The fate of the director

The next (43rd and 44th) numbers of the magazine "Theater." Went out of the press. , united by a common theme: they represent a kind of two -volume and analyze the influence of left ideas on the development of art. Colta.ru publishes the chief editor's column.

The words “acceleration” and “perestroika” came out of the Russian political fashion in the early 1990s, but it is precisely what is happening with the acceleration of perestroika that now determines our lives. It is difficult to list all the values ​​that seemed unshakable, the conventions, aesthetic and ethical criteria, which over the past few years have not been revised and even thrown into a landfill of history. It is no less interesting to list the fact that during the perestroika was selected from the landfill and again declared relevant. About this total reassessment of everything and everything (for example, about the experiencing Renaissance genre of anonymous) could write a separate text, but in the magazine "Theater." It makes sense to focus on the theater - because it was he who became the object of perestroika almost more than all other spheres of our lives.

Until recently, the main theater opposition in Russia could be determined as follows: dramatic vs postdramatic. Around this opposition, serious battles were conducted. People who insist on a careful attitude to the “author’s text” and convinced that theatrical traditions should dictate the form of a performance to a lesser extent than the individual’s individual will have been led by a crusade against those who assured that the director, like Demiurge, can create hisatrical worlds without guiding and not experiencing respect for literary - if any - if there is generally - if there is generally. primary source.

In Russia, these battles were conducted with a clear delay: the corresponding book of Hans-Tis Leman was translated with us fourteen years after its release, and fourteen years, given the above acceleration, eternity. But one way or another, the word “post -dramatic” (for all the vague of this concept) has firmly entered the Russian theater vocabulary. And after the publications in the Russian works of Erica Fisher Likht, Nicolas Burrio, Claire Bishop, discussing a performance in the theater, about the increased role of the viewer, about the theater mimesis (the actor is pretended by a certain hero) became almost a common place of theater texts.

But with all the differences between the drama theater from the post -dramatic, until recently, there was one unifying thing. The history of the post -dramatic theater, like the history of the dramatic, remained the story of the loud names: Christian Lupa, Katie Mitchell, Milo Rau, Romeo Castellucci, Christophe Martall, Angelik Liddell. Even the Rimini Protokoll group, which arose as a team of three equal partners, we still remember primarily by the name of the main and undoubted corrifa - Stefan Kagi.

Now the named opposition has replaced the other. Now the very idea of ​​the supremacy of the theater director. And the theater world, respectively, was divided into those who continue to believe in its demiurgic will and strength, and those who consider the director's theater archaic way to produce an artistic product: we remember the prosaic word “product”, it will still be useful to us.

After all, the main trend of our time is a protest against dominance (man, groups of people, discourse - it does not matter), and the director of the director itself is the quintessence of dominance. It is the director at the top of the theater hierarchy that embodies both repressiveness and (especially) the manipulative nature of the theater, which in the directorial era is as if it is built in a square: at first the director manipulates the psychophysics of artists/performers, achieving the desired effect from them, and then they themselves begin to manipulate the emotions of the audience.

And therefore, after political leaders, the heads of national corporations or high ranks in uniform, the very figure of this supreme commander of the theater is subjected to attacks today, and horizontal structures arise next to hierarchically (vertically) organized theatrical groups. People gather in a creative team in which there are no “demiurges”, no one can dictate anything to anyone, the creation of the performance is not built on the guidelines of the creator who dissolved the fantasy, but on the endless creative compromises of the rehearsal participants who are in constant psychotherapeutic pronunciation of their relationships, of which drawing aesthetic and psychological energy.

The attempt on the permanent director in the theater is only a special case of an attempt on any significant personality in art. After all, the larger this personality, the more repressive it is.

The theater process, as you know, always reveals to us this or that model of society. The theater can be arranged as an estate - a master and serving it (an option, the most common in the Russian oikumen). Maybe like New Religious Movement - a charismatic leader and those who believe in his charisma. The theater of modern times is similar to a termite, where the total mind allows participants to build one or another termite zikgurat. In termitects, however, the hierarchy is just. And in the new type of theater at all levels (copyright, performing, organizational), the rule applies: “Be replaceable/replaced”. This is a literal quote from one of the central texts of the number dedicated to the famous group She She Pop .

