the playwrights want to point out that the desired harmony is achievable only in artistic reality, or they remind us of the "sound of a broken string", which, according to Chekhov's Firs, portends "misfortune" from "will".
Used book materials: Literature: uch. for stud. avg. prof. textbook institutions / ed. G.A. Obernikhina. M.: "Academy", 2010
2. Russian drama of the 20th century, from Gorky to Vampilov. Development trends. Names and genres
30 years The First Congress of Soviet Writers played an important role in understanding the tasks and direction of dramaturgy. By the beginning of the 30s. most of the literary groups were dispersed or disbanded. The Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the restructuring of literary organizations” (1932) stated this fact, arguing that the existing literary organizations are hindering a serious scale of thin. creativity. The Organizing Committee for the preparation of the All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers headed by Gorky was created, and in 1934 this congress took place. The Congress adopted the Charter of the Union, which proclaimed that socialist realism, the main method of literature, allows the artist to show creative initiative, gives him the opportunity to choose various forms, styles and genres. The charter required the writers to stage art. works of tasks of ideological alteration and education of working people in the spirit of socialism. Since that time, an intensive introduction of the principles of socialist realism into the minds of both writers and readers began, and a broad campaign was launched to praise the new creative method as the pinnacle in the worst development of mankind. But most of these principles are actually bad. creativity had nothing to do with it. These were installations of an organizational and ideological order. In the newspapers one could read about the opening of new magazines: Znamya (1931), International Literature (1933). The main feature of Lit. movement 30 years. - the predominance of the epic beginning in all types of creativity, which affected primarily the craving for large canvases. Gorky, A. Tolstoy, Sholokhov. The ideological problems of plays in the first half of the 1930s. Modernity comes to the fore. A prominent place is occupied by the theme of socialist construction, the creative labor of the masses, a theme that was only in its infancy in the 1920s. Plays by N. Pogodin: "Tempo" (1929), "Poem about an ax" (1930), "My friend" (1933). V. Kataev “Time, forward!”, “N. Nikitin line of fire. "Sot" by Leonid Leonov. Playwrights showed in the Soviet people a new, socialist attitude to work, their vital interest in the success and growth of social. industry, a sense of master's responsibility for business, etc. Along with plays about the working class, there were also plays about the birth of the collective farm village, about the party's struggle for the collectivization of agriculture: "Bread" by V. Kirshon, "After the Ball" by N. Pogodin, a staging of "Virgin Soil Upturned" by M. Sholokhov. Dramaturgy did not forget to refer to the recent past - the era of the Civil War. These are such plays as "The First Horse" and "optimistic tragedy" by Vsevolod Vishnevsky. A number of the play was devoted to the theme of the intelligentsia, the struggle on the ideological front. For example, "Fear" by A. Afinogenov. Disputes about the principles of the image of the new hero. For the mass nature of literature, against psychologism - part of the writers. The other part is for individualization, for in-depth psychological disclosure of characters. Another dispute was about whether it is possible to convey the new content of reality in its entirety and reflect the social. transformation of the country, creatively using the old techniques, or an immediate and decisive breaking of all the old forms, and the destruction of the structure of the traditional drama. Many felt the discrepancy between the new content and the old forms (Vishnevsky, Pogodin). They denied the supposedly exhausted traditions of Chekhov, Ostrovsky, Ibsen, and others. They spoke out against psychologism and for portraying the masses. People like Afinogenov and Kirshon still wanted to creatively assimilate the old ones on the way to new forms.
Dramaturgy Alexandra Vampilov and Alexander Valentinovich Vampilov (1937-1972). Born in the Irkutsk region in a teacher's family, graduated from the philological faculty of the Irkutsk University. He began to publish as a student in the youth newspaper. In 1961, he published a book of short stories "The Coincidence of Circumstances". Then he began to write plays. The plays "Duck Hunt" and "Last Summer in Chulimsk" were published in the anthology "Angara". Novy Mir did not accept them, despite Tvardovsky's personal disposition towards him. V. Rozov: "Almost every play by Vampilov begins as a vaudeville or farce, and then reaches the ultimate dramatic tension." Vampilov became the author of only six plays, about 60 short stories, essays and feuilletons, which can easily be combined in one volume (11 years of literary activity). His plays are always about the time in which he lives (late 60s), and about the people who experience this time with him. At the time of their creation, the plays staged at the Bolshoi Drama Theater in Leningrad were perceived as topical. However, contemporary criticism of Vampilov noted that for him the social content of life, its external, active side, turns out to be unimportant. He was reproached for his addiction to the image of inactive, but constantly thinking hard characters. Indeed, the plot side of Vampilov's dramaturgy is weakened, but this is not its drawback, but its undoubted advantage: by placing the process of human thinking at the center of the narrative, he acted as an innovative playwright. The conflict of his plays is also specific. It should not be sought in the confrontation of heroes or groups of characters, because it is contained in the soul of one of them - the hero, placed in the center. However, the distinction between characters on the main and secondary in the plays is not so clear. Who, for example, is the main character of an early Vampilian play "Farewell in June" (1965) ? - Bukin, guilty of a break with Masha and experiencing its consequences, or Kolesov, who sacrificed his feelings for Tanya in order to receive a diploma and enter graduate school? The heroes of Vampilov are always people with a complex character, looking for and not finding themselves in the world, and sometimes noting in themselves the loss of something very important. The playwright's focus on purely "human" issues was noted by V. Rasputin: "It seems that the main question that Vampilov constantly asks is: will you, a man, remain a man?" The heroes of Vampilov are often people around the age of thirty who have come to the stage of preliminary debriefing. They are naturally outstanding, but something often prevents them from realizing this originality. Such are the heroes of the already mentioned play "Farewell in June". Many of them have a common quality - they are not satisfied with the measured course of life, they crave an event or a word that can give dynamics to their everyday existence. Tanya, the daughter of the rector Repnikov, rebels against the external well-being of her parents' house. Bukin at his own wedding speaks of himself in the third person - plays. The unexpected in a superficially realistic drama. His characters do not live, but play with life, challenging reality, trying to create their own analogue of reality. They are somewhat cynical, but still hope that there is still a place on earth where they can be themselves. Change of space? A typical impulse for the youth of the 60s was to leave for Siberia, for the youth "construction of the century". Gomyra is looking for solitude in Siberia, the road to himself. Gomyra's desire is dictated not by the desire to find an external goal, but by the impossibility of opposing something of one's own to it. And that feeling of fatigue that Vampilov fixes in his hero becomes a constant characteristic of Vampilov's characters, a characteristic that passes from play to play: Zilov from Duck Hunt speaks of fatigue. In the play "Farewell in June" Vampilov gave a fairly simple justification for the "fatigue syndrome". She was perceived by him as the result of a clash between "older" and "younger", the impossibility of achieving understanding between "fathers" and "children". "Elders" are concerned about maintaining comfort and maintaining external goodness. Repnikov, Tanya's father. It is revealed in private communication - within the family, in a home conversation about exclusion from the Kolesov Institute. He is kindly cold with his wife, whose inner world is uninteresting for him, irritable, does not accept reproaches, does not take into account Tanya's sympathy for Kolesov and, without listening to him, insists on ending contacts between them. It is said about Repnikov that he is "an administrator and a bit of a scientist - for authority"; he is the bearer of administrative consciousness, which demands that everything in life be made clear and regulated. Without a doubt, he changes Kolesov's diploma for Tanya's love. Another representative of the older generation is Zolotuev. His fate is different than the fate of Repnikov. But it is also a wasted life. Existence for oneself, hoarding, which has become the norm.
