Stage direction as a phenomenon of theater of the XXI century

The purpose of the article. The research is connected with the process of assimilation of theatrical direction with the profession of stage designer as a determining trend in the development of modern theater. The methodology is based on the use of comparative, historical, and dynamic methods. This methodological approach allows us to analyze the formation of scenographic direction in time, as well as to highlight the algorithm for the birth of a scenographic image by the director of the performance. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the expansion of ideas about the evolution of directing as a profession towards the profession of a stage designer and about the emergence of a stage mix “stage design direction”. Conclusions. Scenographic direction as a product of the historical evolution of director's art has significantly enriched the figurative philosophical and spectacular components of the theatrical work. At the same time, there is a dynamic tendency of a certain release of the director from the captivity of the playwright, the conquest of the author's text by the director's concept of the performance. The study of the phenomenon of the formation of "scenographic directing" will contribute to the improvement of theatrical education, the correction of educational programs of theatrical educational institutions, taking into account modern trends in the development of the art of directing.

FLUID IDENTITY IN THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY PLAY (2011) BY KRISTOFFER DIAZ

This thesis is an analysis of a play written by Kristoffer Diaz entitled The Elaborate Entrance Of Chad Deity (2011). It investigates the issue of fluid identity that is experienced by citizen in multicultural society. This analysis is related to the multiculturalism approach and the concept of fluid identity by Andrew Robinson and Leary and Tangney. The analysis focuses on the issue of fluid identity. The aim of this analysis is to what extent the character, conflict (plot), setting and stage direction contribute to reveal the issue of fluid identity. The result of the study shows that identity is fluid and dynamics. It is not biologically. Identity can be changed by time and contexts. Fluid identity is influenced by external factors.

Covid Conversations 3: Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk

Elizabeth LeCompte co-founded The Wooster Group with like-minded pioneers in New York in 1975, leading and directing its collaborators as deaths, departures, and new arrivals have changed its composition and emphases over the decades, segueing into a world-wide uncertain present. Kate Valk joined in 1978, the last representative of The Wooster Group’s foundational period, apart from LeCompte herself, who is still a key member of the company. References in this conversation are primarily to works after 2016. LeCompte briefly remarks on the importance of Since I Can Remember – one of the Group’s ongoing works in progress in 2021 – as an archival project that draws on Valk’s memory of how Nayatt School was made during her formative years. Having become, since then, a quintessential Wooster Group performer, Valk extended her artistic skills to stage direction, undertaking, most recently, The B-Side (2017). Both the initiative and idea for the piece came from performer Eric Berryman, who had brought Valk the collection of blues, songs, spirituals, and preachings on the 1965 LP made from the research of scholar folklorist Bruce Chapman. Berryman had been inspired to approach Valk because of her exclusive use of unadulterated historical recordings in Early Shaker Spirituals (2014), her directorial debut. The main work in rehearsal during 2020 and which was still locked down by the Covid-19 pandemic at the time of this conversation is The Mother, a Wooster Group variant of Brecht’s dramatized version of Gorky’s novel, directed by LeCompte. LeCompte discusses the current situation, emphasizing the increased vulnerability of independent artists and small-scale theatre, while giving a glimpse of the disadvantages for such groupings built into the North American system of project funding. The Wooster Group is a salient example of small-scale theatre that, despite continually precarious conditions, which the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated, has achieved its creative goals and has defined its place in the exploratory avant-garde flourishing vigorously in the 1960s and 1970s. This particular avant-garde, LeCompte believes, has seen various important developments over the years but might well now be counting its last days. The conversation here presented was recorded on 31 October 2020, transcribed by Kunsang Kelden, and edited by Maria Shevtsova, Editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

‘Et dat alapam vita’: A Stage Direction in the Chester 'Noah’s Flood'

This note considers the role of one of the stage directions in the Chester cycle. The direction ‘et dat alapam vita’, found only in British Library MS Harley 2124, records the blow struck by Noah’s wife after her sons force her aboard the ark, and is typically discussed in the context of the misogynistic ‘humour’ found in other dramatic and non-dramatic texts of the period. In this note, I provide an alternative, typological reading of the stage direction.

FROM STATION OF LIFE TO STATION OF DEATH IN THE CHARACTERS OF DANCER AND THE GENTLEMAN OF ONEILLS PLAY THIRST ALONG WITH DIVERSE SYMBOLISM

The Thirst centres on the struggle of three shipwreck victims to survive on a small white raft adrift on a glassy sea. Descending into madness as a result of their thirst, they prey on each other until they sacrifice their humanity to the uncaring, black-stained sea. Despite their common predicament, the three are separated by social, as well as psychological, forces. The Dancer is called young from the stage direction of the play. ONeill described her as figure of pitiful care. The Gentleman has been portrayed by O Neill in The Thirst, as a symbolic agent of the practical civilized world-Virginia Floyd. All through the action of the play he exhibits mostly civilized and dignified behaviour and upholds his morality to the bitter end.- Alfred Routz. While himself suffering, he mostly sympathizes with the unbearable suffering of the delicate young lady that the Dancer is. For, this reason, O Neill presented the European man as the name of Gentleman. Symbolism is indicative of a lot deeper sense in simple and commonplace matter. Conventional well-known materials are used to suggest some deeper sense or truth of life and society through a symbolic treatment. A careful reading of ONeills plays will show that in each play he seeks to communicate his feelings about life. It is invariably true that the natural objects he uses in his plays like the sun, the sky, the sea (p,51)etc. are symbols and images of something. The same thing is true of his stage props and even of the make-ups, costumes, the looks, the important gesture(p,51) and even the vocal nuances of his characters.

