If the actors were just standing or sitting on chairs on the stage, while talking about the subject of the production - would you call it theater? Even though modern Art accustomed us to everyone - no. dramatic art- this is an action, representation, activity of images, feelings, a play of passions. The theater has changed over time, but the meaning inherent in the word itself by the ancient Greeks has not changed. Theater is a spectacle, and its basis is action.

Stage action is the cornerstone and basis of acting and theatrical art, which combines all the components of the actor's game. In it, they are combined into an integral system of thoughts, feelings, movements. In this article, we offer you a small explanation of this important and voluminous concept.

The nature of stage action

Art as a figurative understanding of reality exists in different forms and forms. hallmark each, giving out its specificity, is the material that is used to create artistic images. For a musician it is a sound, for a writer it is a word. For an actor, this material is action. In the broadest sense, action is an act of will aimed at achieving a specific goal. Acting or stage action is one of the main expressive means, a single psychophysical process of achieving a goal in the fight against the proposed circumstances of a small circle, expressed in some way in time and space. Through it, the artist embodies his stage image, reveals the goals, the inner world of the character and the ideological concept of the work.

talking in simple words, stage action is the ability to see, hear, move, think and speak in the given circumstances in order to realize the image. This definition seems to be more understandable, but at the same time it refers us to the conclusion about the complexity of the structure of the constituent parts. In fact, action implies their coordinated work and is a synthesis,.

Mental actions are characterized by a directed influence on the psyche (feelings, consciousness, will) of both another person and one's own. Already from this definition it is clear that mental actions in the profession of an actor are one of the main categories, because the role is realized through it. They are also varied - request, joke, reproach, warning, persuasion, confession, praise, quarrel - these are just a short list of examples.

Mental actions, depending on the means of implementation, are verbal and mimic. They apply in the same way in different situations. For example, a person has disappointed you. You can reprimand him, or you can look reproachfully and shake your head without saying a word. The difference is that facial expressions are more poetic, but not always understandable from the outside, while the word is more expressive.

As mentioned above, a physical action is impossible without a mental one, just like vice versa. In order to console a person, express support for him, you must first approach him, put your hand on his shoulder, hug him. Mental action in this case leaves an imprint on the performance of the physical. After all, no one will run, bouncing, to a person in order to console him in grief.

But the physical action also affects the mental. Let's imagine such a situation. Wanting to persuade a person to some action, you want to talk to him alone. You choose the moment, bring him into the room, and so that no one bothers you, you want to close the door with a key. But you can’t find it either in your pockets or on the coffee table nearby. This leads to irritation, fussiness, leaves an imprint on the conversation.

From all this, a simple conclusion suggests itself - a good actor should pay equal attention to both the physical and mental side of the intended role and, accordingly, develop the necessary skills.

Organic stage action

From the very definition it is clear that the actions of the actor must be harmonious, natural, believable, only in this case it is possible to achieve an organic role and performance. To be authentic, the stage action of the artist must have such qualities as:

Individuality. Personal character and its originality are one of those qualities that give credibility to the stage action. K. S. Stanislavsky wrote: “Let the actor not forget that one must always live from his own being, and not from the role, taking from the latter only its proposed circumstances.”

Uniqueness. We have already written about the need for improvisation, which makes each performance unique. This best reflects the requirement of K. S. Stanislavsky to play “today, here, now” every time.

Emotionality. The action must not only be logical and consistent, which is necessary for a sense of truth, but also take on a coloring that conveys impulse and passion, affecting the viewer.

Multidimensionality. As in life, on the stage, the coexistence of various behavioral tendencies, their change, gives a sense of authenticity.

How to develop the described abilities? These questions have been answered in previous blog posts. Let's remember the main points.

First, the actor must “be on stage” all the time. Do not think about the audience, do not notice them, focusing on the proposed circumstances of the production. To do this, you need to develop.

Secondly, it is important for a novice artist to be able to control his body. - an important component. It not only makes the game expressive, but also contributes to the reliability of the whole action.

Thirdly, the actor must learn to live with repeated feelings, to evoke these feelings in himself, despite the conventionality of the scenery and the whole work.

Fourthly, action as a psychophysical act is impossible without mastery of the word. is a necessary and useful skill.

For the development of acting skills, look for training on our website and blog.

a) Profession - actor

The art of the actor is the art of creating stage images. Performing a certain role in one of the types of stage art (drama, opera, ballet, variety, etc.), the actor, as it were, likens himself to the person on whose behalf he acts in a performance, variety number, etc.

The material for creating this “face” (character) is the actor’s own natural data: along with speech, body, movements, plasticity, rhythm, etc. such as emotionality, imagination, memory, etc.

One of the main features of the actor's art is that "the process of acting creativity in its final stage always ends in front of the audience at the time of the performance, concert, performance."

The art of an actor involves creating an image of a character ( actor). The stage image, in its essence, is a fusion of the internal qualities of this character (actor), i.e. what we call "character", with external qualities - "characteristic".

Creating the stage image of his hero, the actor, on the one hand, reveals his spiritual world, expressing it through deeds, actions, words, thoughts and experiences, and on the other hand, conveys with varying degrees of certainty (or theatrical conventions) the manner of behavior and appearance .

A person who has devoted himself to the acting profession must have certain natural data: contagiousness, temperament, fantasy, imagination, observation, memory, faith; expressive: voice and diction, appearance; stage charm and, of course, high performing technique.

In recent years, the concept of artistry includes not only and not so much external data, the ability to change "appearance" (that is, what is called and understood literally - "acting"), but also the ability to think on stage, to express personal attitude in the role to life.

When we talk about acting, we mean that it is fed by two sources that are inseparable unity: life - with its richness and diversity, and - the inner world of the artist, his personality.

Life experience, a sharpened emotional memory (if the actor knows how to use them), are his main wealth when creating works of art. It is experience that influences a person’s actions, his perception of the life around him, and forms his worldview. At the same time, experience teaches us to see and penetrates the essence of phenomena. How deep this penetration will be, and how it (the phenomenon) will be vividly revealed, depends on whether the viewer will receive aesthetic pleasure from the actor's performance. After all, the desire to bring people joy with their creativity is the very core of the acting profession. Naturally, to a large extent it depends on whether the actor has the gift to observe life, the behavior of people. (Remember, for example, someone else's manner of speech, gestures, gait, and much more). Observation helps to capture the essence of the character of any person, fix in your memory and collect in the “pantry” of your consciousness living intonations, turns of speech, a bright appearance, etc., so that then, at the time of work, search and creation of a stage image, subconsciously draw from this pantry the traits of character and characteristic that he (the actor) needs.

But, of course, “immersion in life”, its disclosure requires from the artist not only talent and a bright personality, but also filigree, refined skill.

Real talent and true mastery implies both expressiveness of speech, and richness of intonation, facial expressions, and a concise, logically justified gesture, and a trained body, and mastery of the art of a sounding word, singing, movement, rhythm.

The most important (main) expressive means of an actor is an action in the image, an action that in essence is (should be) an organic alloy of his psychophysical and verbal actions.

The actor is called upon to embody on stage the synthesis of the author's and the director's ideas; reveal artistic sense dramatic work, enriching it with his own interpretation, based on his life experience, their observations, their reflections and, finally, their own creative individuality.

The individuality of an actor is a very complex concept. Here is the world of conscious and subconscious interests that accumulate in his emotional memory; this is the nature of his temperament (open, explosive or hidden, reserved); this and his data and much more. Preserving the richness of creative individuality, diversity in the choice of visual means, the actor subordinates his creativity to the main task - through the stage image he created, to reveal the ideological and artistic essence of the dramatic work.

b) The nature of acting

For at least two centuries, two opposing views on the nature of acting have been fighting among themselves. In one period, one wins, in another - another point of view. But the defeated side never gives up completely, and sometimes what yesterday was rejected by the majority of stage figures, today again becomes the dominant view.

The struggle between these two currents invariably focuses on the question of whether the nature of theatrical art requires that the actor live on the stage with the real feelings of the character, or whether stage acting is based on the actor's ability to reproduce the external form of human experiences, the external side of behavior by one technique. "The art of experiencing" and "the art of representation" - so called K.S. Stanislavsky these currents fighting among themselves.

The actor of the “art of experiencing”, according to Stanislavsky, strives to experience the role, i.e. experience the feelings of the performed person, every time, with every act of creativity; the actor of the "art of performance" seeks to experience the role only once, at home or in rehearsal, in order to first know the external form of the natural manifestation of feelings, and then learn to reproduce it mechanically.

It is not difficult to see that the differences in the views of opposite directions come down to a different resolution of the question of the material of acting art.

But what is the reason for these inevitable theoretical contradictions in the mouths of stage practitioners?

The fact is that the very nature of acting art is contradictory. Therefore, it cannot lie down on the Procrustean bed of one-sided theory. The complex nature of this art, with all its contradictions, each actor learns from himself. It often happens that an actor, once on the stage, casts aside all theoretical views and creates not only without any agreement with them, but even contrary to them, but in full accordance with the laws objectively inherent in acting art.

That is why the supporters of both the one and the other direction are unable to hold on to an uncompromising, to the end consistent assertion of the views of their school. Living practice inevitably pushes them off the pinnacle of impeccable, but one-sided adherence to principles, and they begin to introduce various reservations and amendments into their theories.

c) The unity of the physical and mental, objective and subjective in acting

The actor, as you know, expresses the image he creates with the help of his behavior, his actions on stage. Reproduction by an actor of human behavior (human actions) in order to create a holistic image and constitutes the essence of stage play.

Human behavior has two sides: physical and mental. Moreover, one can never be separated from the other, and one cannot be reduced to the other. Every act of human behavior is a single, integral psychophysical act. Therefore, it is impossible to understand a person's behavior, his actions, without understanding his thoughts and feelings. But it is also impossible to understand his feelings and thoughts without understanding his objective connections and relations with the environment.

The “School of Experience” is, of course, absolutely right in requiring the actor to reproduce on stage not only the external form of human feelings, but also the corresponding inner experiences. When mechanically reproducing only the external form of human behavior, the actor tears out a very important link from the integral act of this behavior - the experience of the character, his thoughts and feelings. The acting in this case is inevitably mechanized. As a result, the actor cannot reproduce the external form of behavior with exhaustive completeness and persuasiveness.

Indeed, how can a person, without experiencing, for example, a shadow of anger, accurately and convincingly reproduce the external form of manifestation of this feeling? Suppose he has seen and knows from his own experience that a person in a state of anger clenches his fists and draws his eyebrows. And what are his eyes, mouth, shoulders, legs, torso doing at this time? After all, every muscle is involved in every emotion. An actor can truthfully and correctly (in accordance with the requirements of nature) bang his fist on the table and by this action express a feeling of anger only if at that moment even the soles of his feet live correctly. If the actor's legs "lied", the viewer no longer believes his hand either.