He set himself the goal of proving to himself and to the world the absence of honest people: “Where is an honest person?.. An honest person is one who is given little. thousand, Zolotuev’s hopes were not justified, his life lost its meaning, “broken”, and therefore, at the last appearance in the play, “he has a torn look.” In this play, there is hope for the possibility of the existence of honest whole personalities, although there is also the complexity of human characters, and symptoms of fatigue were noted - the "disease" of the generation, which A. Vampilov himself called "lost". Vampilov just recorded in the plays that irreversible loss of the integrity of nature, optimism, faith in people. "Duck Hunt" (1970) - the most famous play by A. Vampilov - an idyllic finale becomes impossible. Her hero Zilov is a typical Vampilian character, personifying the "lost" generation. Faith was trampled. A person was faced with the need to seek support in himself, without having the necessary spiritual filling for this. Zilov's social maturation took place in the 60s. He, who survived the era of hopes and disappointments, is about thirty years old. He is a man with a broken soul, devoid of inner integrity. This is indicated by the first author's note dedicated to him: "he is rather tall, of strong build; in his gait, in a tough manner of speaking, there is a lot of freedom that comes from confidence in his physical usefulness. At the same time, in gait, and in gestures, and in conversation he has a kind of carelessness and boredom, the origin of which cannot be determined at a glance. Zilov bears the features of marginality, which is also typical for the playwright's heroes: Zilov is a native of a remote Siberian town. The impression of the hero's duality is exacerbated by the music, which unmotivatedly changes its character throughout the play: "Cheerful music suddenly turns into mourning." The space of the play is the space of the city, localized and closed within the framework of an apartment and a cafe. This closed space rhymes with the hero himself, this is the moment of characterization of the hero, who is also closed in himself. The state of the world in the play is likened to the state of a character. So, at the beginning of the play, "the last floor and the roof of a typical house opposite are visible through the window. There is a narrow strip of gray sky above the roof. It's a rainy day." In the finale, enlightenment sets in in the hero’s soul and in nature, but there is still no way out into the world beyond the limits of the “I”: “By this time, the rain has passed outside the window, a strip of sky is turning blue, and the roof of the neighboring house is lit by a dim afternoon sun.” Zilov in the play rebels against the monotony of life, the sign of which here is the city. The world in "Duck Hunt" subjugates Zilov. He does not accept lies in others, but he himself often lies. His attitude to work is evidenced by the fact that he is ready to make a report on the work of a non-existent enterprise. A typical situation in Vampil's plays: play replaces life. The Relationship between Fiction and Reality in "Duck Hunt". First, friends play Zilov's death, then the game almost ends with his suicide. The prank is initially cruel. The inscription on the wreath should be perceived ironically. Zilov also questions family feelings. Having received a letter from his father asking him to come, he says: "Let's see what the old fool writes<...>He will send such letters to all ends and lies, the dog, waiting. "Father's premonition of death turns out to be a reality. The fact that Zilov does not believe the word of anyone, even the closest person, is not only his fault. Time has shown a discrepancy between word and deed. And literature The image of Kushak, like Zilov, bears signs of duality: "In his institution, at work, he is a rather impressive face: strict, decisive and businesslike. Outside the institution, he is very insecure, indecisive and fussy." However, the duality of the characters is different. In the case of Zilov, it is proof of the complexity of the human character. Zilov does not allow himself to be regarded as a positive or negative hero. "Behind his ostentatious decency hides depravity. He talks about the unethicality of a visit to visit in the absence of his wife who has gone on vacation, and at the same time easily agrees to an affair with Vera provoked by Zilov. Zilov, unable to overcome the spiritual crisis on his own, arouses the author's interest and sympathy. People but those who live a measured, regulated life are not objects of the author's sympathy. Pilot Kudimov. The expectation of the hunt, with the help of which Zilov hopes to become himself, is perceived as playful in the play. The hunt cannot take place in principle, because it is also impossible to return to the origins of the life path, to the freshness of perception of the world. The explanation for this is both in the hero and outside him, in the era of the turn of the 60s - 70s, in which "one who once lived, inspired by the idea of confrontation or overcoming, was filled with this, - stumbled, if not to emptiness, then to lack of demand. Zilov is the only hero of the play who is acutely experiencing the loss of his soul, farewell to his former self. His trouble is that he himself is infected with the era, unable to resist it. It turns out that the drama of the hero is not from a collision with reality, but, on the contrary, from a non-collision with it, from the gradual transformation of life into everyday life.
