Preview

Shagi / Steps

Advanced search
Vol 3, No 3 (2017)
View or download the full issue PDF (Russian)
9-23 3
Abstract
The paper focuses on ensembles and collective choirs, two remarkable phenomena in Russian theatre during the frst quarter of the 20th century. Both challenged the concepts of “drama” and “the dramatic” based on mimesis and led the way not only to new verbal techniques, but also to the creation of new relationships between actors and spectators. Prior to the Revolution, Russian theatre had become a laboratory for developing collective choirs and many other collective performative forms. The Revolution, which brought about a call for new artistic forms to express the idea of “collectivity”, had a catalytic effect on the spread of recitation choirs which fourished after 1917. While the concept of the choir, rooted in the idea of equality and coordination, ftted rather well with the concept of the social revolution and its artistic principles, other collective artistic forms, such as the ensemble, found it challenging to adjust to the egalitarian nature of post-revolutionary art. Where the pre-revolutionary ensemble and the choir opposed each other in their core principles, after 1917 there were attempts to synthesize them into new genres, such as the staging of poem. An example of this was The Insurrection by Emile Verhaeren (1918; dir. V. Smyshliaev), which is discussed in the paper.
24-44 2
Abstract
The article analyzes the content of a discussion concerning the terminology of a new branch of the humanities — the science of theatre arts — that is signifcant nowadays. This discussion, held in 1925–1928, took place within the Theatre section of the State Academy of Art Sciences (SAAS). All members of the Theatre section (L. Gurevich, I. Novikov, N. Volkov, etc.) took part in it; V. Sakhnovskii, a wellknown theatre leader and director, and P. Iakobson, recently graduated from the Philosophy Dept. of Moscow University, were the main opponents. Though both of them had as their point of departure shared ideas regarding the methodology of theatre studies, they nonetheless adhered to different scientifc traditions. Despite his background as a philosopher, Iakobson was attracted by formal analysis of theatre as an integral art phenomenon, sought to elucidate its structure, to fnd some defnitions that might help one “catch” the vague object. In particular, he declared that “gesture is the main element of theatre” and that “analysis of gesture could open up the total object of theatre”. Paradoxically, the professional theatre director Sakhnovskii spoke as a philosopher, underscoring the highest destiny of theatre as a manifestation of humanity's spiritual (“divine”) nature. Members of the Theatre section prepared to publish a Terminological Dictionary: they identifed the main terms to be included in it, clarifed their methodological positions, and specifed the meaning of words intended to become terms. They discussed different conceptions of theatre, the spatial and temporal aspects of this kind of art, the meaning and role of elements that comprise theatrical action; they also discussed whether in principle it is possible (or impossible) to record a performance, etc.
45-67 3
Abstract
The article focuses on the early history of the International Association of Workers' Theatre (MORT in Russian, 1929–1936) that was founded under auspice of the Comintern. Based on archival resources, the article highlights the role of the independent group “Proletarian Theatre” in establishing and promoting the ideas of ‘agitprop' theatre through its transnational connections. The group's members, the Soviet and foreign dramaturgists, writers and theatrical activists, had various connections abroad and in “home” countries that they used to promote the workers' theatre. This early “grass-root” initiative was based on Proletcult ideas for the international theatre movement and infuenced the transnational activities of MORT during its early period (1929–1932), where transnational pertains to the trans-boundary ties and collaboration with foreign theatrical groups and creation of a transnational network of ‘agitprop' theatres and beyond. This activity resulted in strengthening the left theatre movement and many of the theatrical groups joined MORT also as part of national theatrical associations. This period paved the way for the policy of the Popular Front, announced by the Comintern in the mid-1930s.