But is it possible to memorize and mechanically reproduce on the stage the whole infinite complex system of large and small movements of all organs, which expresses this or that emotion? Of course not. In order to faithfully reproduce this system of movements, it is necessary to grasp the given reaction in all its psychophysical integrity, i.e. in the unity and completeness of the internal and external, mental and physical, subjective and objective, it must be reproduced not mechanically, but organically.

It is wrong if the process of experiencing becomes the end in itself of the theater and the actor sees the whole meaning and purpose of art in experiencing the feelings of his hero. And such a danger threatens the actor of the psychological theater if he underestimates the importance of the objective side of human behavior and the ideological and social tasks of art. Until now, there are still quite a few amateurs (especially amateurs) in the acting environment who “suffer” on stage: die of love and jealousy, blush with anger, turn pale with despair, tremble with passion, cry with real tears of grief - how many actors and actresses he sees in this is not only powerful means, but also the very goal of his art! To live before the eyes of a thousandth crowd with the feelings of the depicted person - for this they go on stage, they see this as the highest creative pleasure. The role for them is an occasion to show their emotionality and infect the viewer with their feelings (they always talk about feelings and almost never about thoughts). This is their creative task, their professional pride, their acting success. Of all kinds of human actions, such actors value impulsive actions most of all, and of all varieties of manifestations of human feelings - affects.

It is easy to see that with such an approach to one's creative task, the subjective in the role becomes the main subject of the image. The objective connections and relations of the hero with his environment (and along with this the external form of experiences) fade into the background.

Meanwhile, any advanced, truly realistic theater, aware of its ideological and social tasks, has always striven to evaluate those phenomena of life that it showed from the stage, over which it pronounced its socio-moral and political verdict. The actors of such a theater inevitably had to not only think with the thoughts of the image and feel with its feelings, but also think and feel about the thoughts and feelings of the image, think about the image; they saw the meaning of their art not only in living before the eyes of the public the feelings of their role, but above all in creating artistic image, carrying a certain idea that would reveal an objective truth that is important for people.

The body of an actor belongs not only to the actor-image, but also to the actor-creator, because each movement of the body not only expresses one or another moment of the life of the image, but also obeys a number of requirements in terms of stage skills: each movement of the body must be plastic, clear, rhythmic, scenic, extremely expressive - all these requirements are fulfilled not by the body of the image, but by the body of the master actor.

The psyche of an actor, as we found out, also belongs not only to the actor-creator, but also to the actor-image: it, like the body, serves as the material from which the actor creates his role.

Consequently, the psyche of the actor and his body in their unity simultaneously constitute both the carrier of creativity and its material.

d) Basic principles of education of an actor

The professional (stage) education of an actor is based, as you know, on the system of K.S. Stanislavsky, but this system must be able to use. Its dogmatic, dogmatic application can bring irreparable harm instead of good.

The first and main principle of the Stanislavsky system is the basic principle of any realistic art - the truth of life. Absolutely everything is imbued with the demand for the truth of life in Stanislavsky's system.

To insure yourself against mistakes, you need to develop the habit of constantly comparing the performance of any creative task (even the most elementary exercise) with the very truth of life.

However, if nothing should be allowed on the stage that would contradict the truth of life, this does not mean at all that everything from life that only catches your eye can be dragged onto the stage. Selection is needed. But what is the selection criterion?

This is where the second most important principle of the school of K.S. comes to the rescue. Stanislavsky - his doctrine of the most important task. The super-task is that for which the artist wants to introduce his idea into the minds of people, that which the artist ultimately strives for. The super-task is the most cherished, dearest, most essential desire of the artist, it is an expression of his spiritual activity, his purposefulness, his passion in the struggle for the affirmation of ideals and truths that are infinitely dear to him.

Thus, Stanislavsky's teaching about the most important task is not only a requirement from the actor of a high ideological creativity, but also a requirement of ideological activity.

Remembering the most important task, using it as a compass, the artist will not make a mistake either in the selection of material, or in the choice of techniques and means of expression.

But what did Stanislavsky consider expressive material in acting? This question is answered by the third principle of the Stanislavsky system - the principle of activity and action, which says that you cannot play images and passions, but you must act in the images and passions of the role.

This principle, this method of working on a role, is the screw on which the entire practical part of the system turns. Whoever does not understand the principle does not understand the whole system.

It is not difficult to establish that all of Stanislavsky's methodological and technological instructions have one goal - to awaken the actor's natural human nature for organic creativity in accordance with the most important task. The value of any technique is considered by Stanislavsky from this point of view. There should be nothing artificial, nothing mechanical in the work of an actor, everything in him must obey the requirement of organicity - this is the fourth principle of Stanislavsky's system.

The final stage of the creative process in acting, from the point of view of Stanislavsky, is the creation of a stage image through the organic creative transformation of the actor into this image. The principle of reincarnation is the fifth and decisive principle of the system.

So, we have counted five basic principles of the Stanislavsky system, on which the professional (stage) education of an actor is based. Stanislavsky did not invent the laws of acting - he discovered them. This is his great historical merit.

The system is the only reliable foundation on which alone it is possible to build a solid building for the modern spectacle, its goal is to bring to life an organic, natural process of independent and free creativity.

e) Internal and external technique. Unity of sense of truth and sense of form

Speaking about the professional education of an actor, it must be emphasized that no theatrical school can and should not set itself the task of giving recipes for creativity, recipes for stage play. To teach an actor to create the conditions necessary for his creativity, to remove the internal and external obstacles that lie in the way of organic creativity, to clear the way for such creativity - these are the most important tasks of professional training. The student himself must move along the cleared path.

Artistic creativity is an organic process. It is impossible to learn to create by mastering techniques. But if we create favorable conditions for the creative development of the constantly enriched personality of the student, we can finally achieve a magnificent flowering of the talent inherent in him.

What are the favorable conditions for creativity?

We know that the actor in his psychophysical unity is an instrument for himself. The material of his art is his actions. Therefore, in order to create favorable conditions for his creativity, we must first of all bring into proper condition the instrument of his acting art - his own organism. It is necessary to make this tool malleable to the creative impulse, i.e. ready to take action at any moment. To do this, it is necessary to improve both the internal (mental) and external (physical) side of it. The first task is carried out with the help of internal technology, the second - with the help of the development of external technology.

The internal technique of an actor lies in the ability to create the necessary internal (mental) conditions for the natural and organic generation of actions. Arming an actor with internal technique is connected with cultivating in him the ability to evoke in himself the right state of health - that inner state, in the absence of which creativity is impossible.

The creative state consists of a number of interconnected elements, or links. Such elements are: active concentration (stage attention), a body free from excessive tension (stage freedom), a correct assessment of the proposed circumstances (stage faith) and the readiness and desire to act arising on this basis. These moments need to be brought up in an actor in order to develop in him the ability to bring himself into the right stage state of health.

It is necessary for the actor to control his attention, his body (muscles) and be able to take seriously the stage fiction, as the true truth of life.

The education of an actor in the field of external technique aims to make the actor's physical apparatus (his body) pliable to an internal impulse.

"It is impossible with an unprepared body, - says Stanislavsky, - to convey the unconscious creativity of nature, just as it is impossible to play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on detuned instruments."

It happens like this: the internal conditions for creativity seem to be present, and the desire to act naturally arises in the actor; it seems to him that he understood and felt the given place of the role and is already ready to express this in his physical behavior. But then he begins to act, and ... nothing happens. His voice and body do not obey him and do not at all what he foresaw as an already found solution to the creative task: the actor’s ears just sounded intonation, magnificent in richness of its content, which was about to be born, but instead from his larynx some rough, unpleasant and inexpressive sounds burst out of themselves, having absolutely nothing to do with what was asking to come out from the very depths of his agitated soul.

Or another example. An excellent gesture is about to be born in the actor, expressing exactly what he is living inwardly at the moment, but instead of this meaningful and beautiful gesture, some kind of absurd movement involuntarily arises.

In itself, the internal impulse in both cases was correct, it was rich in content and correctly directed the muscles, it demanded a certain intonation and a certain gesture and, as it were, called on the corresponding muscles to fulfill them, but the muscles did not obey him, did not obeyed his inner voice, because they were not trained enough for this.

This always happens when the external material of an actor turns out to be too coarse, uncouth, to obey the most subtle requirements of artistic design. That is why it is so important that in the process of internal education of the actor, the internal technique is supplemented by the external one. The upbringing of internal and external technique cannot be carried out separately, for these are two sides of the same process (moreover, the leading principle in this unity is internal technique).

It is impossible to recognize as correct such a pedagogical practice, in which the acting teacher relieves himself of any responsibility for equipping students with external equipment, believing that it is entirely within the competence of teachers of auxiliary training disciplines (such as speech technique, gymnastics, acrobatics, fencing, rhythm, dance, etc.). The task of special auxiliary training disciplines is to educate a number of skills and abilities in students. However, these skills and abilities in themselves are not yet external techniques. They become outer techniques when they are connected to the inner. And this connection can only be made by an acting teacher.

By cultivating inner technique, we develop in the student a special ability, which Stanislavsky called the "sense of truth." The feeling of truth is the foundation of acting technique, its solid and reliable foundation. Without this feeling, the actor cannot fully create, because in his own creativity he is not able to distinguish the fake from the truth, the gross falsehood of pretense and cliché from the truth of genuine action and real experience. A sense of truth is a compass, guided by which the actor will never go astray.

But the nature of art demands from the actor another faculty, which may be called "sense of form." This special professional sense of the actor gives him the opportunity to freely dispose of all expressive means in order to influence the viewer in a certain way. It is to the development of this ability that, in the final analysis, the education of external technique is reduced.

In constant interaction and interpenetration, the actor must have two of his most important professional abilities - a sense of truth and a sense of form.

Interacting and interpenetrating, they give rise to something third - the scenic expressiveness of acting. This is what the acting teacher strives for by combining internal and external technique. This is one of the most important tasks of the professional education of an actor.

It is sometimes thought that any scenic color, if it is born from the lively, sincere feeling of the actor, will turn out to be expressive by this alone. This is not true. It often happens that an actor lives sincerely and reveals himself truthfully, while the viewer remains cold, because the actor's feelings do not reach him.

The external technique must impart expressiveness, brightness, and clarity to the acting.

