The concept of folk theater. Types and genres of traditional folk theater in Russia. Folklore theater, its types (booth, paradise, Parsley theater, nativity scene)

11.04.2019

FEDERAL STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

"MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY OF CULTURE AND ARTS"

Folklore theater

Coursework

Completed:

correspondence student

Groups 11105

Zakharova I.V.

Teacher:

Blinova G.P.

Moscow

Introduction

Chapter I. Folklore theater

1.1. Origins and development of folk theater

1.2. Types of folk theater

Chapter II. Development of folk theater in the XX-XXI centuries.

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

This work is devoted to the study of folk theater, its role in folk artistic culture, consideration of its types and key features.

Relevance The topic of studying folk theater is determined by the urgency of the problem of preserving culture and its values. Not only social changes in Russia in the 20th century led to the destruction of the foundations of traditional culture, but also the current pace of life, which entails a rapid change of priorities, which does not allow one to look back and learn the history of the culture of one’s people. The consequence of this was the realization of the seemingly inevitable loss of popular culture. But the country’s interest in its history, art, folklore, and the desire to preserve and defend its cultural identity have not faded.

Target The work consists of considering the cultural potential of folk theater and revealing its importance at the present stage of development of society.

Achieving this goal is associated with solving the following tasks:

Describe the history of the emergence and development of folk theater;

Consider the main characteristics and types of folk theater;

Analyze its functions in the development and preservation of folk culture traditions using the example of the folk theater “Blossom, Our Land!”;

Identify prospects for development in modern society.

Object of study: cultural heritage, Russian folklore.

Subject of research: activities of folk theater.

Chapter I. Folklore theater.

1.1. Origins and development.

Russian folk theater originated in ancient times. The basis for its appearance was the production activity of our distant Slavic ancestors. Numerous rituals, ritual actions and folk holidays played a major role in the development of the theater.

The main way for the formation of folk theater in Russia is the gradual withering away of ancient pagan ideas of man about the world and the exchange of cultural values between villages and cities, between the Russian people and foreigners.

In Russia, theater as an art form appeared only during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich “The Quietest”, and the words “theater” and “drama” are Greek in origin, as theater critic V.N. Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, entered the Russian language only in the 18th century. Among the people, “theater” was preceded by “disgrace,” and “drama” was preceded by play. Throughout the 17th century. The term “fun” was used, which was later replaced by “comedy”.

The grandiose reforms of Peter the Great changed not only the way of life, but also the traditional culture of Russia. “By planting the theater along the lines of alignment with Europe, Peter forced it to play the direct political role of an agitator, a panegyrist of his reforms. The theater that Peter started was supposed to be a public spectacle, i.e. essentially a completely new idea for Russia.”

Folklore in its ritual and ritual forms was supplanted and remained the lot of the common people, far from new theatrical amusements. Rituals and spectacles gradually lost the ritual functions of man’s magical connection with the natural world and their, as B.N. Putilov wrote, “directly ritualized forms.”

With the loss of the ritual function, the ancient action was preserved in folk life in the form of a game, no longer performing a ritual, but an aesthetic and etiquette function.

At the stage of such changes, folk theater is born. The conventional language of the performances did not require a special place - freely located spectators, of necessity, became participants in the fun. As D.M. pointed out. Balashov, “folklore theater - later

phenomenon of traditional culture<...>it arose as a result of the fundamental changes that Russia experienced, starting from the times of Peter the Great, and which gave rise to professional theater and drama” (quoted from).

The year of the creation of the first national (folklore) theater in Russia is considered to be

1765, when “on the Broomberg square near the Moika<...>nameless Russian comedians under clear skies every day<...>presented their comedies."

Such theater - dressing up, farces, dramatic skits, puppet shows performed by non-professional actors - existed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Also, from the end of the 17th century, secular popular prints became popular, among which a significant proportion were Western European “amusing” sheets, Russian popular prints depicting jesters, buffoons, folk holidays and festivities, fairy-tale heroes. In the 19th century, they were replaced by popular print books with texts of stories, fairy tales, and satires, which were in high demand among the reading democratic public. The emerging urban folklore also included traditional folk spectacles: performances by puppeteers, bear leaders, musicians and jokers. New genres of folk theater are emerging. Since the beginning of the 19th century, paradise has become an indispensable part of holiday entertainment. From the middle of the 18th century, the booth became the soul of all city festivities.

Gradually, various restrictions are imposed on the genres of fair art, they are subject to strict censorship, fairs and places of entertainment are moved outside the city. Driven out of long-developed places, subject to censorship control, the festivities die down, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, essentially cease to exist.

I. Pre-theatrical period (elements in calendar and family rituals, mummers, clowning, trainers, buffoons).

II. Theatrical period from the 17th century:

1. Balagan.

2. Rayok (moving picture theater).

3. Parsley Theater.

4. Nativity scene (about the birth of Christ in a cave).

For many centuries, the national (folklore) theater played an important role in the spiritual life of the Russian people, responding to all the most important events related to its history, and was an integral part of festive folk festivities and a favorite folk spectacle.

Its roots go back to ancient ceremonial rituals and actions associated with mummers. These rituals became an indispensable part of calendar and family holidays, which were based on a dramatic playful beginning.

Folk theater is the traditional dramatic art of the people. The types of folk entertainment and gaming culture are diverse: rituals, round dances, mummers, clownery, etc. In the history of folk theater, it is customary to consider the pre-theatrical and theatrical stages of folk dramatic creativity.

TO pre-theatrical forms include theatrical elements in calendar and family rituals.

In calendar rituals there are symbolic figures of Maslenitsa, Mermaid, Kupala, Yarila, Kostroma, etc., acting out scenes with them, and dressing up. Agricultural magic played a prominent role, with magical acts and songs designed to promote the well-being of the family. For example, on winter Christmastide they pulled a plow around the village, “sowed” grain in the hut, etc. With the loss magical meaning the ritual turned into fun.

The wedding ceremony was also a theatrical game: the distribution of “roles”, the sequence of “scenes”, the transformation of the performers of songs and lamentations into the protagonist of the ceremony (the bride, her mother). A complex psychological game involved changing the internal state of the bride, who had to cry and lament in her parents’ house, and in her husband’s house she had to portray happiness and contentment. However, the wedding ceremony was not perceived by the people as a theatrical performance.

In calendar and family rituals, mummers were participants in many scenes. They dressed up as an old man or an old woman, the man dressed in women's clothes, and the woman in men's clothes, they dressed up as animals, especially often as a bear and a goat. Dressing up in various clothes, making humps, masks, smearing with soot, as well as using sleds and ropes, benches, spindles and spinning wheels, troughs and frying pans, turned out fur coats and straw effigy, wax candles as conventional theatrical props, significantly enlivened folk entertainment, making their bright, exciting and unforgettable spectacle.

The costumes of the mummers, their masks, makeup, as well as the scenes they performed were passed down from generation to generation. On Christmastide, Maslenitsa, and Easter, mummers performed humorous and satirical scenes. Some of them later merged into folk dramas.

In addition to rituals, theatrical elements accompanied the performance of many folklore genres: fairy tales, round dances and comic songs, etc. An important role here was played by facial expressions, gesture, and movement - close to theatrical gesture and movement. For example, the storyteller did not just tell a fairy tale, but in one way or another acted it out: he changed his voice, gesticulated, changed his facial expression, showed how the hero of the fairy tale walked, carried a bucket or bag, etc. In fact, it was a game one actor.

Actually theatrical forms of folk dramatic creativity- more late period, the beginning of which researchers date back to the 17th century.

However, long before this time in Rus' there were comedians, musicians, singers, dancers, and trainers. This is a buffoon. They united in wandering groups until the middle of the 17th century. took part in folk rituals and holidays. There are proverbs about the art of buffoons (Everyone will dance, but not like a buffoon), songs and epics. Their creativity was reflected in fairy tales, epics, different forms folk theater. In the 17th century buffoonery was prohibited by special decrees. For some time the Sko-Morokhs took refuge on the outskirts of Rus'.

Specific features of folk theater— absence of a stage, separation of performers and audience, action as a form of reflection of reality, transformation of the performer into a different image, aesthetic orientation of the performance. Plays were often distributed in written form and pre-rehearsed, which did not exclude improvisation.

During the fairs they built BALAGANIA.

Booths— temporary structures for theatrical, variety or circus performances.

In Russia they have been known since the middle of the 18th century. Balagans were usually located on market squares, near places of city festivities. They featured magicians, strongmen, dancers, gymnasts, puppeteers, and folk choirs; small plays were staged. A balcony (raus) was built in front of the booth, from which artists (usually two) or a paradiseman invited the audience to the performance. Grandfather barkers developed their own way of dressing and addressing the audience.

Booth booths first appeared at European markets in the Middle Ages, when various shows and entertainments were organized to attract buyers, and traveling magicians, acrobats, and trainers performed. From the second half XVI century, they began to invite professional actors there.

The word “booth” has been known in the Russian language for a long time. It came from the Turkic language and meant a light, collapsible extension to a house, intended for storing goods or for trade. Researchers date the history of theatrical booths in Russia to the 18th century.

“Eh-wah, So many booths have been built for your pockets. Carousels and swings for festive fun! - shouted the barkers.

The first descriptions of booths, which were then called fair theaters, date back to the end of the 18th century. In these “wooden huts” all sorts of comic and tragic important acts, fables, fairy tales, miracles were presented. Each spectacle lasted no more than half an hour, “and therefore there are up to 30 or more of them per day, and although each spectator only costs 5 kopecks he pays for the entrance, but this amounts to a significant profit.”

Booths, along with other entertainment facilities, quickly gained popularity. In 1822, an entire city was erected in Moscow, consisting of 13 booths, 4 roller coasters, 2 carousels and 31 tents for trade.

There was no technical control over the construction of booths. They built it by eye, based on experience. This continued until thunder struck, or rather a huge fire broke out. In February 1836, during a performance, a booth caught fire from a lamp suspended close to the rafters. IN auditorium Panic began and out of 400 spectators, 126 died.

After this fire, rules for the construction of booths were developed, in particular, the width of passages and the number of emergency exits were determined, and it was forbidden to install stoves. However, these rules were often deviated from, especially in the provinces.

Especially in booths they loved the so-called frequent changes, i.e. instant changes of all the scenery with the curtain open, in full view of the public. Although the stage was dismountable, it was precisely calculated and “fitted.” Each year it was reassembled from the same parts, with minor replacements of warped or lost parts. In front of the stage there was an orchestral “pit” for 12-15 musicians; open boxes were adjacent to it, and behind them were two or three rows of chairs. Boxes and chairs had a special entrance and exit and were separated by a blank barrier. Then came the so-called “first places” - 7-8 rows of benches. Behind them, on a more sloping part of the floor, there were 10-12 rows of “second places” benches, also with a separate entrance and exit.