68-80 4
Abstract
This paper analyzes innovative amateur theater in the Soviet Union during the period 1983–1985 — a time, when the country prepared to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Soviet victory over the Nazis. In spite of the ongoing cult of World War Two, a number of theatre studios did not put on orthodox war plays. Instead, although some plays focused on the war, they often approached it ironically, sometimes by incorporating the songs of Vladimir Vysotskii. Other troupes ignored the war and emphasized other, more controversial themes, including the purges, nuclear war, and anti-war sentiments. At festivals, these productions received acclaim for their heterodox interpretations. Their success is signifcant because it occurred in the midst of a national crackdown on the arts that resulted from the 1983 war scare. The support from local clubs, juries, and critics for these troupes and their productions demonstrates the limited ability of central governmental and party organizations to dictate local cultural priorities.
81-96 3
Abstract
The article analyzes two site-specifc documentary performances: Radio Taganka at the Taganka Theatre, directed by Semen Alexandrovsky (2014), and Go, Moskvich!, directed by Georgy and Valeriia Surkov at the employees' club of the former factory “Moskvich” (2015). Go, Moskvitch! presents an ambivalent portrait of Soviet car factory workers through the museifcation of their habits, objects and words that remain the same through the years in a small local museum-club as if the epoch hadn't come to an end. Radio Taganka is a promenade across the inner spaces of the legendary theatre with a radio play written on the basis of Yuri Lyubimov's fght against censorship during Soviet times. The functioning of the space during a site-specifc performance is explained through the concepts of Charles Peirce's and Rosalind Krauss's indexicality and Foucault's heterotopia. A site-specifc performance turns out to be a place of interpenetration of various behavioral, temporal and spatial norms, which allows it to engage cultural memory and to belong not only to the realm of fction, but also to that of real social interaction.
97-107 1
Abstract
Contemporary theatre theories (E. Fischer-Lichte, H. T. Lehmann) put forward a new, “anthropological” understanding of a staging. The theorists suggest giving up the idea of a staging as a production which is enclosed into a frame and in this way resembles a work of literature or a painting, and put forward the thesis of a theatre performance as a meeting of actors and spectators — an event with no preliminary set limits, but only those that are created in the process. Such an optics presupposes that special attention is paid to the fgure of the spectator and to his creative role. If the spectator is viewed as a partner, a new category of analysis needs to be introduced. This article proposes to introduce the notion of “spectator's comfort”. It must be distinguished from spectator's comfort in traditional theatre communication: that one is based on care about the comprehensibility of the director's message and is, basically, a sort of patronage over the spectator. Spectator's comfort in contemporary performances originates in the idea of the spectator's freedom, of an open space, preserved for him in the performance, and of renunciation of forceful measures to infuence the audience. As an example of an experimental performance, comfortable for the spectator, we analyze Heiner Goebbels' “Max Black, or 62 Ways of Supporting the Head with a Hand”. The strategies utilized by Goebbels (an invitation to a “scientifc” experiment and intensive observation and self-observation; turning to the diary form, where the fgure of the other and interaction with it are abated; specifc work with corporality, and so on), fully belong to the author and combined in unique way. However, despite their singularity, they serve as a brilliant and spectacular example of how the category of spectator's comfort is being developed in contemporary theatre communications.
108-125 6
Abstract
The article is devoted to the study of the public cabinets of camera obscura, which operated in St. Petersburg in the frst half of the 19th century. Mentions of such cabinets in the press allow us to conclude that they existed in Russia at least since the beginning of the 1820s, but gained in popularity only two decades later. Given this, it is logical to assume that the interest of the capital's public in camera obscura may have been connected to the recent news about the discovery of so-called light painting. The author tries to prove that the connection between the invention of photography and “dark rooms” in minds of contemporaries was inseparable, since photographic images at that time were often described as camera obscura projections fxed on a plane. Using materials from St. Petersburg newspapers of the late 1830s – 1840s, the author demonstrates that descriptions of the optical demonstrations with camera obscura arranged at that time were based on the same topoi as explanations of the principle of photography. The connection between the recent invention of photography and the increased popularity of camera obscura cabinets is also confrmed by the fact that in the mid-1840s the fashion for them passed as quickly as it developed several years earlier. Evidently, never in earlier or in later times were such demonstrations more interesting to the audience than immediately following the invention of photography.