What qualities make acting expressive? The purity and clarity of the external pattern in movements and speech, the simplicity and clarity of the form of expression, the accuracy of each stage paint, each gesture and intonation, as well as their artistic completeness.

But all these are qualities that determine the expressiveness of acting in every role and every performance. And there are also special means of expression, which each time are dictated by the originality of the stage form of a given performance. This originality is associated primarily with the ideological and artistic features of the dramatic material. One play requires a monumental and strict form of stage embodiment, another requires lightness and mobility, a third needs a jewelery finish of an unusually fine actor's drawing, a fourth needs the brightness of thick and juicy everyday colors ...

The ability of an actor to subordinate his performance, in addition to the general requirements of stage expressiveness, to the special requirements of the form of a given performance, designed to accurately and vividly express its content, is one of the most important signs of high acting skills. This ability is born as a result of the combination of internal and external technology.

f) The specifics of the creativity of a variety actor

One of the main features of the stage is the cult of the actor. He (the actor) is not only the main, but, at times, the only figure in the art of variety art. No artist - no number. On the stage, the artist, whatever he may be, good or bad, having stepped on the stage, remains alone with the audience. No accessories help him (props, props, decoration, etc.), that is, everything that is successfully used in the theater. About a variety artist, by right, one can say: "a naked man on bare ground." Actually, this definition can become the key to revealing the so-called specifics of the creativity of a variety artist.

That is why the individuality of the performer is of great importance. She not only alive soul what happens on the stage, but also, as a rule, determines the genre in which the artist performs. “Variety is an art where the performer's talent crystallizes and his name becomes the name of a unique genre…” Very often, a truly talented artist becomes the ancestor of one or the other. Remember the actors we talked about.

Of course, the specificity of the variety art, its performing art requires that the artist be not just a bright individuality, but that this individuality itself be humanly interesting to the audience.

Each pop number carries a portrait of its creator. He is either psychologically subtle and precise, smart, splashes with mischief, wit, graceful, inventive; either dry, boring, ordinary, like its creator. And the last name, unfortunately, is legion.

The main goal of a variety artist is to create a number, in the process of performing which, revealing his creative possibilities, he embodies his theme in his own image and appearance.

Sincerity, in some way “confessionalism”, with which the actor gives his art, his thoughts, his feelings to the audience, with “an intolerant desire to tell him something that he has not seen, heard, will not see in his whole life and will not hear, ”is one of the specific signs of acting creativity on the stage. Only the depth, sincerity of performance, and not self-display captures the viewer. It was then that he was remembered by the public for a long time.

Leading pop artists have always understood and understand how great the tasks facing him are. Each time, entering the stage, a variety artist needs the utmost mobilization of all spiritual and physical forces to create a performance. After all, an artist on the stage usually acts, if I may say so, according to the laws of the square theater, when the message becomes the main thing for him, as a result of maximum concentration, since personal experiences, the spiritual and spiritual world of the artist are of great importance for the public.

Equally important for a variety artist is his ability to improvise, to an improvisational performing style. On the stage, where the actor communicates with the audience "on an equal footing", where the distance between him and the audience, listeners is extremely insignificant, improvisation is initially set by the conditions of the game.

Any pop number should give the public the impression of being created and performed right this minute. “Otherwise, he immediately loses the condition of his intelligibility and persuasiveness - he ceases to be pop,” one of the best authors and experts in this type of art, Vladimir Zakharovich Mass, emphasized the peculiarity of performing a pop number.

An artist who has entered the stage must appear before the audience not as a performer of a pre-written text, but as a person who "here and now" invents and pronounces his own words. Nothing brings the audience into active participation like an actor's improvisation.

Naturally, the freedom of improvisation comes to an actor with professionalism. And high professionalism implies great internal mobility, when the logic of the character's behavior easily becomes the logic of the performer's behavior, and the character of the image's thinking captivates him (the performer) with his own characteristics. Then fantasy quickly picks up all this and tries it on.

It is natural that even the actors most capable of improvisation, naturally predisposed to communication, go through a very difficult, and sometimes quite painful, path of mastering the skill that allows them to really pronounce the author's text as their own.

Of course, in many respects the impression of improvisation is created by the performer's ability, as it were, to look for a word and put together a phrase in front of the audience. Here, the appearance of pauses and backlashes, rhythmic accelerations or vice versa slowdowns, expression, etc., helps. At the same time, we must not forget that the nature and manner of improvisation are directly dependent on the conditions of the genre and the director's decision.

There is one more feature of the stage artist - he looks at his characters, evaluates them, as it were, together with the audience. Performing his number, he actually conducts a dialogue with the public, owning their thoughts and feelings. “If in this union of the artist and the viewer all the links are merged, if harmony is achieved between artists and listeners, then minutes and hours of mutual trust come and great art begins to live.”

If the artist, in his desire to win audience success, builds his calculation on the comic reprise moments contained in a variety work, acting on the principle: the more of them, then, as it seems to him, the artist is “funnier”, then the farther he goes from the real art, from the genuine stage.

A variety artist should be characterized by: looseness of feelings, thoughts, fantasies; contagious temperament, sense of proportion, taste; the ability to stay on stage, quickly establish contact with the audience; speed of reaction, readiness for immediate action, the ability to respond with improvisation to any changes in the proposed circumstances; reincarnation, lightness and ease of execution.

Of no less importance is the presence of charm, charm, artistry, grace of form and, of course, mischief, courage, infectious gaiety in a variety artist.

You ask: "How can one artist have all these qualities?"

Maybe! If not all at once, then by the majority! Here is what he writes about M.V. Mironova, the famous theater critic and writer Y. Yuzovsky: “It contains the flesh and blood of the stage, the lightness of this genre and the seriousness of this genre, and the grace and dashing of this genre, and the lyrics of this genre, the pathos of this genre, and “damn me” this genre…”

Each stage artist is a kind of theater. At least by the fact that he (the stage artist), using his specific techniques, needs to solve the same tasks as the drama artist, but in three to five minutes of stage life allotted for this. After all, all the laws of mastery of a dramatic (or operatic) artist are obligatory for the stage.

Possession of the art of speech, movement, plasticity is a prerequisite for the skill of a variety actor, his profession. “Without an external form, both the most internal characteristic and the soul of the image will not reach the public. The external characteristic explains, illustrates and thus brings to the viewer the invisible inner spiritual flow of the role.

But, of course, in the art of a variety artist, as well as any actor, in addition to mastering movement, rhythm, in addition to stage charm, personal talent, artistic merit, the qualities of a literary or musical work play a huge role. Even despite the fact that on stage the author (as well as the director) "dies" in the actor-performer, this does not diminish their significance. On the contrary, they become even more significant, since it is with their help that the personality of a variety artist is revealed.

But, unfortunately, for some reason, even today, every actor who performs on the concert stage can be considered a pop artist, although his repertoire and performance have nothing to do with the stage. To be honest, in the mass of pop artists, we can often meet someone who does not know how to reveal, let alone deepen the essence performed work, create a stage image. Such a performer is entirely at the mercy of the repertoire: he is looking for a work that will in itself cause laughter and applause. He takes any thing, even rude, vulgar, just to be successful with the audience. Such an artist, sometimes ignoring the meaning of the performance, hurries from reprise to reprise, blurts out part of the text, shifts emphasis, which ultimately leads not only to verbal, but also to semantic absurdity. True, it should be noted that even a good literary or musical work of such a performer can acquire a shade of vulgarity and facelessness.

Artistic images created by a variety artist, no matter what genre they belong to (colloquial, musical, original), because of their recognition, may seem easily accessible to the performer. But it is precisely in this accessibility and apparent simplicity that the main difficulties of a variety artist lie.

The creation of a stage image on the stage has its own fundamental features, which are determined by the "game conditions" of the stage, as a type of stage art, and the "game conditions" of one or another genre.

In the stage there is no temporal extension of the character's fate, there is no gradual increase in the conflict and its smooth completion. There is no plot development either. A stage actor needs to live through the complex, psychologically diverse life of his character in a matter of minutes. “... In about twenty minutes, I must quickly master myself, speaking vulgarly, change the skin and climb from one skin to another.” * At the same time, the viewer must immediately understand where, when and why the act of the act takes place.

The art of a variety artist, the life of a performer on a variety stage is largely based on the laws of acting, discovered by K.S. Stanislavsky, E.B. Vakhtangov, M.A. Chekhov and many other outstanding directors and theater actors. Unfortunately, when speaking about the stage, they prefer to remain silent about this, and if they do, it is very rare and, at times, dismissively. Although the whole creative life of Raikin, Mirov, Mironova, Rina Zelena and many others, who combined pop catchiness with the ability to live the life of their characters, confirms their commitment to the Stanislavsky system and the acting schools of Vakhtangov and Chekhov.

True, and this must be emphasized, the so-called directions of “experiencing” and “performance” that have developed in the drama theater are losing their features on the stage and are of no fundamental importance. The pop artist, as it were, “puts on” the mask of his character, while remaining himself. In addition, reincarnating, he is in direct contact with the viewer. He (the actor) suddenly changes his hairstyle right in front of our eyes, (he somehow messed up his hair), or does something with his jacket (buttoned it on the wrong button), starts speaking in the voice of his hero, and ... "the portrait is ready." That is, with two or three strokes he created the image of his character.

A peculiar form of reincarnation on the stage is transformation. Not trickery circus performance, but a genuine expressive means, a technique that can carry a significant semantic load. “When I first began to engage in transformation,” said A.I. Raikin, - many said that this was trickery, a circus genre. And I went for it consciously, realizing that transformation is one of the components of the theater of miniatures.

The need to reveal in a short time fragment a lively and complex character forces the artist to devote Special attention external drawing of the role, achieving a certain exaggeration of even the grotesqueness of the character, not only in appearance, but also in his behavior.

Creating an artistic image on the stage, the actor selects the most typical character traits and characteristics of his character. This is how the grotesque, bright stage hyperbole, justified by character, temperament, habits, etc., is born. Actually, on the stage, the stage image is made up of a combination of the internal and external properties of the character, with the primacy of the external pattern, that is, the characteristic.

Minimizing theatrical accessories (decoration, scenery, make-up) makes the performance more tense, enhances the expression of the game, and changes the very nature of the artist's stage behavior. His game becomes sharper, sharper, his gesture is more precise, his movement is more energetic.

For a variety artist, it is not enough to master the technical skills of performing (for example, vocal or speech data, or body plasticity, etc.), they must be combined with the ability to find contact with the audience.