The “third place” audience watched the performances standing and was the last to enter the hall. These spectators were called "kopecks" because entrance ticket standing places cost ten kopecks. They waited for the performance to begin on a high, wide staircase, from where they were let in through a sliding gate called the “gateway.” And indeed, as soon as the doors were opened, a crowd of several hundred people broke through in a noisy wave and quickly rushed along the covered floor slope to take places closer to the barrier.

The spectators of the boxes, stalls, “first” and “second” seats were waiting for the start of the performance in the side extensions - cramped, but still a foyer.

In front of the stage, two wooden pillars with iron brackets were dug into the ground. Lightning lamps were inserted into these brackets with three sockets. After the ban on building stoves, they provided light and warmth; food could be heated on them. However, the lamps were expensive for the owner: in a large booth they consumed up to two pounds of kerosene every evening. The walls, covered with two rows of boards, helped to retain heat.

The spectators sat on simple, rough-hewn benches. The front ones were made lower, and the back ones were so high that those sitting on them did not reach the floor with their feet. There was also a brisk trade in seeds, nuts, and buns.

The repertoire could be unimaginable, for example: “On Sunday, May 9, great musical entertainment in the belly of a whale. First place 50 kopecks, second place - 25 kopecks. silver."

Panoramas, dioramas, wax figures, monsters, wild people, overgrown with moss, and even “a siren recently caught in the Atlantic Ocean by fishermen.”

RAYOK- a type of performance at fairs, widespread mainly in Russia in the 18th-19th centuries.

The rack is a small box, a yard wide in all directions, with two magnifying glasses in front. Inside it, a long strip with home-grown images of different cities, great people and events is rewound from one skating rink to another. The spectators, “a penny from the snout,” look into the glass - the raeshnik moves the pictures and tells tales for each new number, often very intricate.

During folk festivals, the raeshnik with his box was usually located on the square next to booths and carousels. The “grandfather-raeshnik” himself is a retired soldier, experienced, dexterous and quick-witted. He wears a gray caftan trimmed with red or yellow braid with bunches of colored rags on his shoulders, and a kolomenka hat also decorated with bright rags. He has bast shoes on his feet and a flaxen beard tied to his chin.

Such a spectacle appeared in Rus' at the beginning of the 19th century. The box in which a strip of pictures was rewound from roller to roller was called a district or cosmorama, and its owner was called a district.

The performance was a huge success at festivals and fairs: many Russian writers emphasized this in their works. A.I. Levitov, for example, in the essay “Types and Scenes of a Country Fair” ends the description of this spectacle with the phrase: “The crowd roared with pleasure...”

There are several versions of the origin of rajka as a type of spectacle. Academician A.N. Veselovsky believed that the model for them was nativity scenes, where drawn figures acted. Historian I.V. Zabelin argued that a box with holes - a cosmorama - was brought to us from the West by traveling artists. Be that as it may, we can assume that the first raishniks in our country were ofeni, peddlers who sold popular prints. To make the goods move faster, they attracted the attention of buyers by giving humorous explanations of the contents of the popular prints. And the popular prints were really interesting.

Pictures on a variety of topics were chosen for display in amusing panoramas, or raikas. Portraits of Russian emperors, generals, as well as, for example, the jester Balakirev, Alexander the Great, epic heroes, Adam himself, etc. Images of various events of the past and present, wars, natural disasters were shown: the Battle of Sinop and the eruption Vesuvius, the battle with the Circassians and the comet Bel, “which almost touched our planet with its tail”; something interesting: “Balloon flight”, “Lion hunt in Africa”, “Elephant ride in Persia” and the like.

Naturally, every rayonnik, in order to attract attention to himself, tried to make his speeches more entertaining and amusing. To do this, he entered into humorous dialogues with the audience, using the techniques and demeanor of old-time barkers and other farce comedians.

For example, the owner of the district, giving explanations to one of the pictures, says:

- But two fools are fighting, the third stands and watches. The one leaning to the window in the box is surprised:

- Uncle, where is the third?

- And you!?

Everyday scenes were most often colored with crude humor, but very understandable to ordinary people. They ridiculed laziness, greed, cunning, and the claims of the rootless to look like an aristocrat.

They often made fun of the dandy and his “sweetheart”: “Here, look both ways; a guy and his sweetheart are walking. They put on fashionable dresses and think they are noble. The guy is lean, he bought an old frock coat somewhere for rubles, and shouts that it is new. And the sweetheart is excellent: a healthy woman, a miracle of beauty, three miles thick, a nose - half a pound, and eyes - just a miracle: one looks at us, and the other at Arzamas.

Even about events that, it would seem, give no reason for fun at all, the “amusementists” still tried to talk about them as funny as possible: “But the fire of the Apraksin market. Firemen are jumping around, hiding half a pint in barrels; There’s not enough water, so they pour vodka to make it burn brighter!”

But, of course, not everything in the speeches of the raeshniks was reduced to jokes. There was, for example, a patriotic trend that developed during wars. The victories of the Russian army were spoken of with pride and pathos.

Showing a drawing of the Russian army crossing the Alps, the raeshnik exclaimed: “But this is a gratifying picture! Our dear Suvorov is crossing the Devil’s Bridge. Hurray! Take hostility!” And with what disdain the owner of the paradise spoke about, say, Napoleon, deliberately distorting the words for greater amusement: “I will report to you: the French king Napoleon is the same one whom our Alexander the Blessed exiled to the island of Elentia for bad behavior.”

Some of the audience looked with interest at pictures with views of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris and other cities. They listened: “And this is the city of Petersburg. The Peter and Paul Fortress stands. The guns are firing from the fortress, and the criminals are sitting in the casemates.”

Imagine a picture depicting the St. Petersburg-Tsarskoe Selo railway. Rayoshnik begins to tell: “Would you like to have some fun? Take a ride by rail to Tsarskoe Selo? Here are the miracles of mechanics: steam turns the wheels, a locomotive runs ahead and drags a whole convoy behind it. Carriages, lines and wagons in which different people sit. In half an hour we drove twenty miles, and then we arrived at Tsarskoe! Stop! Come out, gentlemen, please, to the station here. Wait a little, the Moscow road will soon be ready.

Well, now let's go back, the couples are already whistling again. The conductor calls and opens the doors to the cars. Come here, gentlemen, if you are late, there will be trouble!

Now the locomotive is moving, let's set off. Let's fly like an arrow! Smoke pours out of the chimney in a stripe, forests and villages flash by! They are coming back to St. Petersburg. What, what was the ride like? And we didn’t see how we found ourselves! This is the power of mechanics! Before, a nag drove you around...

Over more than a hundred years, the performances of the paramilitaries, of course, have changed. Technical improvements to the box took place. They increased its size and made not two, but four holes. Stationary panoramas appeared. And color reproductions were added to popular prints. In the texts of the raishniks, the influence of newspaper language and other printed publications was increasingly felt.

At the very beginning of the 20th century, the number of places at fairs and festivities decreased sharply. Apparently, interest in them was declining: they were being replaced by cinema and other new shows. And soon the raeshniks, who had entertained and enlightened Russian residents for more than a hundred years, disappeared without a trace...

PETRUSHKA THEATER- Russian folk puppet comedy. Its main character was Petrushka, after whom the theater was named. This hero was also called Pyotr Ivanovich Uk-susov, Pyotr Petrovich Samovarov, in the south - Vanya, Vanka, Vanka Retatouille, Ratatouille, Rutyutyu (tradition of the northern regions of Ukraine).

In ancient times, in order not to incur the wrath of the gods, presenting stories from their lives, actors resorted to a cunning trick - they “entrusted” responsible roles to wooden dolls. Probably, it was from then on that it became a custom not to identify puppeteer actors with their charges, who sometimes made very dubious jokes. A favorite of the ancient Romans, the big-nosed hunchback allowed himself not only various kinds of obscene remarks, but also poisonous remarks about the rich and powerful - and nothing: the doll, and at the same time the actor, usually got away with everything. Well, what to take from a creature with a wooden head!

With the advent of Christianity, puppet mysteries based on religious themes were played out even in churches. For example, during the celebration of the Nativity of Christ, a wooden box without a front wall was placed on the altar, where doll figures depicted the main event of the holiday.

There were three main types of puppets - cane puppets (they were especially popular in the East), rope puppets, that is, puppets, and easier-to-control glove puppets.

Parsley - from gloves. He had a wooden, rather crudely made head (a hooked nose, a mouth up to the ears), and his body was a cloth bag that the puppeteer put on his hand.

The Parsley Theater arose under the influence of the Italian puppet theater Pulcinello, with which Italians often performed in St. Petersburg and other cities. A sharp-tongued bully wearing a jester's cap appeared in Italy at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries.

Soon, Pulcinell's "brothers" were not slow in appearing in other countries - the English Punch, the French Polichinelle, the Dutch Pikkelherring, the Czech Kasparek, the German Kasperle. In Russia, the red-nosed scoundrel was respectfully called Pyotr Ivanovich Uksusov. And if it’s simple - Pe-trushka. What characterizes the characters is not so much their external resemblance as their permissiveness, the ability to joke about any topic.

An early sketch of the Petrushka Theater dates back to the 30s. XVII century “A man, having tied a woman’s skirt with a hoop at the hem to his belt, lifted it up - this skirt covers him above his head, he can move his hands freely in it, put dolls on top and present entire comedies.”

Later, the raised women's skirt with a hoop at the hem was replaced by a screen.

In the 19th century The Petrushka Theater was the most popular and widespread type of puppet theater in Russia. It consisted of a light folding screen, a box with several dolls (but the number of characters is usually from 7 to 20), a barrel organ and small props (sticks or batons, rattles, rolling pins). The Petrushka Theater did not know the scenery.

The puppeteer, accompanied by a musician, usually an organ grinder, walked from courtyard to courtyard and gave traditional performances about Petrushka. You could always see him during folk festivals and fairs.

About the structure of the Petrushka Theater: “The doll has no body, but only a simple skirt, with an empty cardboard head sewn on top, and hands, also empty, on the sides. The puppeteer sticks his index finger into the doll’s head, and into the hands - the first and third fingers; he usually puts a doll on each hand and thus acts with two dolls at once.”