S. Mamontov and V. Telyakovsky as two fields of attraction in the fate of F. Chaliapin1 and the Russian opera theater

Using meaningful historical material, the article explores the parallels of the creative careers of such great developers of the Russian opera of the late 19th – early 20th centuries as F. Chaliapin, S. Mamontov, and V. Telyakovsky. It was the period of rapid development of innovative stage direction, vocal art, and stage design. The outstanding organizers of theater business S. Mamontov and V. Telyakovsky were at the heart of that creative seething. Being representatives of different social strata (the merchant class and higher nobility), they attracted vivid talents and opened them the way of the private and state opera, respectively. The flourishing of operatic art led to a completely new level of performance. F. Chaliapin and a number of other outstanding representatives of Russian opera began their careers at that time. S. Mamontov’s Private Opera which played a significant role in the development of Russian operatic art was founded in 1896. The repertoire of this theater consisted of works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Borodin. Innovative approaches to the opera performance which was considered as a living synthetic phenomenon integrating the concepts of production and stage design were implemented on the Russian stage for the first time. In its productions, Mamontov’s Private Opera used the principles of realism, which corresponded to the spirit of the works performed. Meanwhile, the development of Russian opera during this period was taking place against the background of complex social relations which aggravated many contradictions both in the life of the society as a whole with its differentiation into metropolitan and provincial life, and in the life on the stage with its specific very mobile interpersonal communications. The article focuses on the careers of S. Mamontov, F. Chaliapin, and V. Telyakovsky. Each of them made an invaluable contribution to the development of Russian opera. From the perspective of the historical culturological approach, the article examines the complicated relationship between the prominent Russian philanthropist and theater director Savva Mamontov, the flexible administrator Vladimir Telyakovsky, and the outstanding opera singer Feodor Chaliapin, and their influence on the formation of the personality of an opera performer and on the development of operatic art in Russia as a whole. The article presents abundant documentary evidence of the peculiarities of their relationship which ultimately determined the vector in the development of the Russian opera theater.

A Walk into the Depth of the Garden (about One Metaphor in the Play ‘Uncle Vanya’ By A. Chekhov)

The metaphor «depth of the garden» introduced in the stage direction of the first act of «Uncle Vanya» is analyzed. It is proved that both entities of the genitive metaphor have a metaphoric meaning. The metaphoric meaning of the lexeme ‘garden’ is connected with units of legal semantics. The lexeme ‘depth’ is connected with water metaphors in the text. ‘The depth of the garden’ points to the degree of Serebryakov’s doomness in his search for God’s mercy, which is depicted through water images. The analysis of the metaphor with its complex relations, including phonetic ones, demonstrates Chekhov’s poetic style, that gives the word specific weight and lends the language a leading role in depicting the world. A fragment of the world – Serebryakov’s walk in the garden – looks like predestination of professor’s fate, made up of his missteps.

To the question of transformation of literary texts into stage version (“Three Years” of A. P. Chekhov in theatrical interpretation of S. V. Zhenovach)

This article is dedicated to the question of text transformation from authorial intent to stage impersonation. Despite the established tradition of studying the questions of recoding of literary text into theatrical, there is yet no theoretical-literary substantiation. Recoding is considered a complex process of creating a new type of text by the theatre director for staging a play. Therefore, an attempt is made to analyze the elements of transformation of literary text into its stage version, using the example of S. V. Zhenovach’s unpublished manuscript for stage direction based on A. P. Chekhov’s novella “Three Years”. The novelty of this research consists in determination of the patterns in transformation of literary text into stage version. The tools and means of expression applied in theatre and literature are different. If in literature it is possible to set several task and solve them all within the framework of the novel, then in theatre, it must be one ultimate task that organizes the action. Identification of the key peculiarities of existence of such type of text as “stage direction” on the example of transformation of the novella “The Years” from the authorial intent to stage impersonation demonstrated its significance for not only theatre studies, but also the theory of literature.

RACIAL STEREOTYPING IN BRUCE NORRIS PLAY SCRIPT CLYBOURNE PARK (2010)

This thesis is an analysis of a play written by Bruce Norris, entitled Clybourne Park (2010). This study is aimed to expose the issue about racial stereotyping which is done by the white people toward the Black and to know contribution dramatic elements; character, plot (conflict), setting, and stage direction in revealing the issue of racial stereotyping. This analysis is related to the concept of Orientalism by Edward Said in the post-colonial approach and also supported by the concepts of stereotype by Gamble. The result of this analysis is to expose the forms of stereotype toward black people. White sees blacks as poor people and black as a barbaric group.

Singularity and Multiplication In The Translation of The Dramatic Text

This text in front of you is the translator’s review, a case study, but also a deep analysis of tragedy Menelao (una tragedia contemporanea) written in 2016 by Davide Carnevali. The playwright sees în Menelaus an anti-hero with aspirations of a hero: recently returned after an exhausting fight, the king of Sparta finds himself sliding into an existential crisis which throws him into an endless depression. The plot follows the journey and the devastating consequences of a psychosis generated by post-traumatic shock caused by the war which the Spartan king survived… Without a doubt, the Italian’s writing method slightly touches the unconventional. Right after the list of characters, before the Prologue, the playwright himself carefully places a stage direction which can be seen as a statement, stating the fact that the acronyms and the temporal incongruities must be considered what they are...nothing! The concept of time does not exist in tragedies, just a glimpse which passes at the same time with the epiphany, or which can expand to the horizon of an end which doesn’t take place, for all eternity.