The ability to build relationships with the audience is one of the most important aspects of the talent and skill of a variety artist. After all, he communicates directly with the public, addresses it. And this is one of the main features of pop art. When any scenes, excerpts from performances, operas, operettas, circuses are performed on the stage, their performance is corrected taking into account this feature. Moreover, in the very first seconds of his appearance on stage, an actor who has not been able to establish strong contact with the audience can be accurately predicted - he will fail, and his act will not be successful.

If an instrumentalist or vocalist from work to work can still win over the audience, then a variety artist performing a monologue, feuilleton, couplets, parodies, etc. - never. Polite observation of the audience over what is happening on the stage is tantamount to failure. Recall: free communication with the public, the absence of a "fourth wall", that is, the viewer is the partner of the performer (one of the main generic features of pop art), also means that the public becomes an accomplice in the actor's creativity. In a word, to make the audience your ally, like-minded, supporter is one of the main tasks of the performer. This skill speaks of the skill of the actor.

Defining in general terms the basic principle of acting, we can say that this is the principle of reincarnation, when the actor, as it were, personifies himself with his character, speaks and acts on his behalf. However, acting techniques based on this general principle, can be radically different from each other. Thus, it is customary to distinguish between external and internal reincarnation. At the same time, external or internal reincarnation can be expressed through formal technical devices - make-up and costume (for example, the most complex portrait makeup of M. Strauch as Lenin in several performances and films - external reincarnation; the absence of a mandatory false nose for S. Shakurov in the role of Cyrano de Bergerac - inner reincarnation). Or: the same internal or external reincarnation can be based on psycho-emotional acting adaptations - the so-called. "school of representation" and "school of experience". In the first case, the role is built by the actor mainly on brightly theatrical, often farcical devices; in the second - on the methods of lifelikeness, reliability. However, the concepts of external and internal reincarnation can only be separated relatively. Theatrical art is extremely conditional in nature, and even completely following the well-known principle of the “fourth wall” (allegedly separating the stage from auditorium), the actor in his work flexibly interacts with the reactions of the public, on the one hand, adjusting to these reactions, and on the other hand, controlling them. Actually, the spectator also perfectly feels the fundamental conventionality of theatrical art: even fully empathizing with the characters, he does not confuse the actor with the character, and the stage reality with life. Exceptions can only be seen in children's theater when the inexperienced young viewers can shout at the top of their lungs, warning the character of the danger that threatens him.

The actor's working tools are his psychophysical data: body; plastic; motility; voice data (diction, ligaments, breathing apparatus); ear for music; sense of rhythm; emotionality; observation; memory; imagination; erudition; reaction rate, etc. Accordingly, each of these qualities needs to be developed and constantly trained - only this allows the actor to be in working shape. Just as a ballet actor has to start every day with a cycle of exercises at the barre, an opera actor with vocalization and chants, so a dramatic actor urgently needs daily lessons in stage speech and movement.

Each role played is a complex conglomeration of creativity of several individuals: the playwright, director, composer, choreographer, artist, make-up artist and other members of the production team become full-fledged co-authors of the actor in the process of preparing the performance. However, at the performance itself, the actor is left alone with the audience; he becomes the ultimate conductor, the translator of the collective creative idea to the viewer. The auditorium itself becomes the most important co-author of the actor's work, making daily adjustments to the rehearsed role. The process of acting creativity is always performed together with the audience, at the time of the performance. And each performance remains unique, unrepeatable.

Historical essay.

The origins of acting go back to the mass performances of early pagan rites and rituals, which syncretically united the beginnings of all types of art. In these rituals, various scenes were played out, presented in theatrical form, associated with key moments in the life of society (hunting; actions accompanying the change of the calendar cycle and supposed to promote fertility; initiation rituals; actions aimed at relationships with the spirits of ancestors and gods; etc. .). Gradually, mass ritual actions performed by the whole clan or tribe were transformed into group ones, which naturally led to the division of participants into performers and spectators. The first predecessors of the actors were undoubtedly shamans and priests, whose main task (along with the implementation of magical actions) was the emotional impact on the audience.

In the future, two ways are outlined for the development of the theater in general and acting art in particular. In one case (the countries of the East), the theater maintains a stable connection with religion, and the art of acting is formed under the influence of the allegorical methods of expression inherent in religion, carefully preserving frozen traditional forms and improving within a clear canonical framework (for example, the Indonesian theaters "topeng" and "wayang-golek "; Japanese - No and Kabuki, etc.). Otherwise ( ancient greece) in dramaturgy and theatrical art, secular, social motives sound more and more clearly, which contributes to a more flexible development of various forms of theater and acting techniques.

The history of European acting, in turn, falls into two main lines of development: folk art itinerant actors (as a rule, those who are in opposition to the official authorities and are formed in the harsh conditions of constant persecution and persecution), and the official theatrical art (developing with the support of the authorities, both clerical and secular, widely using the theater for ideological purposes, forming a system of political , legal, religious, etc. views of society). Almost until the end of the 19th century. these two lines of acting art developed in isolation from each other (we can talk about mutual influence rather on the material of the theater as a whole). The impetus for the synthesis, unification and interpenetration of two different acting techniques was the birth of the art of directing, which brought the theater to a fundamentally new level development. Thus, the first experiments in transferring folk acting techniques to stage performances were undertaken in theatrical art. Silver Age(practical study of the principles of commedia dell'arte and farce). Until that time, the folk line of acting art developed in a single direction - based on improvisation, topicality, permanent mask characters, cultivating typical rather than individual features. On the other hand, the official European acting art, developing together with dramaturgy, scenography and other types of art, has gone through a wide variety of stages and aesthetic trends.

In ancient Greece, two rather isolated styles of acting dominated each other: monumental-epic in tragedy and buffoonish-satirical in comedy. However, in both styles, a broad gesture, an exaggerated, hyperbolic depiction of feelings, and forced reproduction of sound were obligatory. At the same time, the speech acting techniques used in tragedy and comedy were radically different from each other: in tragedy, the clear and measured pronunciation of the text (catalog) was replaced by recitative (paracatalog) and singing (melos); the speech of comedians was extremely dynamic, full of sharp and unexpected changes in intonation, screaming, screeching, choking from the rapid pronunciation of the text (pnigos). The general monumentality and exaggerated style of acting was dictated primarily by the gigantic size of the theaters, which could accommodate tens of thousands of spectators, and by the fact that the performances were held in the open air - in the absence of microphones. The need to be seen from anywhere in the gigantic auditorium also determined the "exaggerated" principles of costumes - cothurns, masks, high headdresses in tragedy; ugly masks, false humps, bellies and butts in comedy.

In ancient Rome acting art initially developed in the same direction. However, in the era of Imperial Rome, the theater was increasingly supplanted by circus and pantomime spectacles, acting art fell into decay. More and more tragedies were written not for stage performance, but only for reading; the stage image, as it were, fell apart into its constituent parts - speech and plastic: the actor-reciter read the text, the pantomimist illustrated the reading with movement.

With the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity, the theater went through centuries of persecution. There was no official theatrical art at all; wandering folk troupes were severely persecuted by the clerical authorities. However, the revival of official theatrical art began in the ninth century. right in the womb christian church- from a liturgical drama, a religious performance that was part of the Easter or Christmas church service (liturgy). Liturgical dramas were distinguished by the strict formalized, ritual-symbolic nature of the acting performance. However, over time, the worldly sound of the liturgical drama intensified - folk intonations, everyday features, and comic motives penetrated into it. Expelled from the church to the porch, the liturgical drama was transformed into a semi-liturgical drama, then into a mystery play and other types of religious theater - miracle and morality. They were dominated by an allegorical, illustrative, moralistic and inactive style of acting. Actually, the main emphasis was not on the actor, but on various stage effects (ascension to heaven, descent into hell, etc.), which should create a reverent impression of a miracle in the audience. However, the strengthening of the public role of the theater led to some indulgences in relation to itinerant, street actors. Farcical, farcical, improvisational techniques of acting performance came to new round rapid development in the art of medieval histrions, vagants, spiermans, minstrels, etc.

By the same time (16th century) the origin and formation of the Italian comedy of masks (commedia dell'arte) dates back, which had a huge impact on the development of not only the theater, but the whole culture as a whole - from literary comedy to the general aesthetics of the Silver Age. In the acting art of commedia dell'arte, the improvisational principle of performance, based on rigid plot schemes, was brought to perfection, as well as the principle of ensemble, inextricable connection and precise interaction with a partner. It is the principles of the acting ensemble that remain relevant for modern theater and acting techniques.

The Renaissance brought new features to the acting art: the mysterious, illustrative and allegorical style of performance was enriched with a more truthful, meaningful manner of acting. This, undoubtedly, was facilitated by a temporary weakening of the oppression of the church, which led to the revival of the official theatrical art, and a mighty surge in the development of drama (in Spain - Lope de Vega, M. Cervantes; in England - T. Kid, K. Marlo, B. Johnson and. of course, W. Shakespeare). In the art of acting, the first sprouts of realism arose, the essence of which is reflected by Shakespeare in Hamlet's address to the actors.

The aesthetic principles of the era of classicism (17th century) led to a new stage in the development of acting. The canon of acting performance was returned to the theater and strictly formalized - a solemnly elevated, accentuated rhythmic, melodious manner of pronouncing the text, accompanied by a wide static gesture, emphasizing the conventionality of stage speech. The aesthetics of classicism was dominated by the principle of "ennobled nature", the idealization of reality, the rejection of the inconsistency of real characters. The aesthetics of the classicist performance demanded from the performers a measured, clear pronunciation of the text, subject to the stresses and caesuras of a pathetic poetic tragedy. The actor's emotions were subject to strict mind control; stage speech obeyed the laws of music, movement - the laws of plasticity. Acting art in the era of classicism was called recitation, which included the whole set of acting visual means and techniques.

The development of the aesthetics of classicism took place on the material of tragedy; comedy remained outside its scope. Moreover, it was at this time that the famous French comedian and actor J.B. Molière made a new breakthrough in the principles of acting - to the need for individualization of the stage image and psychological persuasiveness when creating the character's character.

century, along with the Enlightenment, brought new trends in acting: the strengthening of realistic principles, combined with a civic temperament and a clear social position. For the first time in the history of acting, individualization and psychological development of images began to be correlated not only with age, but also with the social position of the characters. This is due to the strengthening of democratic tendencies in literature, and the appearance on the stage of the heroes of the third estate. Stage images acquire great depth and diversity. The acting art of the Enlightenment era overcame the division traditional for classicism into “high” and “low” styles of acting, and realistic tendencies in the psychological development of stage images strengthened. so-called. The Weimar classicism of I.V. Goethe and F. Schiller became, in a certain sense, a transitional stage to romanticism.