Characteristic features of Parsley's appearance: a large hooked nose, a laughing mouth, a protruding chin, a hump or two humps (on the back and on the chest). The clothes consisted of a red shirt, a cap with a tassel, and smart boots on his feet; or from a clownish two-tone clown outfit, collar and cap with bells.

The puppeteer spoke for Petrushka with the help pika - a device, thanks to which the voice became sharp, shrill, rattling. (The pischik was made of two curved bone or silver plates, inside of which a narrow strip of linen ribbon was fastened), so it was not always possible to understand the words. But this did not at all detract from the audience’s enjoyment of the rough and fun action. Satisfied spectators threw money and demanded a continuation - an endless repetition of well-known scenes a long time ago.

The puppeteer spoke for the rest of the characters in the comedy in a natural voice, moving the squeak behind his cheek

The Petrushka Theater's performance consisted of a set of skits that had a satirical orientation. Parsley is the invincible hero of a puppet comedy, who defeats everyone and everything: the police, the priests, even the devil and death, while he himself remains immortal.

The appearance of the beloved hero was eagerly awaited at fairs, folk festivals and booths. As soon as the screen was installed, a crowd immediately gathered to “gawk at the comedy.” There was no smell of high “calm” here. The skits were primitive, but enjoyed constant success - here Petrushka buys a horse from a gypsy, he tries to deceive, but it doesn’t work out - he gets beaten; So Petrushka fell ill, and a stupid pompous doctor came to him, introducing himself:

- I am a doctor from Kuznetsky Most, a baker, a doctor and a pharmacist. They lead people to me on their feet, and they take them away from me on drays...

Here the fool of the quarter or the gentleman of the fool does not give the hero peace; They’re trying to teach Petrushka military skills, but he sneers and calls the corporal “Your frying pan.” At the end of a short reprise, Petrushka invariably beat the hapless opponent with a huge club and drove him away in shame, interspersing his tirades with obscene jokes.

As a rule, in the finale the ba-lagura was carried away by the devil or the dog. But the spectators were not upset - everyone knew that the cheerful Petrushka would again jump out from behind the screen and give pepper.

The bully in each scene usually had only one “partner” - at the same time there were two characters according to the number of hands of the puppeteer.

The simple “repertoire” consisted of a set of time-tested scenes and was passed on orally from artist to artist, acquiring new jokes.

Parsley and Gypsy

The image of Parsley is the personification of festive freedom, emancipation, and a joyful feeling of life. Petrushka’s actions and words were opposed to accepted standards of behavior and morality. The parsley man's improvisations were topical: they contained sharp attacks against local merchants, landowners, and authorities. The performance was accompanied by musical inserts, sometimes parodies.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the popularity of Parsley began to decline. The authorities and guardians of morality turned against him. The Pyotr Ivanovich Theater was banned, and puppeteers were expelled from fairgrounds. To make money, artists began performing in front of a completely different audience. But the attempt to “comb” the vocabulary of the people’s favorite, to make him the hero of sugary moralizing stories and children’s holidays, failed. The time of the hooligan Uksusov has passed. And the Pulcinella brothers gave way to new heroes.

Puppet theater VERTEP received its name from its purpose: to present a drama in which the Gospel story about the birth of Jesus Christ in the cave where Mary and Joseph found refuge was reproduced (Old Church and Old Russian "den" - cave).

The nativity scene came to Russia from Ukraine and Belarus at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries.

The nativity scene was a portable rectangular box made of thin boards or cardboard. Outwardly, it resembled a house, which could consist of one or two floors. Most often there were two-story nativity scenes. Dramas of religious content were played in the upper part, and ordinary interludes and comic everyday scenes were played in the lower part. This also determined the design of the parts of the nativity scene.

Nativity boxChristmas drama

The upper part (sky) was usually covered with blue paper from the inside; Nativity scenes were painted on its back wall; or on the side there was a model of a cave or stable with a manger and motionless figures of Mary and Joseph, the infant Christ and domestic animals.

The lower part (ground or palace) was covered with bright colored paper, foil, etc., in the middle, on a small elevation, there was a throne on which was a doll depicting King Herod.

In the bottom of the box and in the shelf that divided the box into two parts, there were slots along which the puppeteer moved rods with dolls - characters from dramas - fixedly attached to them. The rods with the dolls could be moved along the box, the dolls could turn in all directions. Doors were cut into the right and blind side of each part: they appeared from one doll and disappeared from the other.

Dolls were carved from wood (sometimes sculpted from clay), painted and dressed in cloth or paper clothes and mounted on metal or wooden rods.

The text of the drama was pronounced by one puppeteer, changing the timbre of his voice and intonation of speech, thereby creating the illusion of a performance by several actors.

Varieties of folk dramas.

Compared to other genres of folk literature, the repertoire of Russian folk drama is small. All known material consists of no more than two dozen plays. And even those are more different options with an independent name.

Why are there so few dramatic works represented in literature? There are sufficient grounds for this in the long-established way of life folk life. Staging a more or less voluminous play requires considerable effort and time. The peasant had little free time - only winter, and not all of that: after Christmas, weddings took place, and then there was Lent. In Rus', the Priesthood has always treated theater very strictly, calling it “demonic actions.”

In this we were very different from the theater of Ancient Greece, where theater was the main entertainment and was never prohibited. The clergy managed to convince the people that by performing “demonic games”, “satanic games”, they are pagan and unclean. If, nevertheless, someone was noticed in these actions, then it was necessary to plunge into the hole three times on the day of the Epiphany of the Lord (January 6), in order to atone for this sin. If you don’t wash yourself with Epiphany water, you will remain condemned to eternal torment.

For these two reasons, the “theatrical” season was short-lived: from December 26 to January 4, during Christmas time. It was then that all the festivities took place. Despite the shortness of the season, rehearsals began long before its performance. A few weeks before the Christmas holidays, a troupe was organized, and the participants in the performance, hiding from prying eyes, learned their roles. They were led by more competent comrades, as a rule, retired soldiers or factory workers. At the same time, other participants prepared decorations from colorful paper and costumes. The roles had to be learned by heart, because There were no prompters in the village theater.

The female roles caused great difficulty, because girls were forbidden to play, and boys took part in the performance instead of women with little pleasure. Therefore, everyone who expressed a desire to learn the female role was welcome. There were often difficulties with this. The small number of female roles is explained precisely by this fact. The performances began on the third day of the holiday (to start earlier is a sin). After lunch, the entire troupe, called a “gang” in the village, went around the village or village, first entering rich houses. An ambassador was usually sent ahead to ask if the owner would like to accept the performance. Or the whole “gang” lined up under the windows with a chant: “Allow me, allow me, master, to enter the new mountain, to ascend to the new mountain, to say a word...”.

When permission was received, all the performers burst into the house and began the performance. There were no preparations on site, all that was needed was a crowd from which the performers would emerge and hide there. Everyone tried to speak loudly, almost shouted, stamped their feet. All this was considered a sign of a good performance of the role. The listeners also did not mince words, approving or scolding the actors, and often interfering in the dialogue of the performers. This was the external environment of Smolensk folk performances.

There has always been a desire for folk drama.

The most common drama was folk drama about Tsar Maxemyan. Its content in general outline the following: the ambassador comes on stage and announces the arrival of the formidable Tsar Maxemyan. Maxemyan himself appears, ordering all the royal paraphernalia in which he is clothed to be brought. He asks his son Adolf to come, whom he orders to accept the Muslim faith. He refuses, actively defending Orthodoxy. For refusal, the king wants to kill his son. The death of his son does not pass without a trace for the king - Death appears and strikes Maksemyan.

Appearing at the end of the 18th century, this play has undergone various changes. It was added, retold, and new options appeared.

The origin of “Tsar Maximilian” (sometimes the drama had this name) has not yet been clarified. Some researchers have suggested that this play is a dramatic adaptation of the life of the martyr Nikita, the son of the persecutor of Christians Maximilian, who subjected Nikita to torture for confessing the Christian faith. Others, based on the foreign names in the play (Maximilian, Adolf, Brambeul or Brambeus, Venus, Mars), suggest that this drama goes back to some school drama of the first half of the XVIII century, in turn based on some translated story of the late 17th, early 18th centuries.

But from these possible prototypes, a story and a school drama, “The Comedy about Tsar Maximilian and his son Adolf” should have retained, in any case, only very little - maybe only scenes where the pagan king demands from his Christian son the worship of “idol gods” " The rest of the content is filled with scenes borrowed apparently from some interludes (one has already been established - “About Anika the Warrior and his struggle with death”), episodes from the nativity scene, Petrushka, and also from others folk plays, related to “Tsar Maximilian”: “Boats”, “Barina”, etc.

Moreover, the text of “Tsar Maximilian” is filled with excerpts from folk songs and romances, as well as distorted quotes from folk 559 alterations of poems by Pushkin, Lermontov and other poets. As you can see, the improvisational principle is used very widely in the play. In its original form, at the beginning of the 18th century, the play “Tsar Maximilian” could be perceived with political acuteness: in it contemporaries could see a satire on the attitude of Peter the Great, who married a Lutheran and fought against many traditions of the church, to Tsarevich Alexei (according to the play Tsar Maximilian marries the “idol goddess”). The plot of this play is very reminiscent of the family life of Peter 1.

Another equally famous play of this time is the drama "Anaka the Warrior and Death." This is a debate about life and death. Strong and invincible, Anika the warrior boasts of her strength. The Grim Reaper enters the stage. Anika the warrior greets her with ridicule. Death knows no mercy and kills the warrior.

Later, a drama called "Boat". At different times, “The Boat” changes, new heroes appear. Russian folk drama has different names: “Boat”, “Gang of Robbers”, “Ataman”, one of the complicated versions is “Mashenka”. In its basic scheme, this play is very close to the traditional beginning of several robber songs, often dedicated to the name of Stepan Razin: a boat is described floating down the river (Volga, Kama) with robbers sitting in it and an ataman standing in the middle of the boat. The content of the play is as follows: the chieftain asks the captain what is visible in the distance. IN different options the drama is complicated by introductory episodes, e.g. borrowings from the third folk play “The Imaginary Master”, or “The Naked Master”. The last play is based on a popular folk anecdote about a master and a headman, who informs the landowner that everything is fine with him, “only... mummy died, the house burned down, the cattle died,” etc.

Drama "Master" is a parody scene of a master's court and the master's purchase of a horse, bull and people. Apparently the play originated among the landed gentry.

In the drama “The Horse”, or “The Rider and the Farrier”, although in a very confused form of dialogue between the rider (originally the master) and the farrier, the relationship with the landowners and various authorities is also parodically depicted.

