• The Philosophical Code in the Performances Staged by Anatoly Efros of the 1960s

УДК: 792.075+792.09

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2023-3-144-157

EDN: KBKIWS

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Anastasia O. Kazmina

Postgradiate Student of the Department of History of the Theatre of Russia. Scientific Supervisor: Stepanova Anna Anatolyevna, Candidate of Art History, Associate Professor of the Department of History of the Theatre of Russia (GITIS).
Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS)
Moscow, Russia

The Philosophical Code in the Performances Staged by Anatoly Efros of the 1960s

Abstract

The poetics of Anatoly Efros’s performances and his metaplot in the directing process in the context of the theatre aesthetics of the Soviet era was often analyzed from the point of view of hermeneutics. Many reviews of his contemporaries are written from this perspective. The approach to the analysis of Efros's work by codes, described in detail by the French theatre critics Anne Ubersfeld and Patrice Pavis, seems to be the most accurate for understanding the deep semantic structures of his individual productions and his work as a united whole. On the example of the performances On the Wedding Day (1964), 104 Pages About Love (1964), My Poor Marat (1965), A Movie Is Made (1965), The Seagull (1966), Molière (1966) there is considered the transformation of the social theme, which initially dominated in the artistic semiotics of Efros, into a metaphysical one. The philosophical code of Anatoly Efros’s performances at the Lenin Komsomol Theatre is connected with the director’s comprehension of spiritual life, the problem of the characters’ internal choice, their transcendence, the rapidly changing time, the ideas of the existentialists and European philosophy of the 20th century that were penetrating social mind. This is verified by the fact of Efros’s performances in the genre of tragedy at the Theatre on Malaya Bronnaya. They are Romeo and Juliet (1970), The Man from the Outside (1971), Don Juan (1973), The Marriage (1975) and Othello (1976). Efros tried to make this genre up-to-date, not via laboratory testing of book concepts, but, first of all, overcoming the boundaries of the theatre, immersion in the spiritual life of the hero and artist, and lyricism.

Keywords

Anatoly Efros, Soviet theatre, theatre poetics, theatre directing, structural analysis of the performance.

For citation

Kazmina A.O. The Philosophical Code in the Performances Staged by Anatoly Efros of the 1960s. Theatre. Fine Arts. Cinema. Music. 2023, no. 3, pp. 144–157.

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2023-3-144-157

EDN KBKIWS

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Received: 14.02.2023

Revised: 02.06.2023

Accepted: 15.06.2023