French Revolution at the end of the 18th century demanded from the theater to display the brave, strong characters, high passions, great emotional intensity. Thus, a new aesthetic trend of the early 19th century was being prepared. - romanticism, undoubtedly, reflected in acting. images romantic heroes influenced the viewer with rebellious pathos, intense emotionality, opposition to society, the tragedy of a large, exceptional personality, revealed in a collision with the environment. The criterion for evaluating acting art was the immediacy and sincerity of the experience.

Almost the entire 19th century associated with the formation and development of realistic art direction. These tendencies are especially intensified towards the end of the 19th century, a time associated both with the emergence of a new wave of realistic dramaturgy (G. Ibsen, G. Hauptman, B. Shaw, etc.), and with the flourishing of a new theatrical profession - directing. A serious innovative revision of the fundamental principles of acting is associated with the development of the theory and method of the actor's art by K.S. Stanislavsky ("Stanislavsky's system"). In particular, K.S.Stanislavsky introduced the concept of "effective analysis of the play" (analysis of the psychophysical actions of each character); "through action" (logical chain, continuous action of the role), "super task" (the goal to which the whole complex of acting action leads). The versatility of the theatrical theory of Stanislavsky gave rise to many different schools and methods of acting and teaching the acting profession (including the famous biomechanics of V.E. Meyerhold, according to which the developed system of plastic, acrobatic and gymnastic training of the actor makes it possible for him to automatically come to the right psychological condition).

Acting art of the 20th century. fundamentally and consistently moves away from the absolutization of any specific, separate method of acting, proclaiming the multivariance and diversity of acting techniques.

So, for example, the Russian artist and theatrical figure K.Malevich, within the framework of the aesthetic trend of futurism, defended and developed the principles of acting developed by G.Krag: the actor must be replaced by a “mask”, a “superpuppet”, devoid of human emotions.

The German playwright and director B. Brecht proclaimed and defended in his work the destruction of the “fourth wall”, the principle of “estrangement” and the fundamental separation of the actor from the portrayed character.

The aesthetic trend of the so-called. absurdism, initially based on the theatrical aesthetics of A. Chekhov, developed a new principle of acting technique: not the psychological volume of the depicted character, but discreteness, a bizarre interlacing of contradictory, but inseparable qualities.

Thus, modern acting art is primarily characterized by the absence of any canon and the fundamental diversity of style. However, the main principle is the aesthetic and stylistic unity of the performance and the ensemble character of the actor's performance.

Tatyana Shabalina

Literature:

Brecht b. About everyday theater. In the book: his Plays. M., 1956
Stanislavsky K.S. An actor's work on himself, An actor's work on a role. Sobr. op. in 8 vols. Tt. 2, 3, 4. M., 1954–1957
Stanislavsky K.S. Role work. Sobr. soch., vol. 4. M., 1957
Zakhava B.E. The skill of the actor and director. M., 1969
M., 1978
Creative heritage of Vs.E. Meyerhold. M., 1978
theater of paradox. Sat., M., 1991
Gubanova G. "Victory over the Sun" - theater according to Malevich. Magazine COOKART, 1999, № 7



Acting art

the art of theatrical play, creating stage images. The artistic specificity of the theater - a reflection of life in the form of a dramatic action directly occurring in front of the audience - can only be carried out through A. and. Its purpose is to influence the viewer, to evoke a response from him. Performance in front of the audience is the most important and final act of the embodiment of the role, and each performance requires a creative reproduction of this process.

The creativity of the actor comes from the drama (See Drama) - its content, genre, style, etc. Drama is the ideological and semantic basis of a. and. But such types of theater are known (for example, the folk comedy of masks) where the actor does not have the full text of the play, but only its dramatic outline (scenario), designed for the art of acting improvisation (see Improvisation). AT musical theater(ballet, opera, operetta, etc.) A. and. determined by the libretto and musical score.

The actor's image is convincing and aesthetically valuable not in itself, but to the extent that the main action of the drama develops through it and through it, its general meaning and ideological orientation are revealed. The performer of each role in the performance is therefore closely connected with his partners, participating together with them in the creation of that artistic whole, which is a theatrical production. Drama presents the actor with sometimes very difficult requirements. He must perform them as an independent artist, acting at the same time on behalf of a certain character. By placing himself in the circumstances of the play and role, the actor solves the problem of creating a character on the basis of stage reincarnation. At the same time A. and. - the only kind of art in which the material of the artist is his own nature, his intellectual emotional apparatus and external data. The actor resorts to the help of make-up, costume (in some types of theater - to the help of a mask); in his arsenal artistic means- mastery of speech (in opera - vocal art). movement, gesture (in ballet - dance), facial expressions. The most important elements of A. and. are attention, imagination, emotional and motor memory, the ability to stage communication, a sense of rhythm, etc. Historical development A. i. gives a complex picture of the search for artistic truth within developing and competing systems and trends. Born in their original elements on the basis of mass actions primitive society, having gone through a connection with religious rites, A. and. in Ancient Greece in the era of the formation of democratic city-states (5th century BC), it is freed from the power of a religious cult. This becomes a prerequisite for the emergence of theater and acting in the true sense of the word. In the theater of ancient Greece, sharply different manners of performing tragedy and comedy developed: in the first case, it was majestic, with recitation turning into singing, plastic movements containing elements of dance; in the second - grotesque, exaggerated, deliberately reduced. Both in tragedy and comedy, actors used masks. AT Ancient Rome the genre of pantomime arose (See Pantomime). But acting, which developed on the basis of Greek traditions, fell into decline in the era of imperial Rome, and only itinerant folk actors - Mimes - conveyed to the Middle Ages certain elements of theatrical culture. In the Middle Ages A. and. existed as a semi-professional folk art itinerant actors (Histrions, Buffoons), which was persecuted by the church for its anti-clerical, satirical, rebellious character. At the same time, the church assimilated A. and. in the genres of spiritual and moralistic representations (see Liturgical drama, Mystery, Miracle, Moralite) , into which, however, comedic, spontaneously realistic beginnings of folk art burst in more and more persistently and more widely. They achieved free development in the farce genre, where the main features of A. and. became characteristic, brought to a caricature, a cheerful, dynamic pace of the game, buffoonery, exaggerated expression of gestures and facial expressions, as well as improvisation. The pinnacle of this type of popular square theater was the Italian Comedy of Masks (see Commedia dell'arte). A. i. Italian folk comedy had the power of satirical generalization, democratic optimism, brilliance, dynamism and, along with this, lyricism, poetic elation. It had a fruitful influence on the development of national original forms of A. and. Renaissance in Spain, France, England and other countries. The advent of the literary Renaissance drama made new demands on the theater and to a large extent transformed the traditions of the folk theatre, placing before the actors the task of expressing big ideas and creating individualized, psychologically complex characters. Shakespeare was the greatest proponent of Renaissance realism in art, combining brightness and depth of feelings and thoughts with fidelity to nature and humanism. A new flowering of A. and. came to France in the 17th-18th centuries. in the system of classicism, which subordinated the theater to the service of national, state interests. A.'s features and. determined by the preaching of civil heroism and the curbing of individualistic passions in tragedy and the sharp ridicule of vices in comedy. Classicism also transferred the normative idea of ​​the beautiful, as it should, to the field of art and art, where the expression of feelings was placed under the strict control of reason and taste, speech and movement were subject to the laws of declamation, which protected the acting game from the intrusion of everyday and spontaneously emotional principles (art French actors Mondori, T. Duparc, etc.), and the whole performance as a whole was an artistic whole strictly organized on decorative-plastic and declamatory-poetic foundations. In the 18th century, during the Enlightenment, in A. and. interest in the individual increases, the ideal of the “natural person” is put forward, the feeling becomes the conductor of the principle of social equality. Rationalism, rationalism, which he defended in A. and. D. Diderot (“The Paradox of the Actor”, 1770-73), who oriented actors to reproduce images previously created by their imagination, who sought to combine fidelity to nature and the social ideal, are being replaced by an ever greater immediacy of performance, the power of experience and emotionality (for example, the work of a tragic actress M. Dumesnil). A. i. approaching the private truth, family life, which is facilitated by the petty-bourgeois drama with its apology for the common man. In the tragedy of A. and. receives a tyrannical, democratic orientation. The division traditional for classicism into "high" and "low" style of play is overcome. The idea of ​​human character becomes more complicated and aggravated, in connection with which in A. and. for the first time the problem of stage reincarnation arises.

Development in the first decades of the 19th century. Romanticism, whose social basis was the liberation upsurge of the democratic masses, dissatisfied with the results of bourgeois revolutions, led to dominance in a. and. impulsive, violent emotionality, inspiration, fantasy, to the cult of a bright creative individuality. Actors (E. Keane in England, Frederic Lemaitre in France, P. Mochalov in Russia, etc.) created characters filled with the spirit of protest against bourgeois norms, combining in them the contrasts of the tragic and the comic, demonism and lyricism, the truth of life and the grotesque. Rich in democratic tendencies A. and. romantics was filled with sympathy for the suffering of ordinary people and, along with this, elements of social satire.

Romantic A. and. in many respects prepared the realistic system of the game, which occupied in the middle and second half of the 19th century. dominant position on the European stage (the art of T. Salvini, E. Duse in Italy, Sarah Bernhardt in France, etc.). Realistic drama demanded from A. and. disclosure of social laws of social development, interpretation of character in its conditionality by the social environment and era. The realistic school of aerial photography, overcoming the subjectivism of the romantics, their interest in the exclusivity and exotic brightness of stage images, achieved unity in the psychological and social solutions of the images. Great ideological strength and psychological subtlety realistic A. and. reached in Russia in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, where it developed under the sign of democratic socio-political tendencies (the work of M. S. Shchepkin, A. E. Martynov, P. M., M. P. and O O. Sadovskikh, P. A. Strepetova, V. N. Davydov, V. F. Komissarzhevskaya, and others). Turn of the 19th-20th centuries was marked by new searches in the field of A. and. in the system of the Free Theaters and the Moscow Art Theater. In the bowels of the Moscow Art Theater, the theory of K. S. Stanislavsky matured, the methodology for educating an actor - the Stanislavsky system (see Stanislavsky system) , which had a huge impact on world A. and. Under the guidance of Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, a galaxy of major actors was trained at the Moscow Art Theater: I. M. Moskvin, V. I. Kachalov, L. M. Leonidov, O. L. Knipper-Chekhov, and others. ., the ability of an actor to show on stage the "life of the human spirit" were for Stanislavsky the main value of theatrical art. Stanislavsky continued his search in this area with the youth of the Moscow Art Theater. In the studios of the Moscow Art Theater, the so-called. the second generation of actors of the Moscow Art Theater - N. P. Khmelev, B. G. Dobronravov, M. I. Prudkin, A. K. Tarasova, K. N. Elanskaya, O. N. Androvskaya, M. M. Yanshin, A. N Gribov, BN Livanov, etc. The activities of EB Vakhtangov were also closely connected with the studios of the Moscow Art Theater. The aesthetic principles of the Vakhtangov school found their expression in the life-affirming, imbued with a sense of modernity, brightly theatrical in form art by B. V. Shchukin, R. N. Simonov, Ts. Stanislavsky and Vakhtangov received in the pointed-grotesque, tragic art of the actors of the Moscow Art Theater of the 2nd (created on the basis of the 1st studio of the Moscow Art Theater) - M. A. Chekhov, S. G. Birman, A. D. Wild, I. N. Bersenev , S. V. Giacintova. The system of education of the synthetic actor was carried out by A. Ya. Tairov at the Chamber Theater (art by A. G. Koonen and others). V. E. Meyerhold called on actors to be openly biased, arguing the need for the emergence of a combat propaganda theater. Such actors grew up in the Meyerhold Theater Soviet theater, as M. I. Babanova, I. V. Ilyinsky, E. P. Garin, M. M. Shtraukh. L. N. Sverdlin, D. N. Orlov and others.