The drama “Mavrukh”, representing a folk adaptation of the song “Malbrouk is ready to go on a campaign,” contains a satire on the church funeral of the deceased and on the life of the clergy.

In the 19th century, dramas often used words from the works of famous poets.

Introduction

I chose this topic because I wanted to learn more about Russian folklore, its festive features and customs. This topic makes it possible to reveal the expressive means of most folk performances, holidays and folk theater in general.

Folklore is the creativity of any people, which is passed on from generation to generation. The main feature is the absence of a famous author.

Theater (from Greek - I look, I see) is a type of art; the place where the action takes place; the performance itself, the stage or stage; a body of dramatic works.

Artistic originality folklore theater

Russian theater originated in ancient times. The soil for the appearance of its initial elements was the production activity of our distant Slavic ancestors. Numerous rituals, ritual actions and folk holidays played a major role in the elements of the development of theater into a complex system of folk dramatic creativity.

Having gone through a centuries-long path of independent development, the Russian folk theater had a huge influence on professional theater. It can be said that without taking into account the experience of the folk theater, without relying on it as a solid foundation, the professional Russian theater would not have been able to rise to world heights in the short historical period of its existence. This alone makes us treat Russian folk theater with great attention and makes it necessary to study it.

Elements artistic comprehension appeared in the era of the primitive communal system. Art in that distant era was “directly woven into material activity and into the material communication of people.”

The main place in art primitive man occupied by the beast - the object of the hunt, on which all life largely depended. In the rituals before the start of a hunt or after its successful completion, there were also dramatic elements that reproduced elements of the hunt. Perhaps even then one or more participants dressed up in skins and portrayed animals, others were “hunters”.

With the development of agriculture, similar actions appear that reproduce the planting, harvesting and processing of useful plants. Such actions lasted for many centuries. Some of them, in the form of round dances or children's games, have survived to this day.

Every nation has its own art; these are legends, epics, songs, dances, the art of lacemakers, knitters, woodcarvers, metal chasers, and the art of weaving products from birch bark, from twigs, and the art of potters, and weaving.

Many types of folk art gave rise to folk crafts in ancient times. There are many places in Russia where artistic crafts were born and still live. Who doesn’t know the famous painting on Gzhel dishes, Zhostovo trays, Vyatka toys, Palekh and X boxes O Luya, wooden ladles of Khokhloma, Gorodets painting on the boards?! What about Rostov enamel? What about Vladimir embroidery? What about Vologda lace? And although not all folk crafts have survived over time, nevertheless, the centers of many folk arts are still alive and there are still brilliant masters in Russia, thanks to whose art the ancient tradition folk arts and crafts.

However, not all folk art should be called folklore. Research in recent decades has led to an understanding of folklore as oral folk art, expressed in verbal, musical, choreographic and dramatic forms. This means that folklore includes epics, folk tales, folk songs (play, ritual, etc.), the art of buffoons, and folk farcical scenes. Rituals, rituals, folk games and amusements, folk festivals - all this is also folklore. But folk crafts and crafts do not belong to folklore, although they represent folk art that actually exists in folk life.

Folklore is characterized by bifunctionality and syncretism. These properties make it similar to primitive art. Folklore, like primitive art, is syncretic: in its origin and existence there was no division into types of art. The epics were told by storytellers to the accompaniment of the gusli; songs were often accompanied by dancing and contained dramatic play elements; and the art of buffoons often combined acting, singing, dancing, juggling, and acrobatics.

The bifunctionality of folklore means that it is both art and non-art, i.e. part of everyday life. This was especially clearly manifested in ritual folklore, which was distinguished by its entertainment.

Bifunctionality also characterizes such a feature of folklore as the absence of division into performers and audience (which is an important feature of the established art); here are all participants and spectators at the same time.

But in addition to these important properties of folklore, it also has special characteristics. The characteristics of folklore include the following: orality, collectivity, anonymity, traditionality, variability, artistic creativity.

These signs had different meanings in different eras, but their complex was always important; this means that it is impossible to determine the folklore in front of us or not based on any one or two or three signs.

Orality of creativity means that folklore works exist in oral form, that is, in transmission “from mouth to mouth.” The oral nature of creativity is associated not with the lack of literacy of the population and not so much with the process of creation, as previously thought, but with the psychological need for communication.

Collectivity and anonymity of creativity mean that folklore works have no authors, that they were created over decades, and perhaps centuries, collectively, passed on from mouth to mouth, supplemented, but at the same time the established centuries-old traditions were not violated.

Traditionality of creativity means certain canons of content, forms and techniques of creativity. Over the centuries, certain “rules” have developed that cannot be broken. So, for example, in fairy tales there is always a beginning. This is a tradition, a canon. In the content - the hero goes through three trials - this is also canon. In the finale, evil is defeated, good triumphs - this is also canon. Fairy tales were also supposed to be told in a certain way, and wonderful storytellers and storytellers knew how to do it. Unfortunately, today this tradition of telling fairy tales has not been preserved. The details included in many rites and rituals have also been lost; other details have been preserved, but their symbolic meaning and meaning have been lost.

Variability of creativity. This feature is associated with the anonymous nature of his creativity and means that the same work of folklore exists in dozens of variants, depending on the locality of its existence. But it is necessary to distinguish the variability of a folklore work from a distorted author’s work, in the course of its existence the text (or melody) has changed. For example, some authors have many works that have “gone to the people”: “Why are you greedily looking at the road”, “Peddlers” by N.A. Nekrasov, some poems by S.A. Yesenin, which became songs, etc. If in different places we find different text and different melody, then this is not a manifestation of variability, but a distortion of the author’s text and the melody composed by the composer.

Artistic creativity is a very important feature of folklore. In pre-revolutionary science, it was believed that all that art that is not recognized by society, because it does not correspond to the aesthetic criteria prevailing in society at a given time, should be classified as folklore. However, this is a deeply erroneous statement, because each type of art and folklore has its own imagery, its own system of expressive means, its own aesthetics. Therefore, we should talk about the aesthetics of folklore, which differs from the aesthetics of the “scientific” art that is familiar to us.

Folklore flourished in the 17th century. The beginning of the reforms of Peter 1, the development of foundries, manufactories, etc. entailed the gradual destruction of the patriarchal way of life in which folklore successfully developed and lived. Its social base was the peasant community, which was dealt a blow by Peter's economic reforms. Consequently, folklore began to collapse. This process proceeded unevenly in different regions: in some regions, economic processes were active, destroying the natural economy and, accordingly, the base of folklore. In others, these processes took place slowly (in the Russian “outbacks”, in the northern, western, southern, Siberian provinces), and many types of folklore were preserved there.

Currently, song and dance forms of folklore are alive in villages remote from industrial centers. Storytellers are a thing of the past; in many rites and rituals the meaning of their individual details has been lost, the traditions of many festivals and folk games have been lost, because all this has long since disappeared from folk life. The loss of folklore is an objective historical process. Attempts to preserve some of its forms are commendable, but, unfortunately, they are not being carried out in the name of folklore itself; Most often this is facilitated by commercial interest. That’s why there is so much pseudo folklore nowadays.

Among the many forms of folklore there was one - folk theater.

Folklore theater is a unique phenomenon in Russian folk artistic culture, a phenomenon that combines the concepts of “folklore” and “theater”. Until now, experts disagree on the definition of “folklore theater”. Some believe that folk theater is everything in folklore that has entertainment value - ceremonies, rituals, games, mass events, festivals, etc. Others classify performances based on oral folk drama as folk theater. Who's right? To answer this question, let us recall the specific features of theatrical art. Among them there will be entertainment, and effectiveness, and play, and collective creativity, and artistry, (and a number of others), i.e. signs characteristic of both theater and ritual folklore. But the content of these signs will be different.

Ritual entertainment is a necessary element of the ritual itself and exists primarily for its participants.

Such entertainment is traditional, canonical, and cannot contain an individual element. The spectacle of a theatrical performance exists for the public. It is inextricably linked with artistic expression performance. It is conceived and embodied in dramatic action. The entertainment value of each performance is individual.

Effectiveness can be seen in a whole series of rites, rituals, celebrations, etc. But, unlike the effectiveness of a theatrical performance, in ritual effectiveness there is no drama, no dramatic struggle, no conflict. Theater is unthinkable without conflict, without dramatic struggle. Consequently, effectiveness in theatrical art presupposes drama and dramatic conflict.

Play in life is a means of satisfying the needs of its participants in the game itself.

Acting in the theater is a way for an actor to create an artistic image, the character of a specific character. It's a way to express conflict. Such a game is a means of satisfying the aesthetic needs of the public.

Collectiveness of creativity in folklore means impersonality, anonymity, and lack of authorship. In theatrical art, this is a huge team of actors, an artist, a composer, costume designers, make-up artists, lighting designers, sound designers, stage workers, etc., organized and directed by the director towards a single goal - the creation of a performance. At the same time, the creativity of each participant is deeply individual. And authorship is manifested in the creativity of each participant in the performance.

Image is a characteristic feature of art. In folk theater this is a mask image, i.e. traditional, canonical image of this or that folklore character, indicated by certain details of costume, makeup, and props. Creating such an image does not require individualization of his character traits; on the contrary, traditional execution should be observed here. This is an essential feature of folklore artistry. (Here, for example, is how the costume of some folklore heroes is expressed: Lady - cap, umbrella and fan; Gypsy - red shirt, boots; Pop - beard made of tow, wooden cross in hand; Goat - the performer is covered with a sheepskin coat, turned inside out, etc. .).

The art of theater is characterized by an individual beginning in the creation of a character's image; the created image itself is endowed with many individual character traits. Traditional, canonic performance is inappropriate here. It would be regrettable to see identical Hamlets and other heroes of Shakespeare’s plays on the stages of theaters around the world, recognizable by their costumes, props, and makeup. Over the course of several hundred years, great works of various actors have been created on the theater stages of the world; The history of world theater includes the famous creators of the image of Hamlet: the Englishman David Garrick, the Italian Eleonora Duse, the German Devrient, many others, as well as the Russian theater actors Mochalov, Karatygin, and in our time the famous Laurence Olivier, Innokenty Smoktunovsky and a number of other great actors. Each of them has their own Hamlet.

