• The Artist's Image in Anatoly Efros's Performances The Tempest and The Theatre Director

УДК: 792.09:792.075

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2025-4-174-193

EDN: JQKBWE

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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 Artist's Image in Anatoly Efros's Performances The Tempest and The Theatre Director

Abstract

Anatoly Efros’s productions have always been distinguished by a special lyricism; the director’s voice was evident, though implicitly, in each production. There are several productions in which Efros’s personal life and the plot almost coincided. These include Shakespeare’s The Tempest, presented in 1983 as part of the December Evenings program at the The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and The Theatre Director, based on Ignatiy Dvoretsky’s play (1984) at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre. The plays reveal the Shakespearean principle — “the world is a stage”, which was actualized during the postmodern theatre rise and the era of reevaluating the concepts of theatricality in the early 20th century, for example, in Bulgakov’s Theatrical Novel or Blok’s The Booth. Efros first turned to such texts at the Lenin Komsomol Theatre: E. Radzinsky’s Filming (1965), The Seagull by A. P. Chekhov (1966), and Molière (1966), based on M.A. Bulgakov’s play The Cabal of Hypocrites. For many years, Efros rarely worked directly with the theme of the artist. At a turning point, when life at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre was collapsing, Efros staged the classic play The Tempest and the contemporary The Theatre Director. In this article, the author attempts to reconstruct these productions, exploring the theme of the lyrical hero and the autobiographical nature of the performances. Anatoly Efros’ directing poetics largely reflects his desire to make the inner experience of theatrical work the subject of audience reflection, thereby opening up a discussion about broader social processes (The Theatre Director). Autofixing also embodies the director's desire to present the experience of theatricality through the actualization of the principle of art synthesis (The Tempest). All this reflects not only the evolution of Efros’ style and method, but also the universality of the outstanding director’s understanding of stage art as a meta-creative space that self-reflexively destroys any limiting canons.

Keywords

Russian theatre, Soviet theatre, theatre directing, W. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, I. Dvoretsky’s The Theatre Director.

For citation

Kazmina A. O. The Artist’s Image in Anatoly Efros’s Performances The Tempest and The Theatre Director. Theatre. Fine Arts. Cinema. Music. 2025, no. 4, pp. 174–193.

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2025-4-174-193

EDN JQKBWE

References

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Received: 10.10.2025

Revised: 02.11.2025

Accepted: 15.11.2025