Vamipilov's plays, together with Shukshin's stories, brought to the literature of the late 60s a mood of confusion, an understanding of a dead end, the futility of efforts to live on. The spiritual fullness of Vampilov's heroes was not enough to live a harmonious inner life. Not having the opportunity and not being able to realize themselves, his heroes replace life with a game. Goodness, whose bearer is, for example, Sarafanov ("Elder Son"), in the artistic world of Vampilov, after all, is an exception, but an exception that retains its creative power.
7.3. The image of the narrator in his relation to the image of the author in the language composition of the text The image of the narrator appears in narrative texts in those cases when the story is not conducted directly "from the author", but is transferred to some person - the narrator. From the 2nd floor 18th century in Russian This approach has been widely developed in the literature. The handsome cook Chulkova, Grinev at Pushkin's, Gogol's Rudy Panko, etc. Vinogradov wrote: “The narrator is the speech product of the writer, and the image of the narrator (who pretends to be the author) is a form of literary artistry of the writer. The image of the author is seen in him as the image of an actor in the stage image he creates. The image of the narrator is created by the author and therefore does not exclude, does not cross out the image of the author.
Moreover, author's image is present in the composition of the work along with the image of the narrator, but in compositional hierarchy occupies the highest level stands above the image of the narrator. The cementing force, the core around which the entire stylistic system of the work is grouped, is the image of the author. The ratio between the image of the author and the image of the narrator may be different, but there are two main aspects of this ratio: 1) the degree of closeness or distance between the image of the narrator and the image of the author and 2) the variety of "faces" in which the author can appear, conveying the story to the narrator. There are works in which the image of the narrator is close to the image of the author in terms of language and view of the world (point of view) - most of Paustovsky's stories, but there are works where the image of the narrator is clearly distant
It must be remembered that the “I” in a narrative work (prose or poetry) clearly indicates the image of the narrator. No personal similarities or biographical coincidences change the case. The author can make anyone as a narrator, incl. and himself. But in the composition of the work it will still be the image of the narrator.
The forms of manifestation of different faces of the author are diverse. It is not uncommon to find narrative compositions that feature multiple narrators. For example, in the hero of our time there are three narrators: a young traveler, M.M. and Pechorin himself. But the author changes his faces within one work, not only passing the story from one storyteller to another, but also revealing different masks of this or that storyteller.
In terms of verbal composition, there is a certain point from which the author or narrator sees everything depicted. In this sense, it is more accurate to speak of point of view . Two concepts have long been associated with the image of the author: omniscience and objectivity. Objectivity acts only as a conditional ideal, and not as a complete detachment of the author from the events or phenomena depicted. Omniscience. A real author cannot have omniscience in reality. But, by creating the world of literary reality, he can implement such "principles for the construction of the author's image" that will make the author's omniscience the starting point for organizing the text. This is what we see when we deal with the author's narration from the third person. This is a convention of literary reality, a rule of the game accepted by all. The point of view is above the depicted events and phenomena, the point of view is “from above”.
The point of view of the narrator differs from the point of view of the author who narrates from
3 persons. The narrator can only tell from what he witnessed, what he saw and heard. Such a story, although it loses in the breadth of coverage of reality, but to a certain extent wins in reliability. The compositional framework of the 1st person narrative is rather tight, and the authors often have to expand it by resorting to different techniques. Eavesdropping on conversations in Cap. daughter.
With all the fundamental difference in the points of view of the author in the appearance of 3 years. and the narrator in a story from 1 liter., they can approach each other in the sense of the appearance of elements of the narrator's omniscience in the event that he approaches the image of the author. Chekhov. Pers. in a case
Ways of expressing the image of the narrator. The OR is most clearly expressed by pronouns and verb forms of 1 l. But OR can also be designated in terms of 3 hp.
In this case, the OR finds expression in the linguistic environments. These are most often colloquial and colloquial words, expressions and syntactic constructions, as well as dialectisms and professionalisms. In some cases, OR can be expressed using book elements. It can be expressed by the OR and the point of view. This way of expressing the OR is the most subtle, not immediately noticeable, but artistically expressive. For example, Bunin's story is The Killer. There is no omniscience at all. A melodious voice speaks. Everything else is what an eyewitness could observe.
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After the October Revolution and the subsequent establishment of state control over theaters, a need arose for a new repertoire that would correspond to modern ideology. However, of the earliest plays, perhaps only one can be named today - Mystery Buff V. Mayakovsky (1918). Basically, the modern repertoire of the early Soviet period was formed on topical "propaganda" that lost their relevance for a short period.
The new Soviet drama, reflecting the class struggle, was formed during the 1920s. During this period, such playwrights as L. Seifullina became famous (“ Virineya"), A. Serafimovich (" Mariana", the author's staging of the novel " Iron Stream"), L. Leonov (" Badgers»), K. Trenev (" Lyubov Yarovaya»), B. Lavrenev (" Fault"), V. Ivanov (" Armored train 14-69"), V. Bill-Belotserkovsky (" Storm"), D. Furmanov (" Mutiny"), etc. Their dramaturgy as a whole was distinguished by a romantic interpretation of revolutionary events, a combination of tragedy with social optimism.
The genre of Soviet satirical comedy began to take shape, at the first stage of its existence associated with the denunciation of the NEP: Bug" And " Bath" V. Mayakovsky, " Air Pie" And " End of Krivorylsk» B. Romashov, " Shot" A. Bezymensky, " Mandate" And " Suicide" N. Erdman.