Folklore theater, of course, has lost such properties of folklore as syncretism and bifunctionality: it already has a clear division into “artists” and “audience” (although the “artists” were fellow villagers of the “spectators”); and he himself clearly gravitates towards the art of theater (that is, he breaks with folklore syncretism). Over the many decades of his existence, he also developed his own dramaturgy, which, by the way, has not lost touch with folk tradition. Therefore, we can say that folk theater is a theater of oral folk drama. There are mainly three major dramas - “Tsar Maximilian”, “The Boat”, “Gang of Robbers”, as well as smaller ones - “Black Raven”, “Ermak”, “How the Frenchman Took Moscow”, “Parasha”. Their variants are also known. There are also satirical dramas: “The Master”, “The Imaginary Master”, “Mavrukh”, “Pakhomushka”. Collectors of Russian folklore wrote them down. Tsar Maximilian was first recorded in 1818, other dramas were recorded later. This means that at the beginning of the 19th century there was still a folk theater. But, apparently, its heyday took place earlier. He lived in villages. Performances were prepared in advance and usually took place during Christmas time or during Holy Week. Participating in the performances were traveling actors (former buffoons) and the most “poor” guys in the village, those who were distinguished by their resourcefulness, sense of humor and were considered recognized artists who knew the traditions of performing certain roles.

If we read the text of any of the oral folk dramas, we will not get any idea about the performance, because the plot, for example, of “Boats” or “Gang of Robbers” is quite primitive, inspired by the “exploits” of Ataman Stenka Razin. It contains borrowings from folk songs, folk legends, and literary sources. The plot itself is very sketchy. All spectators knew the content of the upcoming performance in advance. But the whole advantage of the theatrical performance was not in introducing the public to the plot, but in what improvisational interludes between the “tragic” scenes would arise today. These farcical interludes were in no way connected with the main plot of the oral drama, and the audience could contact the “artists” directly from the “audience”, and they usually deftly parried all the attacks of the audience. This was the main pleasure of such a spectacle-game. But it was precisely this ability to improvise that was lost in the first place.

Economic reforms in Russia, begun by Peter, marked the beginning of the destruction of that way of life (i.e., the peasant community) that nourished folklore and contributed to its flourishing. The further development of commodity-money relations increasingly affected the state of the village community and the state of folklore. By the twentieth century, many types of folklore were lost. Modern amateur performances are a qualitatively new phenomenon. Some scholars try to present this as modern folklore. But such a statement, from a scientific point of view, is not true. Modern amateur performances do not correspond to any of the characteristics of folklore; This is a qualitatively new folk art.

There have been attempts to invite modern amateur theater performances to take the path of folklore creativity: to revive oral folk drama. But very soon it became clear that folklore theater was not viable and its revival in amateur theater was futile; it could not lead to creative success. Sometimes some directors boasted that they turned to folk theater and reaped success. However, in fact, these were performances in which only some elements of folklore expressiveness were used, which is quite appropriate. Here one could cite one brilliant example of a folklore performance: it was a performance by the Skomorokh theater in the 70s. last century, staged by Gennady Yudenich. It was the history of our country, presented in folklore aesthetics and expressiveness. But this creative success is, unfortunately, the only example.

Russian folk drama and folk theater art in general are a most interesting and significant phenomenon of national culture. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, dramatic games and performances formed an organic part of festive folk life, be it village gatherings, religious schools, soldier and factory barracks, or fair booths.

Folk drama is a natural outgrowth of folklore tradition. It compressed the creative experience accumulated by dozens of generations of the broadest strata of the people. In later times, this experience was enriched by borrowings from professional and popular literature and democratic theater.

Folk actors for the most part were not professionals, they were a special kind of amateurs, experts in folk tradition, which was inherited from father to son, from grandfather to grandson, from generation to generation of village youth of pre-conscription age. A man would come home from work or a trade and bring back to his native village his favorite play, memorized by heart or copied into a notebook. Even if at first he was just an extra in it - a warrior or a robber, but he knew everything by heart. And now a group of young people gathers and in a secluded place adopts the “trick” and learns the role. And at Christmas time there is a “premiere”.

The geography of distribution of folk drama is extensive. Collectors of our days have discovered unique theatrical “hearths” in the Yaroslavl and Gorky regions, Russian villages of Tataria, on Vyatka and Kama, in Siberia and the Urals.

The formation of the most famous folk plays occurred in the era of social and cultural transformations in Russia at the end of the 18th century. Since that time, popular prints and pictures have appeared and been widely distributed, which were both topical “newspaper” information for the people (reports about military events, their heroes), and a source of knowledge on history, geography, and an entertaining “theater” with comic heroes - Petrukha Farnos, broken pancake, Maslenitsa.

Many popular prints were published on religious themes - about the torment of sinners and the exploits of saints, about Anika the warrior and Death. Later, fairy-tale plots borrowed from translated novels and stories about robbers - Black Raven, Fadey Woodpecker, Churkin - gained extreme popularity in popular prints and books. Cheap songbooks were published in huge editions, including works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Tsyganov, Koltsov.

In urban areas, and later rural fairs Carousels and booths were set up, on the stage of which performances on fairy-tale and national historical themes were performed, which gradually replaced earlier translated plays. For decades, performances dating back to the dramaturgy of the early 19th century have not left the public stage - “Ermak, the Conqueror of Siberia” by P. A. Plavilshchikov, “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” by S. N. Glinka, “Dmitry Donskoy” by A. A. Ozerov, “The Bigamist” by A. A. Shakhovsky, later - plays about Stepan Razin by S. Lyubitsky and A. Navrotsky.

First of all, the confinement of folk ideas was traditional. Everywhere they settled down for Christmastide and Maslenitsa. These two short theatrical “seasons” contained a very rich program. Ancient ritual actions, which at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were already perceived as entertainment and, moreover, mischief, were performed by mummers. artistic performance theater actor

The ancient meaning of mummering is the magical effect of words and behavior on the preservation, restoration and increase in the vital fruitful forces of people and animals, and nature. This is associated with the appearance of naked or half-dressed people at gatherings, “pecking” of girls with a crane, blows with a tourniquet, spatula, bast shoes or stick when “selling” kvass, cloth, printed cloth, etc.

The Yuletide and Maslenitsa games of mummers are accompanied by small satirical plays “The Master”, “The Imaginary Master”, “Mavrukh”, “Pakhomushka”. They became a “bridge” from small dramatic forms to large ones. The popularity of comic dialogues between master and headman, master and servant was so great that they were invariably included in many dramas.

The style of folk drama is characterized by the presence of different layers or stylistic series, each of which in its own way relates to the plot and system of characters.

Thus, the main characters express themselves in a solemn ceremonial speech, introduce themselves, and give orders and instructions. In moments of emotional turmoil, the characters in the drama pronounce heartfelt lyrical monologues (they are sometimes replaced by the performance of a song). In dialogues and crowd scenes, everyday event speech is heard, in which relationships are clarified and conflicts are defined. Comic characters are characterized by humorous, parodic speech. Actors playing the roles of an old man, a servant, or a doctor often resorted to improvisation based on traditional folklore techniques for playing up deafness, synonyms and homonyms.

A special role is played in folk drama by songs performed by the heroes at critical moments for them or by the choir - a commentator on the events taking place. Songs were required at the beginning and end of the performance. Song repertoire folk dramas consist mainly of original songs of the 18th-19th centuries, popular in all strata of society. These are the soldiers’ songs “The White Russian Tsar Went,” “Malbrouk Left on a Campaign,” “Praise, Praise to You, Hero,” and the romances “I walked in the meadows in the evening,” “I’m heading off into the desert,” “What’s clouded, the clear dawn "and many others.

PEOPLE'S THEATER- Theater created directly by the people themselves, existing among the broad masses in forms organically related to oral folk art. In the process of historical development of arts. the culture of the people is the fundamental principle that gives rise to the entire subsequent history of prof. theater. claim-va, is adv. theater. creation.

Folklore theater is the traditional dramatic creativity of the people. The types of folk entertainment and play culture are varied: rituals, round dances, mummers, clownery, etc. In the history of folk theater, it is customary to consider the pre-theatrical and majestic stages of folk dramatic creativity. Pre-theatrical forms include theatrical elements in calendar and family rituals. In calendar rituals there are symbolic figures of Maslenitsa, Mermaid, Kupala, Yarila, Kostroma, etc., acting out scenes with them, dressing up. Agricultural magic played a prominent role, with magical acts and songs designed to promote the well-being of the family. For example, for winter Christmastide they pulled a plow around the village, “sowed” grain in the hut, etc. With the loss of magical meaning, the ritual turned into fun. The wedding ceremony also represented; theatrical play: the order of “roles”, the sequence of “scenes”, the transformation of the performers of songs and lamentations into the protagonist of the ritual (the bride, her mother). A complex psychological game was the change in the internal state of the bride, who was supposed to cry and lament in her parents’ house, and in her husband’s house to indicate happiness and contentment. However, the wedding ceremony was not perceived by the people as a theatrical performance. In calendar and family rituals, mummers were participants in many scenes. They dressed up as an old man or an old woman, the man dressed in women's clothes, and the woman in men's clothes, they dressed up as animals, especially often a bear and a goat. The costumes of the mummers, their masks, makeup, as well as the scenes they performed were passed down from generation to generation. On Christmastide, Maslenitsa, and Easter, mummers performed humorous and satirical scenes. Some of them later merged into folk dramas.

Balagan- temporary wooden building for theater and circus performances, which became widespread at fairs and folk festivals. Often also a temporary light building for trade at fairs, to accommodate workers in the summer. In a figurative sense - actions, phenomena similar to a farce show (buffoonish, rude). Balagans have been known since the 18th century.

Nativity scene- folk puppet theater, which is a two-story wooden box resembling a stage area. The nativity theater entered Russia at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries from Poland through Ukraine and Belarus. The name is associated with the original depiction of scenes about the life of Jesus Christ in the cave where he was hidden from King Herod.

Among Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians, the performance was divided into two parts: religious and everyday. Over time, the religious part was reduced and acquired a local flavor, and the repertoire expanded and the nativity scene turned into a folk theater.

Unlike the “Parsley Theater”, the puppets are controlled from below

Nativity scene theater was a large box with a stage inside, usually two tiers. On the upper stage they showed the worship of the newborn baby Jesus, on the lower stage - episodes with Herod, after whose death the everyday part of the performance followed. Wooden dolls were attached to a wire from below, with the help of which the nativity scene maker moved them along slots in the floor. The main decoration on the stage is a manger with a baby. At the back wall there were figures of the righteous Joseph with a long beard and the holy Virgin Mary. Scenes with the birth of Christ were traditionally played out in the upper tier. The owner of the nativity scene usually himself pronounced the text in different voices and led the dolls. The choir boys sang Christmas carols. And if a musician was present, he would accompany the singing and dancing with music. Puppeteers and the accompanying musicians and choir walked from house to house, or staged performances in public gathering places - in shopping areas.