In the 20s. there is a birth of national schools A. and. in theaters of the Soviet republics - Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tatar. A high flowering reaches A. and. in the theaters of Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus (see sections on theater in general essays on these republics). The diversity of national performing traditions influenced the formation and development socialist realism in A. and. At the same time, the work of the actors of the peoples of the USSR organically perceived the best traditions of the Russian realistic school. During this period, the entire diversity of artistic trends in art and art was revealed, developing in close interaction and enriching each other. Representatives of various theatrical generations and performing styles performed on the stage of the Soviet theater: from the older generation of the Maly, Artistic and Leningrad academic theaters- A. A. Ostuzhev, P. M. Sadovsky, V. N. Ryzhova, V. N. Pashennaya, V. O. Massalitinova, V. I. Kachalov, I. M. Moskvin, O. L. Knipper-Chekhova , Yu. M. Yuriev, E. P. Korchagina-Aleksandrovskaya, V. A. Michurina-Samoilova, I. N. Pevtsov - to young artists brought up in Soviet years. During the period Patriotic War A. i. becomes even more politically active, topical and journalistic. For A. and. 1950-60s characterized by a desire for great philosophical generalizations, revolutionary passion, political activity. The ideological depth and artistic maturity were manifested in the images created by Yu. V. Tolubeev, I. M. Smoktunovsky, Yu. K. Borisova, M. A. Ulyanov, E. A. Lebedev, S. Yu. Doronina, E. A. Evstigneev and others.

In the 20th century new principles of stage figurativeness were revealed. Along with the stylization inherent in the so-called. conventional theatre, there were demands for greater acuteness and generalization of the academy and for strengthening its agitational and analytical functions (the work of V. E. Meyerhold and B. Brecht). In the modern Western theater A. and. high development reached in the work of J. L. Barrot, J. Vilar, M. Cazares, J. Philip (France), J. Gielgud, V. Lee, L. Olivier, P. Scofield (England), E. Weigel (GDR) and other Peculiar systems A. and. formed in the theater of the East (Burma, India, China, Japan, etc.). About A. and. in the musical theatre, cinema, stage, see articles Opera , Ballet , Cinematography , Estrada .

T. M. Motherland.

Big soviet encyclopedia. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1969-1978 .

See what "Acting Art" is in other dictionaries:

Acting professional creative activity in the area of performing arts, consisting in the creation of stage images (roles), a type of performing art. Fulfilling a certain r ... Wikipedia

Directing, the art of creating a harmoniously holistic spectacle with a certain artistic unity (dramatic or musical performance, film, television film, circus or variety performance, etc.) ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

ACTOR- in the cinema, a participant in the process of creating a film, whose creative professional activity is aimed at the embodiment of characters on the basis of scenario dramaturgy and in accordance with the director's concept of the film. The acting is capacious emotionally ... ... Cinema: Encyclopedic Dictionary

Acting is a professional creative activity in the field of performing arts, consisting in the creation of stage images (roles), a type of performing art. playing a certain role in theatrical performance, actor ... ... Wikipedia

Action is the basis of acting

. What is an action? What are its features?

Action is the fundamental element of theater. Theater is the art of action. It serves as the main means of expressing life on the stage, with its help the characters' characters are revealed, their thoughts, feelings, experiences are transmitted.

In life, the word "action" refers to any work, any deed, act. But to understand the essence of action is not so easy. In Russian, action is denoted by verbs, but not every verb is suitable for designating stage action. For example, if you say: a person got up from a chair, went to the door, opened it, went out, it will hardly be possible to understand what he did. Another thing, if you call the action - "a person goes to the store for bread." Everything becomes clear because a specific direction of behavior is indicated. This is one of the features of the action - it is always directed towards a specific goal. But the presence of a goal does not yet fully characterize the action (you can go to the store for bread, but never buy it for some reason), because you need to do something to achieve it, make some kind of strong-willed effort, otherwise striving for the goal remains an intention and does not translate into action.

It turns out that the action is the realization of the desire for some goal. Although this is far from a complete formulation, the main features of the action are reflected in it: the volitional beginning and the presence of a goal.

The volitional nature of the action distinguishes it from feelings (a stable emotional attitude to the phenomena of reality). The actions of the hero in the play cannot be determined in the following way: rejoices, upsets, surprised, offended, since these verbs do not express action. An action requires volitional effort, that is, in the will of a person whether to perform it or not. Feelings, as opposed to action, arise involuntarily, in response to some circumstances, facts, events. For example, the fulfillment of a desire causes joy, failure - grief, injustice or meanness - anger, irritation. Therefore, in order not to confuse actions and feelings, one must ask oneself - can I do this, does it depend on my will? You can’t, for example, force yourself to feel feelings of pity, but you can console someone, calm them down. In the same way, one cannot force oneself to be surprised, offended, rejoiced, delighted. Therefore, all these verbs denote feelings. But you can surprise, offend, please a person at your own will. So these verbs represent actions.

Undoubtedly, it is worth considering that it is wrong to call an action by verbs denoting a statement of some accomplished fact (because there is no volitional principle inherent in action).

This can be illustrated by the following examples: walking in the park, a person hears a strange sound not far from the fountain. “Hears”, “heard” is not an action. After all, in order to hear this sound, no volitional effort was required. For the same reason, the fact that in a conversation with an interlocutor a person understood (or did not understand) something or, for example, found a wallet on the road, cannot be considered an action. But “listen to the sound” (understand what kind of sound), “try to understand the interlocutor”, “raise the wallet” (so that no one notices) - this is an action.

If the volitional principle makes it possible to distinguish action from feelings, facts, then the presence of a goal distinguishes it from movements. After all, the movements on the stage are closely connected with the action, since they usually constitute its external side, but unlike the action, which always has some kind of target orientation, they do not express this orientation themselves. And they acquire meaning only depending on the action with which they are associated. For example, if we return to the action "a man goes for bread." When performing it, you need to get up from the chair, go to the door, open the door, go outside, that is, make a series of movements (of which, in the end, the action was formed). However, if you simply list all these movements, then you can only assume that the person went for bread, and did not go out to take out the trash or just walk along the street, etc. But in this case, a whole range of movements was named, and if you take only one of them, for example, "got up from a chair", then it can be done with a hundred different purposes. From this it should be concluded that movements are necessary for the performance of an action and are closely related to it, but for all that, they constitute only the external form of the action (in addition to movement, the actor’s facial expressions and speech intonations also belong to it). Action has two sides: internal (mental) and external (physical). The mental aspect of an action is determined by its purpose. It contains the essence of the action. The physical side consists of certain muscular movements with the help of which this goal is realized. Both of these sides are inseparable from each other: the mental side of the action is manifested in physical movements, and those, in turn, convey its inner essence. When a physical action is separated from an internal one, then the action ceases to be an action - it turns into a series of some kind of mechanical movements. Therefore, one must always remember about its single psychophysical nature.

Depending on the nature of the actions, they are only conditionally divided into psychological, physical and verbal. Psychological actions include actions that require some kind of serious movement of thought (for example, a person thinks about something, makes a decision, remembers something, dreams, etc., etc.). Physical actions are mainly associated with a change in the surrounding material environment (for example, I clear the table, write a task, cook dinner, get dressed, wash my face, etc.). Verbal actions are actions carried out with the help of words (I convince, prove something, argue, explain, etc.). But we must understand that all these actions are inseparable from one another. Any psychological action is somehow necessarily manifested in involuntary gestures, in facial expressions, in the expression of the eyes. Physical action is always accompanied by some thoughts, assessments (dismantling the table, you can assess the situation, decide something, think about something or dream). Well, verbal action is an expression of our thoughts and, moreover, is accompanied by muscular movements of the lips and mimic changes on the face. In a word, the action has a single psychophysical nature.

The action that the actor must perform on stage is often presented to him in the form of a task. An effective task includes three points: what I do (the action itself), for what and why I do it (motivation of the action) and how, in what way I do it (adaptation). In this case, only what the actor must do and why is established in advance. For example, if an actor is given the task of helping a friend who is in trouble, then an action is outlined that he must perform for this - to calm (comfort, reassure, distract, etc.) the comrade. As for how the actor will do this, it is not specified in advance. He must find the external side of the action (adaptation) in the very course of the task, as a result of direct perception of the partner, assessment of his behavior, communication with him, etc. That is to say, the actor's creative nature should prompt the adaptations.

If the task concerns a single action and is limited to its implementation, then this is quite simple. But there are other tasks that are called the main ones. They already refer to what the character does during a whole piece of the play, the action of which is caused by some kind of event, and consist of a number of simple actionable tasks.

Determining the line of action of the characters in the play is not always easy. After all, the action in the play can be expressed in the replicas of the characters not only directly, but also indirectly. In addition, there are actions without words (physical or psychological). Therefore, when determining the action, one cannot rely only on the text of the play. In order to create a true and sufficiently complete idea of ​​the line of action of the characters, it is necessary first to carefully consider the proposed circumstances in which these characters act, and to understand the general direction (that is, the main tasks) of their actions.

2. What is the importance of action in creating a realistic image on stage?

theater acting scene

Action, in the art of the actor, is of paramount importance in creating a realistic image on stage.