A new stage in the development of Soviet drama (as well as other genres of literature) was determined by the First Congress of the Writers' Union (1934), which proclaimed the method of socialist realism as the main creative method of art.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Soviet dramaturgy was looking for a new positive hero. On the stage there were plays by M. Gorky (“ Egor Bulychov and others", « Dostigaev and others"). During this period, the individuality of such playwrights as N. Pogodin was formed (“ Pace", « Ax Poem", « My friend" etc.), V. Vishnevsky (" The first equestrian, « The Last Resolute", « An optimistic tragedy), A. Afinogenov (" Fear", « Far», « Masha"), V. Kirshon (" The rails are buzzing”, “Bread”), A. Korneichuk (" The death of the squadron ", « Platon Krechet»), N. Virty (" Earth"), L. Rakhmanov (" Restless old age"), V. Gusev (" Glory"), M. Svetlova (" Fairy tale", « Twenty years later"), a little later - K. Simonova (" Guy from our city, « Russian people", « Russian Question", « Fourth" and etc.). Plays in which the image of Lenin was displayed were popular: “ Man with a gun" weather, " Is it true Korneichuk", " On the banks of the Neva Treneva, later - plays by M. Shatrov. Drama for children was formed and actively developed, the creators of which were A. Brushtein, V. Lyubimova, S. Mikhalkov, S. Marshak, N. Shestakov and others. how many adults (" Cinderella", « Shadow", « The Dragon" and etc.). During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and in the first post-war years, patriotic dramaturgy naturally came to the fore both on modern and historical topics. After the war, plays devoted to the international struggle for peace became widespread.
In the 1950s, a number of decrees were issued in the USSR aimed at improving the quality of dramaturgy. The so-called "conflict-free theory" was condemned, proclaiming that the only possible dramaturgical conflict was "the good with the best." The keen interest of the ruling circles in modern drama was due not only to general ideological considerations, but also to another additional reason. The seasonal repertoire of the Soviet theater was supposed to consist of thematic sections (Russian classics, foreign classics, a performance dedicated to an anniversary or holiday date, etc.). At least half of the premieres had to be prepared according to modern dramaturgy. It was desirable that the main performances were staged not on light comedy plays, but on works of serious subjects. Under these conditions, most of the country's theaters, concerned about the problem of the original repertoire, were looking for new plays. Competitions of modern dramaturgy were held annually, the magazine "Teatr" published one or two new plays in each issue. The All-Union Agency for Copyright for official theatrical use annually published several hundred modern plays purchased and recommended for staging by the Ministry of Culture.
The general rise of theatrical art in the late 1950s led to the rise of dramaturgy. The works of new talented authors appeared, many of which determined the main paths for the development of drama in the coming decades. Approximately during this period, the individualities of three playwrights were formed, whose plays were staged a lot throughout the Soviet period - V. Rozov, A. Volodin, A. Arbuzov. Arbuzov made his debut back in 1939 with the play " Tanya" and remained in tune with his viewer and reader for many decades. Of course, the repertoire of the 1950s-1960s was not limited to these names; L. Zorin, S. Aleshin, I. Shtok, A. Stein, K. Finn, S. Mikhalkov, A. Sofronov, A. Salynsky actively worked in drama , Yu. Miroshnichenko, and others. The largest number of productions in the theaters of the country for two or three decades accounted for the unpretentious comedies of V. Konstantinov and B. Racer, who worked in collaboration. However, the vast majority of plays by all these authors are known today only to theater historians. The works of Rozov, Arbuzov and Volodin entered the golden fund of Russian and Soviet classics.
Among all the variety of genres and styles that have swept the theater from the late 50s of the XX century up to the present day, in modern dramaturgy one can note the clear predominance of the traditional Russian theater socio-psychological plays. Despite the frankly everyday, even everyday background of the action itself, most of these works had a very deep, multi-layered philosophical and ethical subtext. In a sense, the authors of these plays became successors "Chekhov" traditions in dramaturgy, when “eternal”, universal questions and problems were reflected in an ordinary plot. Here, the writers actively used such techniques as
- creating an "undercurrent"
- embedded plot,
- expansion of the stage space through the introduction of poetic or subject symbols.
- For example, a small flower garden with daisies in A. Vampilov's play "Last Summer in Chulimsk", like the old cherry orchard from the well-known drama of the same name by A. Chekhov, becomes for Vampilov's heroes a kind of test for the ability to love, humanity, love of life.
- Very effective, enhancing the psycho-emotional impact on the viewer, were such techniques as off-stage "voices", sometimes constituting, in fact, a separate plan of action, or fantastic visions of the characters.
A. Arbuzov and V. Rozov, A. Volodin and S. Aleshin, V. Panova and L. Zorin continued to explore the character of our contemporary throughout the 50s-80s, turned to the inner world of a person and recorded with concern, and also tried to explain the trouble in the moral state of society, the devaluation of high moral values. Together with the prose of Y. Trifonov, V. Shukshin, V. Astafiev, V. Rasputin, the songs of A. Galich and V. Vysotsky, screenplays and films of G. Shpalikov, A. Tarkovsky, E. Klimov and the works of many artists of different genres, the plays of these authors were looking for answers to the questions: “What is happening to us?! Where does it come from in us?!”
The late 1950s - early 1970s were marked by the bright individuality of A. Vampilov. During his short life he wrote only a few plays: Farewell in June, « Eldest son", « Duck hunting», « Provincial jokes, « Twenty minutes with an angel And " The case with the metropolitan page», « Last summer in Chulimsk» and unfinished vaudeville" Incomparable Tips". Returning to Chekhov's aesthetics, Vampilov set the direction for the development of Russian drama in the next two decades.
The young writer, who at the very first steps in dramaturgy received numerous critical accusations of gloominess, pessimism, never lived to see his first premiere in the capital, and even more so - before the “Vampilov season” in our theater. These plays spoke with alarm about the spreading moral ailments: double morality, cruelty, rudeness as a norm of behavior, the disappearance of kindness and trust in relations between people.
The young playwright managed to sensitively capture and skillfully convey disturbing phenomena in the moral atmosphere of his time. How much Vampilov cares about the problem of testing a person by everyday life can be judged by all his plays. His characters are funny and at the same time scary in their life attitudes. "Serious" and "frivolous", "angels" and "sinners" - such a gradation of Vampilov's heroes is found in some critical works. “... Love is love, but ... with a car, a husband, for example, is better than without a car” ("Twenty minutes with an angel"); “... if a person has money, then he is no longer funny, then serious. Beggars are out of fashion today" ("Last summer in Chulimsk"). The speculator Zolotuev ("Farewell in June") is generally not so much a real as a phantasmagoric figure. This ridiculous and miserable character put his whole life into proving that there are no honest people, everyone is either bribe-takers or "accomplices", honest (and even then not for long) only those who are given little, because "money, when there is none, is a great power."