In fact, it was a two-tier box, 1 x 1.5 m, with dolls moving on the tiers.

Petrushka Theater- The parsley screen consisted of three frames, fastened with staples and covered with chintz. It was placed directly on the ground and hid the puppeteer. The barrel organ gathered spectators, and behind the screen the actor began to communicate with the audience through a peep (whistle). Later, with laughter and reprise, he ran out himself, in a red cap and with a long nose. The organ grinder sometimes became Petrushka's partner: because of the squeaker, speech was not always intelligible, and he repeated Petrushka's phrases and conducted a dialogue. The comedy with Petrushka was played out at fairs and booths.

In Russia, only men “drove” Petrushka. To make the voice louder and squeakier (this was necessary both for audibility at fair performances and for the special character of the character), they used a special squeak inserted into the larynx. Petrushka's speech had to be “piercing” and very fast.

Unlike the Nativity Scene, the screen is not a box, but a window with “curtains”. And the person who controlled the puppet in the Petrushka Theater could appear to the public himself and talk to his own puppet.

Rayok- a folk theater consisting of a small box with two magnifying glasses in front. Inside it, pictures are rearranged or a paper strip with homegrown images of different cities, great people and events is rewound from one skating rink to another. Rayoshnik moves the pictures and tells sayings and jokes for each new plot.

The highest manifestation of folk theater is folk drama. The first folk dramas were created in the 16th–17th centuries. Their formation proceeded from simple forms to more complex ones. The most famous and widespread folk dramas were "The Boat" and "Tsar Maximilian". Folk, everyday satirical dramas were also performed ("The Master", "The Imaginary Master", "Mavrukh", "Pakhomushka", etc.), adjacent to the Yuletide and Maslenitsa games. They are based on dramatic scenes that were performed by mummers.

Some of the folk dramas were historical in nature. One of them is “How the Frenchman took Moscow.”

State educational institution of secondary vocational education "Kurgan Regional College of Culture"

PCC "Socio-cultural activities"

COURSE WORK

On topic: “Folklore theater”

Prepared

student of group 3 HT

Specialties SKD and NHT

Vazhenina I.V.

Checked

Teacher

Sarantseva Yu.S.

Kurgan 2011

Introduction

1. Russian folk theater

2.Types of folk theater:

2.1.Skomorokhs as the founders of Russian folk art

2.2. Farcical theater

2.3.Theater "Rayok"

2.4.Mummer Games

2.5.Live Actor Theater

Conclusion

References

INTRODUCTION

Elements of artistic comprehension appeared in the era of the primitive communal system. Art in that distant era was “directly woven into material activity and into the material communication of people.”

The main place in the art of primitive man was occupied by the beast - the subject of hunting, on which all life largely depended. In the rituals before the start of a hunt or after its successful completion, there were also dramatic elements that reproduced elements of the hunt. Perhaps even then one or more participants dressed up in skins and portrayed animals, others were “hunters”.

1. Russian folk theater

Folk actors for the most part were not professionals, they were a special kind of amateurs, experts in folk tradition, which was inherited from father to son, from grandfather to grandson, from generation to generation of village youth of pre-conscription age. A man would come home from work or a trade and bring back to his native village his favorite play, memorized by heart or copied into a notebook. Even if at first he was just a statist in it - a warrior or a robber, but he knew everything by heart. And now a group of young people gathers and in a secluded place adopts the “trick” and learns the role. And at Christmas time there is a “premiere”.

Many popular prints were published on religious themes - about the torment of sinners and the exploits of saints, about Anika the warrior and Death. Later, fairy-tale plots borrowed from translated novels and stories about robbers - Black Raven, Fadey Woodpecker, Churkin - became extremely popular in popular prints and books. Cheap songbooks were published in huge editions, including works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Tsyganov, Koltsov.

At city and later rural fairs, carousels and booths were set up, on the stage of which performances on fairy-tale and national historical themes were performed, which gradually replaced earlier translated plays. For decades, performances dating back to the dramaturgy of the early 19th century have not left the mass stage - “Ermak, Conqueror of Siberia” by P. A. Plavilshchikov, “Natalia, the Boyar’s Daughter” by S. N. Glinka, “Dmitry Donskoy” by A. A. Ozerov , “The Bigamist” by A. A. Shakhovsky, later - plays about Stepan Razin by S. Lyubitsky and A. Navrotsky.

The ancient meaning of dressing up is the magical effect of words and behavior on the preservation, restoration and increase in the vital fruitful forces of people and animals, and nature. This is associated with the appearance of naked or half-dressed people at gatherings, “pecking” of girls with a crane, blows with a tourniquet, spatula, bast shoes or stick when “selling” kvass, cloth, printed cloth, etc.

A special role is played in folk drama by songs performed by the heroes at critical moments for them or by the choir - a commentator on the events taking place. Songs were required at the beginning and end of the performance. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of original songs from the 18th and 19th centuries that were popular in all strata of society. These are the soldiers’ songs “The White Russian Tsar Went,” “Malbrouk Left on a Campaign,” “Praise, Praise to You, Hero,” and the romances “I walked in the meadows in the evening,” “I’m heading off into the desert,” “What’s clouded, the clear dawn "and many others.

2. Types of folk theaters

2.1 Skomorokhs as the founders of Russian folk theater

They are at the bazaars, at princely feasts,

At the games they set the tone,

Playing the harp, bagpipes, whistles,

At fairs people were amused.

But which mortal does not know

How a song gives strength to the weary,

How music lifts the spirit!

A happy-go-lucky tribe of merry vagabonds

The formation of the Russian folk theater has long been rightly associated with the activities of buffoons.

The word “buffoon” came to Rus' in the 11th century, along with the first translations of Greek texts into the Old Slavic language made in Bulgaria. It should be noted that by this time we already had quite a lot of words that were approximately equivalent to the new one. This is a “player”, a “laugh-maker”, a “laugh-maker”.

All these words were used later, when the word “buffoon” came into full force.

A lively little man in an intricate cap, a caftan and morocco boots sings and dances, playing along on the harp. This is how a Novgorod monk-scribe depicted a buffoon - a folk musician, singer, dancer - in the 14th century. And he wrote: “hum a lot” - “play better.” They danced, sang funny songs, played the harp and domra, wooden spoons and tambourines, pipes, bagpipes and a violin-like whistle. The people loved buffoons, called them “cheerful fellows”, told about them in fairy tales, made up proverbs and sayings: “The buffoon is happy about his domras”, “Everyone will dance, but not like the buffoon”, “The buffoon is not a comrade with the priest.”

The clergy, princes and boyars did not favor buffoons. The buffoons amused the people. In addition, the “cheerful fellows” more than once had funny, witty words about priests, monks and boyars. Already in those days, buffoons began to be persecuted. They could live freely only in Novgorod the Great and in the Novgorod land. In this free city they were loved and respected.

Over time, the art of buffoons became more complex and varied. In addition to buffoons who played, sang and danced, there were buffoon actors, acrobats, jugglers, buffoons with trained animals, and a puppet theater appeared.

The more fun the art of the buffoons was, the more they ridiculed the princes, clerks, boyars and priests, the stronger the persecution of the “merry fellows” became. Decrees were sent to cities, towns and villages - to drive out the buffoons, beat them with batogs, and not allow people to look at the “demonic games.” The folk art of buffoons lives on in a modified form life to the fullest nowadays: puppet theaters, the circus with its acrobats, jugglers and trained animals, pop concerts with their well-aimed ditties and songs, Russian orchestras and ensembles folk instruments developed into separate large areas from the varied cheerful art of buffoons.

Buffoons differed little from other residents. Among them were small landowners, artisans and even traders. But the bulk of settled buffoons belonged to the poorest strata of the population.

Knowing very well the traditions of festive games and rituals, the buffoon saddles were indispensable participants in every ritual and holiday. It was the buffoon who was the person around whom the main events unfolded at the game. He organized a variety of holiday events, including those that gradually turned into skits and then into folk theater performances.

If in the 11th - 16th centuries it was mainly the church that fought against buffoons, then in the 17th century the state actively joined the fight against them. In 1648, a formidable decree of the tsar appeared, banning buffoon games throughout the country and ordering that disobedient people be beaten with batogs and exiled to “ukrainian cities for disgrace.” But such measures did not eradicate buffoonery.

Since the end of the 17th century, Russia has entered a new period in its history. Significant changes are taking place in all areas of life. They also touched upon folk culture. Professional buffoons are becoming obsolete, their art begins to change and takes on new forms. At the same time, the word “buffoon” disappears from the documents. The place of buffoon games is now taken by folk theater performances - a new and higher form of folk dramatic art compared to buffoonery.

2.2 Farcical theater

The farce theater is the so-called theater for the people. He played in "booths" - temporary structures on holiday and fairgrounds by professional actors for money. It has the same texts and the same origin as folk theater, but unlike it it has no significance; its content becomes the folklore form of the existence of the text. Instead of mythological entertainment. With a few exceptions, these are phenomena of mass culture (entertainment is a commodity). All the texts of the booth are, to one degree or another, copyrighted, and were subject to mandatory censorship. Partly penetrating back into the village, into barracks and onto ships, they sometimes acquired a second folklore life (the same notebooks of folk performers that they did not use).

The farcical theater arose during the period of Peter's reforms. Used as a conductor of state ideology. Liquidated in 1918 along with popular literature and fist fights.

In the post-revolutionary years, there was an attempt to monopolize the spectacle and create a “red booth”; what remained from these attempts were “propaganda brigades” and modern parades and shows. Cinema, and later television, became another face of the many-sided farce. Many elements of the farce "went" to the stage and to the circus, to the theater. In connection with the above, the impression may arise that Balagan is something necessarily base. Not at all. If literary basis If Balagan is high, so is Balagan. Thus, the theaters of Moliere and Shakespeare were booths. The Shakespearean tradition, as we know, died: in the 16th - 17th centuries, booths were banned everywhere in Europe. A century later, on different roots, modern European theater grew. So it’s not enough to have high literature, we also need appropriate productions: it’s difficult to stage Shakespeare using the same means as Chekhov.

We would not classify the jokes of farcical grandfathers (and then we should also include clownery, entertainment, etc.), as well as sales cries, as folk theater. If this is a folk theater, then it is a completely special one - before us is a product of fair, urban culture. Although there is a developed system of work between the actor and the audience, and sometimes there is a dramatic text (but not among the traders), there is still no folklore form of its existence.

2.3 Theater "Rayok"

Rayek is Russian entertainment, rayek is theater, and raeshnik, of course, is an artist, and the more talented he is, the more spectators will give him their money, which caused delight among the public.