126-151
Abstract
The article examines references to photography in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. In contrast to a well-established view of this medium's role in the writer's universe as secondary and purely negative, this article proceeds from the assumption that the invention and proliferation of photography in the 19th century was a major infuence on Proust's artistic vision. Photographs are present in Proust's novel both as physical objects and as metaphors. As the former they appear mainly in social contexts, where they embody and visualize emotional exchanges, degrees of intimacy, connection and division of various milieus. Proust shows society, especially its elite strata, as operating in a quasimechanical way, and the photograph as an automatically produced image echoes this aspect of human relationships. On the other hand, metaphorical references to photography tend to emphasize the “internal” quality of the changes which flm undergoes, as well as their temporal dimension: a pause that lies at the very heart of the ever-increasing pace of modernity. Paradoxically combining the meanings of the serial and the unique, the photograph becomes a site where massifed technical reproducibility becomes ‘dislocated', creating a quintessentially modern experience of luxury.
152-168
Abstract
A vagary of the duke de La Rochefoucauld, who constrained the coadjutor of Paris, J.-F.-P. de Gondi, in a door in the building of the Parliament of Paris, was one of the most dramatic episodes of the Fronde, and was depicted in several memoirs from that period. The article deals with texts by the cardinal de Retz, F. de La Rochefoucauld, F. de Motteville, and G. Joly to analyze these memoirists' construction of the two main meanings of La Rochefoudauld's gesture — threat and abuse. The author looks into narrative strategies determined by the political, social and spatial position of each memoirist during the confict. Our analysis reveals interrelations between politics and literature, strategies of political action and textual utterance. Abuse appears to be an effective ‘scenic' political weapon in early modern politics and reveals the importance of imagination, allusions and ambiguities in political actions as well as in texts. Corrspondingly, memoirs about the Fronde had much in common with novels, stage plays, burlesques in ways of affecting the reader, with political intention being far more important than telling a ‘true' story.
169-176 2
Abstract
We publish an essay, “One can write about theatre in different ways”, which was written by Boris Ponizovsky — theatre director, philosopher, theoretician and one of the leaders of Leningrad unoffcial culture during the 1960s–1990s. In this text, its author explains the main points of his theater theory and the specifcs of the theatrical language of his performances in comparison and in connection with the topography of Leningrad.
177-186
Abstract
We present a short excerpt from Jacques Barzun's book From dawn to decadence: 1500 to the present: 500 years of Western cultural life (2000), translated and commented by undergraduate students of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration as part of a course assignment.
187-203 1
Abstract
A commented translation of several essays by a 17th century French moralist writer, Charles de Saint-Denis, seigneur de Saint-Évremond (1613–1703). The frst one, “Conversation with M. de Candale”, recounts events and intrigues of the Fronde era. The other two are humorous and gallant letters that discuss such topics as the best religion for one's wife and the social merits of castration.
204-208
Abstract
Bourriaud, N. (2016). Reliatsionnaia estetika. Postproduktsiia [Relational aesthetics. Postproduction. Trans. by A. Shestakov from Bourriaud, N. (1998). Esthétique relatiomnelle. Paris: Les Presses du Réel. Ibid. (2003). Postproduction. Paris: Les Presses du Réel]. Moscow: Ad Marginem Press. 216 p. (In Russian)
209-215 2
Abstract
Nicholson, H. (2015). Applied drama: The gift of theatre. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 224 p.
216-218 1
Abstract
Petrovskaia, E. (Ed.) (2016). Sinii divan: Filosofskoteoreticheskii zhurnal [Sinii Divan: The Journal of Philosophy and Theory], 21. Moscow: Tri kvadrata. 264 p. (In Russian).
219-234 2
Abstract
Page, C., Koretzky, C., Jodeau-Belle, L. (Eds.) (2016). Théâtre et psychanalyse: Regards croisés sur le malaise dans la civilization. Montpellier: L'Entretemps. 334 p. (In French).


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.


ISSN 2412-9410 (Print)
ISSN 2782-1765 (Online)