First of all, the role of action is to create the character of the hero. In life, we evaluate a person by his actions, in the theater - the viewer gets an idea of ​​​​the hero by the actions that the actor performs. It is through actions that the views of the characters, their aspirations, the warehouse of psychology, the inner world, tastes, habits are revealed on stage - in a word, everything that is included in the concept of "human character". Consequently, the action on the stage is the main means of expression for the actor. But in order to create a live stage image, the actor must transform into the person he plays, that is, heal his feelings, emotions, experiences. And in order to translate this into a realistic image, the actor resorts to action. It is known that feelings, as a rule, arise involuntarily. Acting on the stage, realizing certain goals, the actor includes in his work his entire human and creative nature, his entire organism. Therefore, a collision with the proposed circumstances of the play can cause him - without any violence against himself - sincere feelings and experiences. In other words, the action turns out to be a “lever” that “revives” the actor on stage and contributes to the birth of feelings in him. It not only characterizes the person he has to play, but also helps the actor to reincarnate and create a realistic image on stage.

If an actor on stage plays a role without action, it will be bad and absolutely unrealistic, which will lead to the inevitable decline of the whole production! This fundamentally contradicts best tradition Russian theater - "live theater". After all, then it will look like the actor simply pronounces the words, pretending that he feels something, experiences something. After all, character, feelings, and emotions can be depicted with the help of facial expressions, some gestures, movements, speech intonations and other external techniques. For example, "playing" a good man - he will smile sweetly, and playing a villain - he will frown and "sparkle" his eyes. In the same way, you can show a person who is smart and stupid, honest and deceitful, etc. And feelings can be "played". In order to convey surprise, you need to open your eyes and mouth wider; to show that a person is in despair, you need to close your eyes and clasp your head in your hands; to show that he is angry - tighten his lips tighter, screw up his eyes and speak curtly, dryly.

So you can show anything. And it's not difficult at all. But it is to show, not to play. In this case, on the stage, instead of a living person, there will be his mask in front of the audience. What he says and does does not inspire faith, will not awaken any feelings in the viewer and stage partners, will not give an opportunity to empathize. And the character of a person will not be created, but only depicted. Such external, divorced from action methods of representation in the theater are called stamps. And he eats stamps, nothing more than pests of any art. And in this case - the theater as an art form.

As an example, I would like to cite the actions of the actor Leonid Kuravlev from the movie "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession." That scene when Shurik, with the help of his invention (a time machine), removes the wall and the thief Miloslavsky, who is played by Kuravlyov, gets to them from the next room. Having quickly realized, Miloslavsky immediately realizes that he can use this invention in his thieves' affairs. But of course he doesn't want to give it away. And he begins to turn to Shurik with various kinds of questions - keeping in mind how to appropriate this car to himself, which is clearly manifested for the viewer in his behavior, intonation, gestures, questions with some hidden meaning, which Shurik, impressed by success and flattery, obviously does not see. But there is another character nearby - Bunsha, played by Yuri Yakovlev, who can interfere with Miloslavsky. All the true action of Miloslavsky towards Bunshe is clearly to make him silent and not interfere and show his insignificance. And this is especially clearly expressed in the phrase of Miloslavsky:

Bunshe: Fie on you!

Shuriku: So what are you talking about?

Bunche: Fuck you again!

In one small scene, he immediately has two dramatically different actions to two characters nearby. And this is obvious to the viewer, who immediately understands this by his facial expressions, intonation and attitude, which are so vividly and convincingly shown.

3. What does it mean to act on stage organically, for real?

To act organically on the stage is when the natural organics of the actor responds to the actions he performs on the stage. And in order for these actions to truly and convincingly reveal the character of the hero, they must be genuine, that is, organic. This means that they must obey the same laws, have the same properties as our actions in life. The main of these properties are purposefulness, expediency and productivity. They are inherent in any action in life, therefore, they must be present in the action on the stage. Only then can it be considered real, genuine, and not ostentatious. Now, I will consider each of these properties, in relation to the stage action.

The very essence of action lies in the realization of some goal. Without a goal, there is no action. Therefore, the actor, at every given moment of his stay on the stage, must have some specific goal, that is, an effective task, and direct all his efforts towards its solution. Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen. It's bad when the actor - at the prompt of the director - simply performs a series of planned mise-en-scenes and mechanically copies the prompted gestures and intonations. As a result, the idea of ​​why he does it is lost. It also happens that the actor forgets about the purpose of the action because of excitement or because he is carried away by the desire to arouse applause from the audience. In these cases, the real action is replaced by external mechanical movements or a demonstration of one's "abilities", which in the end also does not manifest itself as the art of an actor, but simple trickery and "ostentation".

Another property of genuine action is expediency. In life, performing any action, we always behave in accordance with the environment and in accordance with our character. When kindling a fire, we remember that fire burns, and we keep our distance from it. Crossing the street, we look first to the left, and then to the right, so as not to get hit by a car. Yes, and they all cross it in different ways: most do it in the right places, but an impatient and poorly educated person can cross the street in front of the nose of the car. People do this because there is a logic to every action they take in life. So she should be on stage. In realizing his desire for a particular goal, the actor must do it in accordance with the proposed circumstances. Suppose that in the course of the performance it is necessary to clean the room. So, if the hero has a lot of time in the play, this can be done slowly, slowly, carefully. If time is short, then the same action should be performed faster. Or the contractor has another task: you need to borrow money. The performance of this action will depend on what kind of person you need to borrow them from, what is the relationship between the characters, where, when and why you have to ask for money. Let's say this person good friend. Then you can just go up to him and, looking straight into his eyes, say: “Lend me five rubles.” Well, if this is a person you don’t know very well, whose help you don’t really have to count on, then you can, for example, before uttering these words, make a gloomy face and sigh several times. If the matter takes place at a party, you can first take him aside and state your request in a whisper there. Well, if a friend is met in a store, you can first pat yourself in your pockets, and then with a smile (here, they say, what an opportunity: left the money at home) ask for a loan. In all these cases, the action was performed in different ways, but each time those devices were chosen that were prompted by the proposed circumstances.

If you do not pay due attention to this, then there will be nonsense on the stage, which is found in bad and undeveloped performances. There are a lot of examples: an actor tells something to his partner in a “secret”, while he himself shouts at the top of his lungs; or, having met a stranger, immediately pats him on the shoulder; enters the boss's office, as if to his own home, etc. Such inconsistencies immediately expose the actor, they say that he does not really act, but only depicts the action. And this is not allowed!

Another property of true organic action is productivity. The goal that underlies the action is most often associated with the achievement of a specific result. And although it is not always possible to achieve a result, all efforts should be directed precisely at this. This is where productivity comes in. With regard to the stage, this means that every action on it must also be brought to the end, to the desired result. If you have to clean the room on the stage, then you really need to brush off the dust, collect the garbage. If you have to think about something, decide - you need to let the whole chain of thoughts go through yourself and, as a result, come to a certain conclusion. But, alas, it often happens that an actor on stage, who is completely uninterested in the results of his action: brushing off the dust, he waves a cloth in the air, instead of really thinking - just "Wrinkles his forehead." The absence in action of both purposefulness, expediency, and productivity testifies to its ostentatious nature.

So, to act truly, organically means to have some specific goal in front of you at every moment of your stay on the stage, and in realizing it, to behave in accordance with the proposed circumstances and bring the action to the end. This is what must be achieved in any action performed on the stage, whether large or small, physical, psychological or verbal. In life, we always act like this, but, going on stage, the actor often loses this ability. Nemirovich-Danchenko, studying with the youth of the Moscow Art Theater, liked to repeat that purposefulness, expediency, productivity are distinguished not only by a person, but also by any animal, down to the most primitive. Even a crab, he said, navigates the terrain and, climbing out of the water onto land, looks for danger. Even a blind worm feels the road ahead. And only one creature on earth enters an unfamiliar place and, without even looking around, goes straight where it wants, confidently grabs an object, not knowing where this object is, reads a letter without looking at the written text, unlocks a complex lock, without touching it, in a word, it does not act, but produces only a series of mechanical movements, aimless, often inconsistent with nothing, changing nothing around it. This unnatural creature may be an actor on stage.

Unfortunately, there are a number of reasons why this happens, that even the most familiar skills disappear on stage, and we do not know where to put our hands. The fact is that when going on stage, the actor gets into special world- a world where everything is not true, convention. He deals with invented events, fictitious people, he sees a conditional situation. He knows in advance from the author's text everything that should happen. And in addition, it turns out to be under the constant supervision of the audience, feels on itself their evaluating views. All this leads to the fact that a person entering the stage loses his usual well-being in life - he no longer sees or hears anything, stiffness arises, his legs stick to the floor, and his hands begin to tremble, refuse to obey and his voice is hoarse. Well, in this state, the only thing left for him is to simply pronounce the words of his role or portray something.

Unfortunately, there are no ready-made recipes on how to make yourself live on stage according to the laws of real life and regain your normal well-being in this regard. And no one can achieve this right away. After all, on the stage, everything has to be learned anew - to speak, see, listen, move, etc. Well, it takes time and a lot of work. And above all, work aimed at developing, cultivating in oneself creative qualities and abilities that are needed for real action on stage.

For example, while working on the role of the Janitor in the play “Bad Day” based on the play of the same name by Mikhail Zoshchenko, in the first scene I had the goal of stealing as much from the cooperative as I could carry. But justified. The goal is to steal a certain set of products, the proposed circumstances are night, dark, scary that they will be caught. Achieving the goal - he took exactly what he spoke about and what he wanted, neatly folded it in his bosom, stuffed it into his pockets. And already laden, stealthily left the cooperation.

In subsequent scenes, when the theft (albeit not significant) was discovered, they invited a policeman and all the employees of this cooperation, including my character, the Janitor. The goal was not to give himself away, to win back the sincere surprise of the theft. The proposed circumstance is the presence of a policeman, whom he was afraid of, since the Janitor had a conscience, and the director and the accountant told the policeman at times inflated losses, which, of course, unsettled my character, who tried so hard not to give himself away. Achieving the goal is the failure of the primary goal (but here the goal is missed, which in the abstract is also the achievement of this goal in the stage interpretation). At some point, he cannot stand the obvious lies of the Manager and Accountant - and he stipulates that he is a thief, that he could not steal so much.

After when it is revealed that he is a thief. A new goal arises - to justify, to check that the policeman would correctly record everything in the protocol, without exaggerating the losses. The proposed circumstances are the disclosure of theft, the reproachful views of colleagues, shame for what they have done. Achieving the goal - only after my character is finally convinced of the validity of the completed protocol and that all the missing goods have been returned - he already doomedly leaves with the policeman.

theater acting scene

4. What role do attention, creative imagination, assessment of the proposed circumstances and communication between partners?