“Look, look,” the raeshnik said cheerfully and expressively, “here’s the big city of Paris, if you enter it, you’ll get screwed. There is a large column in it where Napoleon was placed; and in the twelfth year our soldiers were in action, the march on Paris was settled, and the French were agitated.” Or all about the same Paris: “Look, look! Here is the big city of Paris; If you go there, you'll immediately burn out.

Our eminent nobility goes there to spend money; he goes there with a sack full of gold, and from there he returns without boots and on foot!”

“Trr! - shouts the raeshnik. - Another thing! Look, look, here sits the Turkish Sultan Selim, and his beloved son is with him, both smoking pipes and talking to each other!

The raeshnik could easily ridicule modern fashion: “If you please, look and look, look and look at the Alexander Garden. There girls walk around in fur coats, in skirts and rags, in hats, green linings; the farts are false, and the heads are bald.” A sharp word, said cheerfully and without malice, was, of course, forgiven, even something like this: “Look, a guy and his sweetheart are coming: they put on fashionable dresses and think that they are noble. The guy bought a lean old frock coat for rubles and shouts that it is new. And the sweetheart is an excellent one - a hefty woman, a miracle of beauty, three miles thick, a nose the size of half a pound, and the eyes are just a miracle: one looks at you, and the other in Arzamas. Interesting! " And it's really interesting. The sayings of the raeshniks, such as this one about St. Petersburg, where a lot of foreigners have always lived, became a kind of social satire. “But the city of St. Petersburg,” the raeshnik began to say, “that wiped the sides of the bars. Clever Germans and all sorts of foreigners live there; they eat Russian bread and look askance at us; they fill their pockets and scold us for our deceptions.”

2.4 Mummer games

Mummers - important characters Christmastide On Christmas Eve, bands of disguised youth rush through the streets with noise, whistling, and clamor and throw festive parties.

The mummers must dress up so that no one recognizes them. He must fool and amuse others with his appearance. Faces are covered with masks. In the old days, they used rags to do this and cover their faces with soot.

Many disguised themselves so that they would be mistaken for “strangers”: an old man, an old woman, a gypsy, a gentleman, a paramedic. Very often they dressed up as a bear, a horse, a goat, a bull, or a crane.

Mummering should be accompanied by games and fun, and it is desirable that spectators become participants in the actions of the mummers. The Yuletide and Maslenitsa games of mummers are accompanied by small satirical plays “The Master”, “The Imaginary Master”, “Mavrukh”, “Pakhomushka”. They, obviously, were the “bridge” from small dramatic forms to large ones. The popularity of the comic dialogues between master and elder, master and servant was so great that they were invariably included in performances of “The Boat” and sometimes “Tsar Maximilian”.

2.5Live Actor Theater

The next stage in the development of folk theater is characterized by the appearance of live actor theater performances. The beginning of this highest stage is usually attributed to the first decades of the 18th century. The most significant monument of this stage is the oral folk drama “Tsar Maximilian”. It was played almost all over Russia. It existed among workers, peasants, soldiers, and common ranks.

In November or December, on the eve of Christmas and Christmastide, the future actors gathered to learn the text, determine the mise-en-scène, and prepare the props. Usually the performer was in charge leading role, he is also the most experienced person in theatrical matters. The roles were learned from the voice, and since the texts, with rare exceptions, were not recorded in writing, a variety of changes could be made to them along the way.

The mise-en-scenes were no longer recorded there and were recreated solely from memory. The props were the simplest: a chair covered with “gold” or “silver” paper served as a throne, a crown was made from cardboard, a sword for the executioner was made from wood, a bast shoe suspended on a rope represented the censer of a priest. The costumes were no more difficult. Only for the performer of the role of the king it was necessary to get trousers with wide stripes and attach lush epaulettes to the shoulders. They didn't pay much attention to the costumes of the other participants.

Russian folk drama and folk theater art in general are a most interesting and significant phenomenon of national culture.

Even at the beginning of the 20th century, dramatic games and performances formed an organic part of festive folk life, be it village gatherings, religious schools, soldier and factory barracks, or fair booths.

And everywhere the actors found many grateful spectators. Folk actors for the most part were not professionals, they were a special kind of amateurs, experts in folk tradition, which was inherited from father to son, from grandfather to grandson, from generation to generation of village youth of pre-conscription age. The same traditions existed in military units stationed in provincial Russian towns, in small factories and even in prisons and stockades.

The people's love for theatrical performances and the power of the performances' impact were so great that the memory of seeing a performance at least once was preserved for a lifetime. It is no coincidence that to this day it is possible to record vivid memories of spectators of folk performances more than half a century ago: descriptions of costumes, manners of acting, entire memorable scenes and dialogues heard in song performances.

The combination of “high”, tragic scenes with comic ones is present in all plots and texts of dramas, including “Tsar Maximilian”. This combination has an important ideological and aesthetic meaning. Tragic events take place in the dramas - Tsar Maximilian executes the rebellious son of Adolf, the chieftain kills a knight and officer in a duel; The executioner and the beautiful captive commit suicide. The choir responds to these events, as in an ancient tragedy.

The style of folk drama is characterized by the presence of different layers or stylistic series, each of which in its own way relates to the plot and system of characters.

In dialogues and crowd scenes, everyday event speech is heard, in which relationships are clarified and conflicts are defined.

Comic characters are characterized by humorous, parodic speech. Actors playing the roles of an old man, a servant, or a doctor often resorted to improvisation based on traditional folklore techniques for playing up deafness, synonyms and homonyms.

A special role is played in folk drama by songs performed by the heroes at critical moments for them or by the choir - a commentator on the events taking place. The songs were a kind of emotional and psychological element of the performance. They were performed mostly in fragments, revealing the emotional meaning of the scene or the state of the character. Songs were required at the beginning and end of the performance. The song repertoire of folk dramas consists mainly of original songs from the 18th and 19th centuries that were popular in all strata of society. These are the soldiers’ songs “The White Russian Tsar Went,” “Malbrouk Left on a Campaign,” “Praise, Praise to You, Hero,” and the romances “I walked in the meadows in the evening,” “I’m heading off into the desert,” “What’s clouded, the clear dawn "and many others.

Among folk dramas there are plots known in a few records or even in a few complete versions. Their texts (not counting evidence and fragments) are absent both in the extensive pre-revolutionary archives and in the materials of Soviet-era expeditions that worked in the places where these plays were recorded.

A special, extremely bright page of folk theatrical entertainment culture consists of fairground amusements and festivities in cities on the occasion of major calendar holidays (Christmas, Maslenitsa, Easter, Trinity, etc.) or events of national importance (coronation, celebrations in honor of military victories, etc. .p.).

The heyday of the festivities dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries, although individual species and genres of folk art, which were an indispensable part of the fair and city festive square, were created and actively existed long before the designated centuries and continue, often in a transformed form, to exist to this day. This is the puppet theater, bear fun, partly the jokes of traders, many circus acts. Other genres were born out of the fairgrounds and died out when the festivities ended.

3. Modern trends in the folklore movement in Russia

Speaking about the folklore movement in Russia, by “folklore”, following V.E. Gusev, we understand “folk culture (in various volumes of its types), a socially conditioned and historically developing form creative activity people, “characterized by a system of specific features (collectivity of the creative process as a dialectical unity of individual and mass creativity, traditionalism, non-fixed forms of transmission of works, variability, multi-element, multi-functionality) and closely related to labor activity and everyday life, customs of the people.”*

Back in the 80s, when the folklore movement began in Russia, it was able to focus its attention on folk culture “in various volumes of its types,” and this already contained its alternative character in relation to existing folk choirs.

Years passed, and a lot changed: folk choirs began to imitate, dressing in tailor-made costumes and looking towards genuine folk songs. And folklore groups realized the important role of the stage in modern art and began to strive for mastery in this field. The picture has become more complicated. Sometimes you can already hear that the folk choir is participating in the folklore movement in its own way...

Today in Russia there are two approaches to mastering traditional singing. Considering their vectors, we can talk about a kind of centrifugal and centripetal tendencies that determine the process of creative search.

The first is directed outward: from authentic tradition - to individual, and in its essence, author's creativity. At the same time, singers and musicians either follow the usual stereotypes of existing concert and stage practice, or create their own original version, using new creative techniques.

The second tendency is protective, directed deep into the tradition - towards mastering its “language” and laws, towards the continuity of folk culture in its artistic forms and towards the maximum achievement of mastery along this path, which requires considerable knowledge and understanding of the essence of the matter.

The first (i.e., centrifugal) tendency is most clearly manifested in the activities of groups, many generated by the state system of personnel training existing in Russia (its extreme expression is folk choirs, song and dance ensembles and their modern modifications).

Such groups master folklore material according to the laws written culture: they most often turn only to the song and musical side of the folk tradition and reproduce its samples, as a rule, from one of the most successful examples recorded in notes or a phonogram.

Vocal work on folk songs in such “folklore” groups is carried out within the framework of the existing school, which was created in the 20th century on the basis of the principles of academic singing, somewhat adapted to “Russian specifics”. Choreography, often separated from singing performance, also uses techniques developed by famous choreographers on the professional stage.

The idea has been established that folklore groups can only be a kind of “sounding museum”, preserving a certain “standard” of a traditional song, or a laboratory for researching the studied intonation. Such groups proclaim the purity of reproduction of this “standard” and the absence of any changes in subsequent performance as the highest virtue of creativity.

In the Moscow “near-folklore” environment one can hear the perplexed words “folklore is so elitist...” Yes, if folklore is the life of “standards” and “masterpieces.” And here one involuntarily recalls the words of the outstanding Russian folklorist E.V. Gippius, who wrote in his “Peasant Music of Zaonezhye”** in 1927: “Folk song is a phenomenon continuously and spontaneously moving and changing, almost continuously evolving. Recording every moment of this movement is a kind of instant photography, and every fixed form cannot be considered as something crystallized and frozen.”

In another luminary of Russian folkloristics, P. G. Bogatyrev,** we find the idea that the life of a work of written tradition (be it literature or musical classics) is the result of a certain path: from the work to the performer. Folklore is a path from performer to performer.

Students and followers of the ideas of Gippius and Bogatyrev, Gusev and Putilov, Mekhnetsov and Kabanov understand well that folklore is life itself, and in it there is a place for the desire for perfection with a focus on peak examples, and masterful performance of traditional songs, and routine everyday work to comprehend and restore the systemic connections of traditional culture in “various volumes of its types,” where music, although important, is not always the main role.