The main character of the theater A. Vampilov is a middle-aged man who feels moral discomfort, dissatisfaction with his way of life and "early fatigue from it." The village teacher Tretyakov (“House with Windows in the Field”), investigator Shamanov (“Last Summer in Chulimsk”), engineer Zilov (“Duck Hunt”), students Kolesov and Busygin (“Farewell in June” and “Elder Son”) are shown at the dramatic moments of his life, "on the threshold", which must be crossed, to take a decisive step in order to part with his spiritual "suburb". Their entire future fate depends on how they act: to wake up before the “threshold” or to continue their existence-hibernation; rush into battle with injustice or stand aside and indifferently leave others to “achieve the impossible”, “beat their heads against the wall”; to recognize his way of life as mediocre burning it, to break decisively with the past or continue to take this whole nightmare for granted - over all this, the author makes his heroes think for almost the first time in their lives. Vampilov's plays have a very strong lyrical beginning. The author explores, in essence, the fate of people of his generation, young people of the 50s and 60s, on the transition from the euphoria of the “thaw”, hopes to change the whole world, to certainly take place as a person - to the collapse of social and personal illusions.
A. Vampilov finished the play “Elder Son” in April 1966. In 1968 it was published, and in 1969 it was first staged. In 1970 he revised the play. "The Elder Son" was staged in 28 theaters of the country, the performance was performed more than a thousand times, becoming one of the leaders of the season.
“Elder Son” begins with a cruel joke of two young people - Silva and Busygin. At night, somewhere in the suburbs, having missed the last train, they began to look for a lodging for the night, but no one wanted to let them warm up. And then Busygin says: “People have thick skin, and it is not so easy to break through it. You have to lie properly, only then will they believe you and sympathize with you. Silva remembers this randomly thrown phrase. Young people again enter the apartment at random, wanting only to spend the night in it. Seeing that they are about to be kicked out, Silva passes Busygin off as the illegitimate son of the owner of the apartment - Andrei Grigoryevich Sarafanov. And that's where it all starts.
Sarafanov is an elderly man with a daughter, Nina, and a son, Vasenka. The situation in the family is not easy. Sixteen-year-old son Vasenka fell in love with a frivolous person, who is also ten years older than him. Because of this, Vasenka wants to leave the house and leave. Daughter Nina is going to marry Kudimov and also leave, leaving her father. Maybe Sarafanov lacked someone who would be with him in his old age. And then Busygin appeared.
The young people, who introduced themselves as "the son and his companion", stunned by their own arrogance, tried to hide, but they did not succeed due to purely worldly circumstances: at first, Vasenka blocked their path, warning Sarafanov about their newly-appeared relative ("There is a guest and another one") . Unable to escape at this moment, Busygin, however, unexpectedly learns some details of the alleged biography of the alleged son of Sarafanov (age - 21, mother's name is Galina, birthplace of Chernigov). Another attempt of the heroes to retreat is inadvertently stopped by Sarafanov himself, who began to arrange an overnight stay for his son, during the third attempt, Sarafanov reappears, deciding at that very moment to give Busygin a family heirloom - an old snuffbox, traditionally passing to the eldest son in the family. And, finally, at the moment of the final decision to leave, which now, it would seem, nothing can resist, the awakened Sarafanov calls Busygin to save Vasenka in his love madness.
Busygin did not expect that an adult would so recklessly believe lies, with such generosity and openness would take him for his eldest son. Growing up without a father; Busygin, perhaps for the first time, felt love for himself. Volodya Busygin is worried about everything that happens in the Sarafanov family. He feels his responsibility for Vasenka and Nina. In a word, Busygin does not just enter the role of the eldest son, he feels like him. Therefore, trying three times to leave and stop the protracted performance, he hesitates every time: he is not released by responsibility for the family.
Busygin is the son of Sarafanov not by blood, but by spirit. He, perhaps, also lacked a loving and caring father. The son and father, as it were, found each other, they seemed to be looking for each other and found. Busygin could have continued his life with his "father", but he could not. He couldn't live with a lie. But, despite the fact that everything has already been clarified, he still continues to feel like the son of Sarafanov.
And at the same time, the feeling of non-domestic meaning of the events does not leave for a minute. The virtuously organized speech structure of the play, which not only does not contain a single monologue, but even replicas of more than 4-5 phrases, is at odds with the complexly organized internal structure of the work.
The comedy "The Elder Son" is built on a hard paradoxical breakdown, a paradoxical transformation of events arising from the "wrong", non-canonical reaction of the characters to circumstances.
And, above all, it concerns the main plot event. When Sarafanov learns from Vasenka that his newborn son is waiting for him in the kitchen, the logic of dramatic action could go in several completely predictable ways.
In the process of finding out the truth, it could turn out that Busygin is really the son of Sarafanov, this would be a model of French vaudeville. It could turn out that, having cruelly cheated a trusting family, spitting and trampling on everything that is not supposed to be spit and trampled on, Busygin and Silva have already tried to escape in a timely manner, perhaps taking something from the property of the ingenuous Sarafanovs. Here, some real powerful antagonistic principle should have come into play, for example, Nina's fiancé who arrived in time. It would be a cruel realistic version in the spirit of Pavel Nilin or Vladimir Tendryakov.
Finally, under the influence of the credulity of the victim, the characters of the play could, on their own initiative, begin to "re-educate themselves." And having repented, they could, for example, stir up some tragic memories in Sarafanov’s soul, maybe about the family lost during the war
Vampilov chooses his own path. Calling himself the son of old Sarafanov, the hero, in essence, instantly, without reflection and preparation, which could turn into the meaning of the play for another author, becomes a "son", accepts the rules of the game, which he himself imposed on others. "The Elder Son" begins as an extremely everyday play and remains in this state until the very moment when the touched Sarafanov exclaims, referring to Busygin: "son, son." With these words, not only the course of intrigue changes, but the artistic structure of the play also changes, it ceases to be a story with lies, it becomes a story with transformations.