The audience potential of this kind of theater is usually noticeably lower than that of the Demiurgic, Conquest Theater, involving the audience (a very successful group of She Pop here is rather an exception to the rule), but the behavioral code is much stricter. There is bioetics, according to which it is important not only whether the tomato lying on the counter is important, but how exactly it was grown, whether, say, the soil was damaged. If the tomato was incorrectly grown, we do not buy it, although the tomato itself can be very tasty. And there is ethics of aesthetics. If during rehearsals a hierarchical, hard, manipulative world arose inside the team, then this or that production is good or bad, it is not so important. In both cases, we have an incorrectly manufactured product in front of us: once again we draw the reader's attention to this word.

We are actually present with the total revision of that theater paradigm, which was no less relevant for the theater for more than a hundred years - since the origin of the director's profession itself. But, having looked more closely, it is easy to see that the attempt on the permanent director in the theater is only a special case of an attempt on any significant personality in art. After all, the larger this personality, the more repressive it is. It suppresses those who are less significant, by the very fact of their existence. She (personality) now and then speaks as the right to have. And even if it, unlike the director, is not assigned an official place in the hierarchy, dominance is still evident here.

Any left (utopian) idea in one way or another has in its basis the acquisition of a new person. In the aesthetic sphere, this egalitarism brought to the absolute limit involves, apparently, the withdrawal of a special type of artist (tsy), who (aya), even being a talented, charismatic, dominant person, will suppress the will to dominate the psychological comfort of associates, and at the same time recipients. Otherwise, an outstanding personality was ordered to go where Lars von Trier sends in the parody thriller “The House that Jack built” his Alter Ego , an egocentric artist, literally building artistic fantasies on foreign bones, to the underworld!

The question of how much this utopian dream of a new artist is reassured, we will now leave aside.

As well as we leave aside the rhetorical question: is the repressiveness of no less, but perhaps greater than in any hierarchy in a new horizontal. And the accompanying question: will the struggle with the hierarchy end in building a new hierarchy? This is an almost inevitable process.

We will leave aside even a more local and more urgent question: what will turn into an egalitarian trend for Russia, where a large artist is now attacking from two sides at once - both right obscurantists and left utopians: Ah, did you assure that you are higher than the king and higher than the crowd? Well, we will now show you your place.

We note better this.

The dominant personality (and indeed - a personality), pushed out gradually from the process of creating an artistic “product”, is inevitably supplanted from the essence of the work of art itself. Going hand in hand with the idea of ​​the total (a hand stretches to write “totalitarian”, but to refrain) egalitarianism the idea of ​​equal representation of various social, sexy, racial or ethnic groups inevitably leads to the fact that the heroes of the modern theater are increasingly interesting not so much as unique and unique individuals, of course, belonging to one or another classes, groups, and stord As a combination of certain representations - dark -skinned, heterosexual, privileged, transgender, etc.

And this is a paradoxical situation.

After all, the very appearance of the director’s figure at the turn of the XIX - XX centuries meant that the creation of the performance was transferred to an individual, personal level. Previously, the role of the director was played by style, genre, traditions, conventions. And the theater fled for a long time and stubbornly from their power, that is, from something permissible (add to the listed masks, roles, etc.), in order to return to the supra-resident again. He moved from type to individuality in order to return to type again. He endowed the director’s demiurgic power in order to dissolve his laws again, put on himself, in the general (together invented) rules of the game. In fierce progressiveness, a completely reversible turn was suddenly revealed.

It is stupid to engage in futurology and guess how this new trend is fraught with art in general and the theater in particular and how they will do without large personalities who suppress their charisma: if art becomes different, this does not mean that it will certainly be worse. But, unlike the right to Abuez and even a sinful (?) The right to creative or other dominance, the right to love and protect the theater and the art that we were dear, so far no one has canceled. Even in the most violent utopian fantasies, I hope it will stay with us. And I personally are ready to use it.