Collectives of the first type, not only choirs, but also ensembles, have something in common - they live for the stage, which is the defining moment, and folklore samples are just works for performance on stage, and nothing more. There is a transfer of folklore from one system - its living existence - into a stage artistic and aesthetic system, and even frozen in its “greatness,” which significantly impoverishes and curtails the idea of traditional performance. Even when both vocals and dance movements are oriented towards traditional performance, and even when very “tradition-like” results are achieved, they are not such due to the introduction of creative laws that are fundamentally alien to it.

The second trend (indicated above as centripetal), in our opinion, is the most promising for modern cultural process. It is represented by those, for the most part, youth folklore groups in Russia, whose search is directed precisely to the oral way of existence and reproduction of folk tradition according to its inherent laws. Such groups do not limit themselves only to stage forms, but first of all provide examples of the living existence of culture, pass on their experience to the younger generation, filling modern life with the most viable elements of traditional culture and those layers of folklore that are fundamentally “non-concert”, that is, they lose all meaning in an unusual them situations. These are ethnocultural groups aimed at maximum authenticity in mastering the local style and “language” of tradition.

It is gratifying that several higher educational institutions of Russia, such as the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Vologda pedagogical university, the Voronezh Institute of Arts managed to move away from the stereotypes of personnel training that developed in Soviet times, putting forward the priorities of the traditional direction in the curricula of their universities. These programs are headed by A. M. Mekhnetsov, G. P. Paradovskaya, G. Ya. Sysoeva - they were the ones who participated in the creation of our Union in 1989.

In the last decades of the twentieth century, experience was gradually accumulated, mostly by amateur groups, which subsequently united into the Russian Folklore Union on the basis of common creative aspirations. Now we can talk about this experience as worthy of comprehension and generalization.

Where a folklore group relies on the knowledge of folklorists, ethnographers, historians, and also conducts its own collecting and research work, serious results are achieved. Currently, in the field of view of the Board of the Russian Folklore Union there are hundreds (!) of groups from different regions, for which in joint creativity, carried out according to the laws of tradition, the process itself is more important than the result oriented towards spectator stereotypes. (Remember that when the Union was created in 1989, it included only 14 groups).

The idea of “inheriting the culture of one’s ancestors,” which was put forward in the 80s by the leader and president of the Folklore Union A. M. Mekhnetsov, turned out to be not only socially useful, but also very passionate. According to many, it was she who partly opened the floodgates to a wide wave of interest among young people in their root culture. It also required a certain amount of courage from the scientist, because in the eyes of some fellow folklorists it almost sounded like sedition.

It must be said that the activities of groups that, with all their creative practice, affirm the idea: “We are the successors of our culture, the traditions of our ancestors,” of course, do not reflect the entire diversity of folklore life forms in traditional society. There is generally little place left for the everyday sound of a song in our modern city life. Perhaps, only leisure forms (folk festivals, “evenings”), some individual significant events in family life that require designation of the specialness of the moment (for example, weddings, farewells, meetings, etc.) or the recreation of an entire holiday that is in demand by part of society ( e.g. Christmastide, Maslenitsa or Trinity) actualize the need to express themselves in song.

Participants in the folklore movement understand well that peasant labor on the land is disappearing, and with it entire layers of folk culture, the village is practically disappearing... It is all the more important to preserve the language of culture, the way of thinking (expressed, including in musical forms and genres), which, centuries later, will allow our descendants to not get lost in this world and say: “We are Russian people.”

The amateur movement is in dire need of the help of professionals, but where will they come from in the required quantity - after all, only three universities graduate three dozen specialists in this profile per year - and this is for the whole of Russia, where tens of thousands of specialists in folk culture are needed!

In the early 90s, the Board of the Russian Folklore Union conducted a sociological study among participants in folklore groups of the ethnocultural direction.**** A generalization of the questionnaire data provided a kind of collective portrait of the participants in the folklore movement in terms of social composition, motivation for interest in folk tradition and methods of its development.

This study showed that participants in folklore groups prefer to engage in the traditions of their (or any one) region or region; Considering the basis of his activities to be collecting work, trips to villages to the bearers of folk culture of the older generation. At the same time, musical folklore is not the only area of their expeditionary interests: the context of the tradition is necessarily studied - rituals, customs, life, crafts, folk costume. Many work with children and teenagers.

It must be emphasized that participants in folklore groups, declaring their “dislike” for the stage, perceive it only as an inevitable form that has established itself in modern urban life: but folk song always needs its listener, and the ability to come into contact with him, touching the subtle and complex strings of his soul, requires great skill, especially when performing on stage. And here it becomes clear that stage and folklore are very difficult things to combine.

At the same time, the process of searching for them went far beyond the boundaries of performing arts. Many folklore groups do not even call themselves ensembles. Among the self-names: “family folklore theater”, “scientific and creative association”, “free partnership”, “historical and ethnographic club”, “community”, “youth folklore association”, “laboratory”, “folklore club”, etc. The majority consider themselves either to be part of everyday groups, but with the need to perform on stage, or to be part of the stage, but not alien to the characteristics of an informal group that practices everyday singing. None of the groups discussed here call themselves purely everyday or purely stage.

If we talk about the method of mastering the material in terms of frequency of mention, then almost all participants in such groups name the live singing of a bearer of tradition and a phonogram as a model. Next comes the mastery of the material at the suggestion of the leader and their own expeditionary and collecting work, in last place are music collections and transcripts, which are very little involved in the work. This is the external picture, summarized from the questionnaires of the participants in the folklore groups themselves.

Observing the life of folklore ensembles over many years, and also relying on the results of the study, one can see that mastering the language of culture is what captivates these people, whether they realize it or not. Trying to identify itself with a group of authentic performers, an amateur folk group begins to bear the features of such groups. Among amateur ensembles, there are also open and closed groups, even closed ones, with one bright leader and several, with different types of relationships (authoritarian and democratic), and the personality of the leader does not always coincide with leadership in singing. That is why folklore groups of this direction are so diverse.

Mastering the language of tradition involves multi-level tasks. Since folk song is not perceived by folklore groups only as an aesthetic and stylistic phenomenon, in the process of joint creativity communicative or group-forming factors come to the fore, namely:

1. Identification of one’s inner world with the life and manifestations of any particular tradition and with those authentic masters who are its bearers. The mechanism of “preliminary censorship of the collective” in relation to its own performance is activated (the expression of P. G. Bogatyrev), and it is one of the main factors in the work of the group.

2. In the process of developing a joint “language” the so-called “ small group”, in which, apparently, accumulated knowledge and skills were always preserved and transmitted. At the same time, each participant gets the opportunity to self-disclose, finds his place inside a living organism, which is a small group (ensemble).

Since the continuity of traditions is proclaimed as the creative credo of these groups, all work, including vocal work, turns into a process of constant personal search and mastery of tradition by each individual in combination with joint work in the group. The idea of continuity of tradition, as it were, “restarts” the creative process, giving rise to a song tradition within a given group. A necessary element of this work is personal contacts with folk performers and recorded material. The performer of a folk song, both in former times and now, is not only a custodian, but also a “renewer” of tradition. In joint creativity there is a merging of collective experience with the content of each participant’s own inner world.

Serious work on mastering traditions requires careful attitude to dialect intonation and articulation, without which none of the folklore groups can do today. At the same time, it is obvious that mastering the ethno-dialectal features of musical material occurs easier and more naturally where the group members are engaged in one local tradition, or even better in their native region: there are fewer barriers to overcome. The leader of the group only needs to help them enter the sound production system, and the presence of a folklorist-consultant makes it possible to ensure textual accuracy and set limits of variability. The combination of a folklorist scholar and a choirmaster in one person would seem to be the ideal leader that such a group needs. But the few examples of this kind show that this is not always enough for the best creative development of this kind of group: the very direction of the search is important, the song needs to find a place in our lives.

The search for modern non-stage forms of existence of the tradition, the preservation of its living essence, free procedural nature, flexible and diverse functioning of song genres in it in different performing compositions - this is what a folklore ensemble should strive for. After all, songs are sung for joy, and it is song, as a cultural and historical phenomenon, that can unite thousands and hundreds of thousands of people on this basis.

What was created in past eras takes on a new, relevant meaning for us today. The past and future of culture are always present in our present. An old language takes on a new life when a new sound of meaning arises - this is how continuity is achieved. Folklore groups that have declared their task to be the continuity of the culture of their ancestors have a chance to join the living creative process and achieve mastery along this path. This is the guarantee of the self-preservation of traditional culture, its protection from deadening and alien influences introduced from the outside, its ability to creatively process and assimilate everything that is viable. And in this sense, participants in the youth folklore movement create the culture of today, which contains both the experience of their ancestors and its future prosperity.

Conclusion

The significance of Russian folk theater was assessed only in Soviet times. The materials collected and studied to date indicate the continuity and sufficient intensity of the process of formation of theatrical art in Russia, which followed its own, original path.

Russian folk theater is a unique phenomenon. This is without a doubt one of the brilliant examples of world folklore creativity. Already at the relatively early stages of his formation, he demonstrated ideological maturity and the ability to reflect the most acute and topical conflicts of his time. The best aspects of the folk theater were absorbed and spread by the Russian professional theater.

folk theater skomorokh drama

References

1. Aseev. B.N. “Theater at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries” - Moscow “Enlightenment”, 1976

2. Belkin. A. A. “The Origins of the Russian Theater” - Moscow “Enlightenment”, 1957

3. Vinogradov. Yu.M. “Maly Theater” - St. Petersburg “Drofa” 1989

4. Gotthard. E.L. "People's Theatres" - St. Petersburg "Enlightenment" 2001

5. Lane. A.Z. “Theater of the 18th century” - Moscow 1998

6. Obraztsova. A.G. “Actor’s Theater” - Yekaterinburg: “Blue Bird” 1992

7. Prozorov. T.A. “Theater in Rus'” - Moscow 1998

8. Rostotsky. I.B. “The Art of the Buffoon” - Moscow 2002

9. Khamutovsky. A.N. "Story drama theater" - St. Petersburg "Drofa" 2001

10. Chadova. PC. Puppet theater" - Ekaterinburg: "Blue Bird" 1993

The concept of folk theater. Types and genres of traditional folk theater in Russia. Folklore theater, its types (booth, paradise, Parsley theater, nativity scene)

Chapter I. Folklore theater

Chapter II. Development of folk theater in the XX-XXI centuries.

Chapter I. Folklore theater.

1.1. Origins and development.

Varieties of folk dramas.

Introduction

Artistic originality folklore theater

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