From the moment the head of the family recognizes Busygin as a son, two coordinate systems begin to operate in the play - a kind of play appears in a play - a "play for the Sarafanovs" is played and a play that embraces this "play for the Sarafanovs", "a play for readers-spectators "Knowing that Busygin is not a son, and Sarafanov is not a father. Until that moment, the lies of Busygin and Silva were equally lies for themselves, the owners of the house and the audience. The special element of the play, a new special dramatic tension arises from this double, "layered" structure of the comedy.
In the "play for the audience" it still seems that Busygin continues to cheat the owners of the house, Silva also adheres to the same opinion, suspecting the threshold of a new grandiose scam in Busygin's behavior, while in the "play for the Sarafanovs" this is no longer the case.
The play's moral quest unfolds between two theses-slogans that require rechecking, between two poles - "all people are brothers" and "people have thick skin, and it is not so easy to break through it."
Paradoxically, not that Sarafanov believed Busygin's invention, but the fact that Busygin behaved according to his imagination. The paradox of the situation is that the most "thin" skin turned out to be that of the main cynic-theorist. Busygin, who decided to check whether all people are really brothers and how thin the skin of those around him, himself falls into the networks of humanity he himself has set up. Finding himself in a relaxing atmosphere of Sarafanov's naivety, he begins to behave in accordance with the declared role.
The peculiarity of the play is that we know what Sarafanov believes: he believes the story told by Busygin, not suspecting that it is a lie. He believes Busygin's word. What Busygin believes, who knows perfectly well that he is deceiving the old man, at first glance, is difficult to say. But Busygin also believes the word. But not to that speculative, abstract word of honor given once and for all, to which the iron Kudimov is so faithful, but simply to a spoken, materialized word, such as, for example, the word "son".
Busygin is called a son and behaves like a “son” in the future, Vasenka threatens to kill Makarskaia - he goes and sets fire to her, Nina advises Busygin, who is “suffering from unrequited love”, to beat off the girl, which he does with great success, moreover, and the old man Sarafanov receives back the story he himself told the guests, slightly embellished by Busygin.
Moving in a dual coordinate system, Vampilov's comedy also suggests a special structure for Busygin's image. We know that Busygin is not a son, although the title of the play states otherwise, and in the course of the action we observe two kinds of his psychological metamorphoses: how he plays himself a son and how he turns into a son. We see the dual existence of a person: Busygin the impostor and Busygin the son, and these, along with the vicissitudes of the plot, the vicissitudes of assimilation and dissimilarity of the hero's hypostases are a surprisingly exciting process.
At first glance, Busygin is morally reborn, falling into the relaxing atmosphere of Sarafanov's kindness and naivete. However, with the way of the Sarafan house, as well as with the artistic way of the play as a whole, the situation is not so simple.
At first glance, Silva and Busygin are bad, and the Sarafanovs are good. Meanwhile, Kudimov is better than all of them put together, but he is ridiculed, made a fool of, expelled from home and forgotten in the twinkling of an eye to everyone's pleasure.
The way of the Sarafanovs' house is far from textbook. In this play, everyone lies. Not to mention the main, "global" lies of Busygin and Silva, which in the final version and a lie was almost conditional, so, by coincidence, all the Sarafanovs lie: the father - to the children that he works in the Philharmonic, the children - to him that they believe to this, Sarafanov persuades Makarska to be kinder to Vasenka, that is, to lie to him.
Only Kudimov always tells the truth, but how poor, vulgar, stupid and cruel this master is to his word in his poor household. Not a word of lies escapes the lips of Silva, who is going on a date with Makarska, and how humiliatingly he will be punished - left without pants in broad daylight. The truth that Makarskaya throws about Vassenka is more soulless and harsher than any deception.
And how, at the same time, the heroes firmly believe in their fiction: Busygin - that he is the son of Sarafanov, Vasenka - that he will kill Makarskaya and run away to the taiga, and all together - that Sarafanov works at the Philharmonic, and does not play at the funeral.
Everyone lies recklessly, and this lie turns into cordiality, warmth, and thereby reveals in the heroes such depths of personality, spirituality and kindness that they themselves simply did not suspect. The impulsive lie of the heroes of "The Elder Son" is of a special nature; it creates the playful element of the play.
This is a play that is shaped not by conflicts, but by their absence: as soon as Busygin and Silva prepared to be expelled with a bang, it turned out that their imposture was accepted with open arms. Busygin only tries to recapture Nina from the lieutenant, but she herself falls into the arms of the hero. Busygin only suspects that Silva and Makarska may have an affair, as the burnt Don Juan is already flying out of her apartment like a bullet.
Here in "The Elder Son" not heroes are opposed, but ways, elements. Where the right Kudimov will lose Nina, where the prudent neighbor will go sadly walking away his hypertension, there this wonderful way of life will bring Busygin and Nina together, make the hard-hearted Makarskaya look with interest at Vasenka, the noble robber. In this wonderful element of the play, the right actions are punished - kefir, walks before going to bed and punctuality, and, God forbid, "photographic", sharp memory can simply drive a person out of the house.
Vampilov is building a world of evil stupids and bureaucratic idiots, he is building a world of fun games, happy accidents, looking for those who are disposed towards them.
Life in "The Elder Son" is not constructed, but arises, its dramaturgy is not introduced from the outside, but is born in itself. Guys who are trying to wait 5-6 hours under the roof of someone else's house, confident that they have cruelly cheated others, find themselves in a world that exists in nervous, unadorned forms of life, a world of almost fabulous miracles, a world warmed by cordiality and care for each other. Heroes from the unmarked, unpainted world of the main streets, roadside glass, and the comfort of the hostel find themselves in a completely different, local world. Much later, both at the time of the creation of the play and at the time of the stormy interest in it, critics will write that this world means Vampilov's peculiar middle position in the confrontation between urban and rural prose.
The remark at the end of the play is symbolic: “Busygin, Nina, Vasenka, Sarafanov - everything is nearby, Manarskaya is aside ...” . Makarska's remark unites them into a human brotherhood: "Wonderful you, by the way, people" . A. Vampilov managed to create "passions" in the genre of everyday comedy for the spiritual closeness of people, for kindness and mutual understanding.