Attention, creative imagination, assessment of the proposed circumstances and communication between partners are the most important elements of the creative nature of the actor, which are necessary for organic action on stage.

First of all, this is attention, that is, the ability of the actor to highlight the main thing in what is or happens on the stage, and focus on it. But stage attention requires strong-willed efforts. The actor must have the ability to focus on what he needs for the action, to transfer his attention from one object to another at will, to keep it on this or that object for the right time. Such objects for an actor can be not only partners or furnishings, but also something that is connected with the inner life of his character - a task, thoughts, images, some kind of life associations, etc. Attention helps the actor to “disconnect” from the viewer, and thereby get rid of muscle clamps, gain inner freedom. At the same time, it is the source of action, since any action begins with the perception of the environment. Therefore, without attention, real action cannot be born.

The next quality an actor needs to act on stage is imagination. If in life perception immediately pushes us to action, then on the stage, where everything is conventional, the call to action can arise only when the actor believes in it, treats everything that happens on the stage as the truth. It is the imagination that gives the actor on stage that special feeling of faith that prompts him to act. Without this sense of faith, the actor on stage is "dead."

The impetus for the active work of the imagination can serve as a technique that Stanislavsky called the magical "if". When it is difficult for an actor to believe that the partner standing next to him on the stage, the person whom he (by role) loves, does not know how to behave with him, he asks himself: what would I do if I really loved him, or, even better, what he would do if there was a person he loves nearby. These “ifs” on the stage can literally refer to everything: not only to the characters of the play, but also to its events, proposed circumstances, even to furnishings. Such a technique, in which the moment of admission is concluded, immediately opens the "gateways" of fantasy, and it arouses faith in us and induces us to act.

After perception in action comes the moment of judgment. Therefore, the actor, in addition to attention and imagination, must also develop the ability to truly comprehend everything that happens on stage. This quality of the actor's creative nature is called evaluation of the proposed circumstances. Evaluating something on stage means really thinking, thinking. Without this, the actor cannot take a single step on the stage, he cannot find an action that would be expedient for the given circumstances, he cannot carry it to the end.

It is also necessary to pay serious attention to the fact that the actor is relatively rarely alone on stage. More often he has to communicate with partners. And this also requires special skills. Communication with a partner is not like when the actor turns to face his partner and starts talking, looking at the interlocutor. It is impossible to limit the matter to this, it is not communication. After all, real communication is a very complex process. Communicating, we always achieve something from a partner, influence him and, in turn, are influenced by him. Therefore, real communication is the mutual understanding of partners and the interaction between them. Therefore, it requires a live, direct perception of the partner, an assessment of his behavior, and then an impact on him and an assessment of the results of this impact. When at least one of these moments falls out, communication becomes formal, false. Most often, the perception and evaluation of the words of a partner falls out. The actor at this moment is just waiting for the right cue. And only then does it start to work. But in this case, the line of action is interrupted at the moments of pauses, that is, the actor ceases to live in the image.

Attention, imagination, assessment of the proposed circumstances, communication are considered the main elements of organic action. They do not just help to master the action, but merge in it (we call the real action on the stage organic, because all the “organic” of the actor participates in it - his attention, thought, imagination, etc.). They are closely related: neither imagination nor evaluation can work without attention (imagination pushes us to evaluate thoughts), without attention and evaluation there is no communication, etc. etc. When one of the elements in an action is missing, it breaks, and the action loses its authenticity.

5. Sequentially state the line of action in the created excerpt from the play

Analysis of an excerpt from the play “At the Half-Station” from the woman’s words “Is this a commissar?” to the soldier’s words “Don’t touch, I’ll shoot!”

At the beginning, it is better to analyze the expected circumstances, such as: time, place, setting of the action, atmosphere, characters, relationships of heroes, etc. It is also necessary to take into account the general socio-historical background of the action of this play, as well as those events that immediately preceded those taking place in excerpt.

Proposed circumstances in the analyzed passage.

Civil War. 1918 Winter. Night. Small, abandoned station. There are fights nearby. The whites are coming. The revolution is in danger. At the half-station, the Sailor and the Soldier meet. The sailor recruits reinforcements for the Red Army, and the Soldier returns from the German front. His native places are already close, so the Soldier refuses the call of the Sailor to go to fight against the enemies of the revolution. He dreams of his farm, of the land. There is a dispute between them. At this moment, another character appears at the half-station - a Woman who pretends to be a paramedic. In fact, this is a local manufacturer, she runs to the whites. She has jewelry in her bag, and in her purse - information about the location of the Red Army units. She is warm and well-dressed. From the moment the Woman appears, all the attention of the Sailor rushes to her: appearance, the very appearance of her at a deaf half-station is alarming. The soldier is not interested in the woman at first. He is busy with his thoughts. For a Woman, meeting people at a half-station is unexpected and unpleasant. It can be assumed that she was afraid to go from the station closest to the factory, since everyone knows her there and they can detain her. Perhaps she counted on the fact that she would be the only passenger at the stop. Sailor and Soldier are enemies for her - they can frustrate her plans, expose her. The sailor immediately begins, under the guise of a "simpleton", to elicit her true motives for being here and striving to take the train and leave closer to the front line. Under the pretext of bandaging a wounded leg, the Sailor checks that the woman is posing as a paramedic. After an inept attempt to bandage it, the deception is revealed and the Sailor, making a search of the woman, finds out her true hostile goals in relation to the Red Army, of which he is an ardent representative, namely, the People's Commissar. The Soldier, at this time, only has time to follow what is happening, but in his behavior and actions it is felt that he still sympathizes with the Woman, humanly. Then they hear the horn of an approaching train, apparently the one the Soldier needs. The sailor, obviously worried about being left alone with the Woman, asks the Soldier to help him go out to see, perhaps, his comrades who got lost nearby. But the Soldier, worried about missing his train, refuses. Then the Sailor decides himself, affirmatively asking the Soldier to watch over the woman. The sailor goes out into the street, the Soldier and the Woman are left alone. The woman understands that perhaps this is her only chance to save herself in this situation, to bribe the Soldier and persuade him to let her go and possibly turn him against the Sailor. The Soldier, under the influence of the Sailor, remains to protect the Woman. Perhaps all his thoughts now are about not missing the train and all this situation that has come to light is a burden to him and he wants to quickly deal with it and start his own interests - to return home and work on the ground. Such are roughly the proposed circumstances in the passage under consideration. Already they suggest the main direction of what each of the characters should do.

Knowing the proposed circumstances, having determined the tasks of the characters in the passage, we proceed to the most important thing - to determine the specific actions that they perform. That is, we put each character in the given proposed circumstances of the play, and then find out what he does in these circumstances, having a certain general desire and pronouncing certain words (if any).

Woman.Is this the commissar? Starts a conversation with the Soldier to gradually offer him a deal. Soldier.Looks like the commissar. He answers with a certain degree of doom that he must keep this Woman at gunpoint, for whom he may have a sympathetic attitude. Woman.After all, as I understand it, you are not one of his people? He makes reconnaissance in order to know how to continue to conduct a conversation with him, from what position. Soldier.So what? The soldier answers, but clearly does not understand the true meaning of this question. Woman.Listen, my dear, are you a peasant? He fawns on him, calls him “dear”. Goes to the starting point to start offering him a deal Soldier.Peasant. He answers with doubt, not understanding what she is getting at. Woman.So: you have your own economy, I have mine. It seems to me that we will understand each other. He switches to a specific offer of bribery. Soldier.No. Hardly. We are of different suits. Refusal. And he makes it clear that they have a completely different look at money and bribery. That he does not accept him. The distant whistle of a locomotive. Woman.Do you hear? Train. Tries to hurry the Soldier. He uses the opportunity to interpret the beep as to inspire the Soldier with the idea that it will be home soon, that it is home, that you need to let me go. Soldier.And close somewhere. Or stating a fact. Or teases a little that your train is coming soon, but I won’t let you on it. (Although the second option, judging by psychological portrait Soldier, I don't think it fits). Woman.Let me go. Or we'll go together. In the meantime, let's hide so that the commissioner does not find it. (He gets up.) Already desperate, he openly lays out his plans, as he is running out of time due to the imminent arrival of the train. Soldier.Sit. It was not ordered to let her in. The soldier is not going to let her go - therefore he makes a sharp negative statement on her proposal. Woman.He is not your boss. He cannot order you. And you should not recognize his power over you! He tries to arouse a feeling of antipathy and hostility towards the Sailor, to break the established alliance between the Soldier and the Sailor, with the subsequent enticing of the Soldier to his side. Soldier.I recognize the power of the people. And the people put commissars. It substantiates the fact that they are subordinate to the Sailor. And that he sincerely considers this submission fair and correct. Woman.Listen, Soldier, do you need money? Do you want two hundred, three hundred rubles? Gold? Makes a desperate attempt to bribe the Soldier, as he realizes that perhaps this is not the best option but the only one left. Soldier(takes a step towards the woman). What? The Soldier is offended by the Woman's attempt to bribe him. Woman.Three hundred! Agree? Doesn't understand that she offended. I am sure that the Soldier said so that he would give more. Either she realized that she offended and tried to raise the price in order to kill the Soldier's pride with a larger amount. Soldier.Three hundred? The soldier is outraged. His honor is being bribed. But honor cannot be bribed. The soldier is offended even more, to the depths of his soul. Woman.Few? A thousand! Continues to bend the line with an increase in the proposed amount, in the hope of finding the point where the Soldier’s conscience still begins to waver in favor of taking the offered money and letting her go. The Soldier is silent. The Soldier’s internal indignation at such an act grows strongly inside. The woman does not understand that she is only making things worse. Woman.Well, half of everything in the bag! Do you want half? There are a lot here. (She stretches out her hand to the bag.) The woman is in complete despair - she goes for broke. Soldier(shouts). Don't touch! I will shoot! The Soldier's internal indignation cannot stand it and spills out. Finally dotting all the i's. A breathless sailor enters. He is covered in snow.

This passage is interesting in that two radically different concepts of bribing a Human with money collide here. The soldier does not accept this and it is against his nature. On the other hand, she is a potbelly stove, who is used to the fact that she can buy everything for money. And here the bourgeois-capitalist judgment about the possibility of bribing everyone and everything collides with the sincere nature of human conscience, which in its nature does not accept this judgment. In the end, the unshakable conscience of the Soldier wins. Perhaps it was at that moment that the first thought flashed through his mind - to join the ranks of the Red Army in order to eradicate such "disgrace". And if before that the Soldier may even have sympathized with the Woman, now his attitude has changed radically, to antipathy.

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