Each next play by Vampilov acts as an argument in a dispute about a contemporary hero. The heroes of post-Vampilian dramaturgy constantly demonstrate the most diverse manifestations of this disease.
For several decades, modern dramaturgy has been striving to overcome established stereotypes, to be closer to real life in solving the hero's problem.
The dramaturgy of the 80s, according to the theater critic B. Lyubimov, painted a certain group portrait of the “intermediate generation” “people who are not very kind, but not so very - evil, who know everything about the principles, but far from observing all the principles, not hopeless fools, but not truly smart, reading, but not well-read; about parents caring, but not loving; providing children, but not loving; doing the work, but not loving; not believing in anything, but superstitious; dreaming that there would be no less in common. And more of yours…”
Painful introspection, a complex of guilt before oneself and loved ones for one's "failure" is the best thing in these "vibrating" heroes. Shame and conscience did not leave their souls.
Post-Vampilian dramaturgy explores many variants of the spiritual discomfort of heroes - more often intellectuals, as a result of the moral atmosphere of stagnant times, in which there were all conditions for the prosperity of conformism, "double life", when the spiritual potential of a person began to depreciate, and talent and education were not always in demand. But it is difficult to understand why these people retreat so easily before cynicism, rudeness, sober worldly logic; why these "withered" romantics are being "reanimated" and pushed aside by their own antipodes-pragmatists. In the dramaturgy of the “new wave”, these antipodes are also ambiguous: not sinners and not villains, but practical people who prefer actions to reflection, although not in the name of high ideals.
The modern play on the theme of morality became extraordinarily tougher in the atmosphere of glasnost in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
For the first time, prostitutes and drug addicts, homeless people and informals, criminals of all stripes, from bribe-takers to racketeers and killers, flooded the screen and the stage so much that criticism about “black realism”, “shock therapy” justifiably sounded. The long hushing up of many problems of society now, in an atmosphere of "freedom and publicity", led to a breakthrough of the dam, writers looked into the roadside life that burns with its ugliness, and sometimes even "life on the limit".
In modern drama, more is written not so much about diseases and their causes, but about the consequences, about ways to survive “on the edge”, to preserve the human in a person. Kindness of attitude, saving humor, irony towards their heroes, ordinary people trying to understand the absurdities of their lives, distinguishes the plays of V. Gurkin (“Love and Pigeons”, “Baikal Quadrille”, “Crying in a Handful”), S. Lobozerov (“A Family Portrait with a Stranger”, “His Diamonds and Emeralds”, “A Family Portrait with Banknotes”), new works by M. Roshchin, A. Kazantsev, the latest plays by M. Varfolomeev. More and more often we now recall the recent words of our oldest playwright V. Rozov, words that he follows in his work all his life: "Art is Light" And "A real playwright must be kind" . Criticism reminds modern writers that it is time to move from debunking the modern hero to some kind of positive, constructive program.
The development of modern dramaturgy is invariably accompanied by active aesthetic searches concerning traditional dramatic categories: genre, conflict, the development of stage action, the construction of dialogue, the "speech language" of the characters, and even various forms of "author's presence", which is completely new.
It is represented by a wide range of the most diverse genres, both traditional and invented by the playwrights themselves. Here you will meet the "opera of the first day", and "ballet in the dark", and "virtual theater", as well as - "Homeric comedy", "room of laughter for a lonely pensioner". A lot of different comedies are being written now: from vaudevilles, farces, pamphlets to "black" tragicomedies (this genre is especially widespread).
Not all plays, especially by young playwrights, immediately reached the audience. However, both at that time and later, there were many creative structures that united playwrights. Since 1982, the almanac Modern Dramaturgy has been published, publishing dramatic texts by contemporary writers and analytical materials. In the early 1990s, the playwrights of St. Petersburg created their own association - "The Playwright's House". In 2002, the Golden Mask Association, Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov, the annual New Drama Festival was organized. In these associations, laboratories, competitions, a new generation of theater writers was formed who gained fame in the post-Soviet period: M. Ugarov, O. Ernev, E. Gremina, O. Shipenko, O. Mikhailova, I. Vyrypaev, O. and V. Presnyakovs, K. Dragunskaya, O. Bogaev, N. Ptushkina, O. Mukhina, I. Okhlobystin, M. Kurochkin, V. Sigarev, A. Zinchuk, A. Obraztsov, I. Shprits.
Each of them has his own voice, his own aesthetic preferences, experiments in the field of form. Novelty is always a sign of the vitality of the process, and modern drama does not stand still, develops, moves forward through the renewal of traditions and at the same time through loyalty to the most important of them. Contemporary art gravitates toward a philosophical understanding of the problem of the century. In many ways, this increased interest in the genre of intellectual drama, parable plays with a variety of conventional devices. Already known literary and legendary plots are often used. (“The House That Swift Built” by Gr. Gorin, “Don’t Throw Fire, Prometheus!” M. Karima, “Mother of Jesus” by A. Volodin, “The Seventh Labor of Hercules” by M. Roshchin); historical retrospectives (“Lunin, or the Death of Jacques”, “Conversations with Socrates” by E. Radzinsky, “Royal Hunt” by L. Zorin). These forms allow us to pose eternal problems in which our contemporaries are involved. The authors are interested in Good and Evil, Life and Death, war and peace, the destiny of man in this world.
Theatrical and dramaturgical languages were especially actively updated in the 1990s. Avant-garde tendencies, postmodernism, "alternative", "other" art, whose line was cut short in the 1920s, became relevant. Since the mid-1980s, the theatrical underground not only rose to the surface, but even became equal in rights with the official theater. Today's plays are more "avant-garde", "absurd" in terms of content than in terms of artistic form. In the history of Russian dramaturgy, there has not yet been such an original trend as the "absurdist drama". Modern plays of this kind are called plays with elements of absurdism, where all the absurdity of human existence is captured vividly and artistically. One of the most characteristic moments of modern avant-garde theater is the perception of the world as a home for the insane, a “stupid life”, where ordinary ties are broken, tragicomically the same actions and phantasmagoric situations. Our reality is inhabited by phantom people, "morons", werewolves. An example of this is the grotesque images in the plays "The Wonderful Woman" by I. Sadur and "Walpurgis Night, or the Steps of the Commander" Ven. Erofeev. On dreams as a disgusting quintessence of absurd reality, the play "Dreams of Evgenia" by A. Karantsev is based. Sometimes a little "grotesque pressure" turns our "realistic reality" into something absurd. Vivid confirmation of this is the ironic, grotesque plays "Tribunal" by V. Voinovich, "A domestic cat of medium fluffiness" Gr. Gorin and V. Voinovich, "Russian Teacher" A. Buravsky. Modern playwrights willingly make the scene for their heroes a dump ("And there was a day" by A. Dudarov), a morgue ("...Sorry" by A. Galina), a cemetery ("Askold's Grave" by A. Zheleztsov), a prison ("Date" and "Execution" by L. Petrushevskaya), a mental hospital ward ("Walpurgis Night, or the Steps of the Commander" by Ven. Erofeev).
The "new wave" of young contemporary playwrights such as N. Kolyada, A. Shchipenko, M. Arbatova, M. Ugarov, A. Zheleztsov, O. Mukhina, E. Gremina and others expresses a new worldview. Their plays make you feel pain from the "trouble of authenticity". At the same time, the authors do not so much stigmatize the tragic circumstances that disfigure a person, but peer into his suffering, forcing him to think “on the edge” about the possibility of straightening up and surviving in often terrible conditions.
The words of the critic E. Sokolyansky, addressed to the “absurd” moments in modern drama, seem fair: “It seems that the only thing that a dramatic writer can convey in the current conditions is a certain madness of the moment. That is, the feeling of a turning point in history with the triumph of chaos.
Modern dramaturgy and theater were the first of all the arts not only to reflect the changes that took place in the life of our society at the turn of the century, but also played a significant role in their implementation. However, critics note that a paradoxical situation has developed in Russia today: modern theater and modern dramaturgy exist, as it were, in parallel, in some isolation from each other. The most high-profile directorial searches of the beginning of the 21st century are associated with the staging of classical plays. Modern dramaturgy, on the other hand, conducts its experiments more “on paper” and in the virtual space of the Internet.
American dramaturgy copied English and European theater until the very beginning of the 20th century. Plays by English authors or translations from European languages often dominated theatrical seasons. The imperfect copyright law, which could neither protect nor encourage American playwrights, worked against truly original playwriting. The same can be said about the "star system" in which more fame went to the actors and actresses than to the plays themselves. Americans were eager to see European actors who came on tour to American theaters. In addition, imported dramaturgy, like imported wines, enjoyed a higher status than domestic productions.
In the 19th century, melodrama was popular, with its exemplary democratic characters and a clear division between good and evil. Plays with social themes such as slavery also attracted large audiences; sometimes they were adaptations of novels like Uncle Tom's Cabin. Only in the 20th century was an attempt made at aesthetic innovation in the genre of serious dramaturgy. However, pop culture developed rapidly, especially in the genre of vaudeville (a variety of stage with sketches, clowning, music, and the like). The original forms were also developed in shows based on African-American music and folklore performed by whites dressed as blacks.
Eugene O "Neill (1888-1953)
Eugene O'Neill was the greatest figure in the American theater. In his many plays, great technical originality is combined with freshness of vision and emotional depth. , and reflect his acquaintance with Freud's theory, as well as painful attempts to reconcile with the already departed mother, father and brother.In his play "Love under the Elms", written in 1924, O "Neill traces the passions hidden within one family; in the play "The Great God Brown" (1926), the unconscious in the personality of a wealthy businessman is revealed, and "Strange Interlude" (1928), for which O "Neil won the Pulitzer Prize, analyzes the intricate hobbies of one woman. These powerful plays show how different personalities display primitive emotions and confusion when under intense stress.
O'Neill continued to explore the Freudian theme of the pressure of love and submission within the family in his trilogy under the general title "Mourning Goes to Electra" (1931), based on Sophocles' classic trilogy "Oedipus Rex". Among his later plays are such recognized masterpieces as " Icebreaker Comes (1946), a tough reflection on death, and Long Day's Falling into Night (1956), a powerful, extended autobiography in the form of a play, centered on his own family, physical and psychological deterioration its members, traced over the course of one night. This work was part of a cycle of plays on which O "Neal worked shortly before his death.
O'Neil revised the theater, abandoning the traditional division into acts and scenes (there are nine acts in the Strange Interlude, and the play Mourning Goes to Electra is designed for nine hours of play), introducing masks like those found in Asian and ancient Greek theaters , Shakespearean monologues, Greek choir and special effects with lighting and sound. By all accounts, O'Neal is America's preeminent playwright. With the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to him in 1936, O "Neill became the first American playwright to receive this honor.
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)
Thornton Wilder is known for his plays "Our Town" (1938) and "On the verge of death" (1942) and the novel "King Louis Bridge" (1927).
Our Town expounds positive American values. All elements of sentimentality and nostalgia are present here - the archetype of a traditional town in the countryside, good-natured parents and mischievous children, young lovers. The play is captivated by inventive moments, including ghosts, voices from the audience, and bold shifts in time. It is essentially a play about life and death in which the dead are reborn, at least for a moment.
Clifford Odets (1906-1963)
Master of social drama Clifford Odets came from a family of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He grew up in New York and became one of the first actors of the Group Theater under directors Harold Clurman, Lee Strasburg and Cheryl Crawford, committed to producing only domestic American plays.
In his most famous play, Waiting for Lefty (1935), an experimental one-act drama, Odets enthusiastically championed labor unions. Another popular success was the nostalgic family drama "Rise and Sing!", followed by "Golden Boy", which tells the story of an Italian immigrant youth who ruins his musical talent (he is a violinist) when, tempted by money, he becomes a boxer and injures his hands. . Like Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby and Dreiser in An American Tragedy, Odets warns in his play against the dangers of over-ambition and materialism.
