Theater critic: profession or vocation? Profession theater critic How to become a theater critic.

Who is a theater critic and how do you become one? How not to kill with a review?

A critic, in the minds of some people, is a judge who issues a verdict: to be a performance or not to be. To be more precise: is it a masterpiece or complete nonsense. In many ways, this is a dead-end opinion, because criticism is not only a simple review, not a simple pro e contro of a production. Theatrical criticism is a special world with big pitfalls. Without them, criticism would long ago have switched to the format of discussions and posts on social networks. So what is it? Where do you learn the art of writing reviews? What talents do you need to have to become a theater critic? What are the challenges in this profession?

If we recall the genres of journalism, then the review belongs to one of three groups - analytical. Simply put, a theater critic analyzes a performance. He peers into every detail, because every little thing matters. But a review is not always “criticism”. No one will read material where it is emotionally written: "Your performance sucks."

"Damir Muratov from Omsk at the Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art in Moscow presented his work “Not everyone can offend an artist” - a conceptual inscription on canvas. As in any similar actionism, along with a playful pun, one can see an important meaning, - says Alexey Goncharenko, theater critic. - Sometimes a sharp remark from a critic allows, leaving emotions aside, to change something in the scene and make it stronger, and sometimes an unexpected compliment can depress the author (he expected that they would note something more dear to him in the work). It is not necessary to simply scold directors and artists, just as simply praise, this can be done by the audience. It is more productive for the theatrical process to analyze, disassemble, ask questions and ask questions, and then along with the arguments an assessment of the work of art will be born, without which it is impossible, after all, the critic is not the author of odes, he does not blindly admire, but respects those about whom he writes ".

In order to write in this genre, it is not enough to know what theater is. A critic is a choice hodgepodge in the good sense of the word. He is well versed not only in theatrical art. The critic is a bit of a philosopher, a bit of a sociologist, psychologist, historian. Director, actor, playwright. And, finally, a journalist.

"As a member of the theatrical profession, the critic must constantly doubt, - Elizaveta Sorokina, editor-in-chief of the magazine "Badger-theater expert" shares her opinion. - You can't just assert. You have to keep hypothesizing. And then check whether it is true or not. The main thing is not to be afraid of mistakes, to appreciate each one. We must not forget that the theater critic is a profession as creative as all other theatrical ones. The fact that the critic is "on the other side of the ramp" does not change anything. The unit of statement of the director is the play, the actor is the role, the playwright is the play, and the criticism is its text.

One of the challenges for a critic is to write material for everyone. Adapt to each reader who has their own tastes and preferences. The review audience is quite large. It includes not only the audience, but also the directors of performances (although many venerable directors claim that they do not read criticism of their works), as well as colleagues in the shop. Imagine what different people they are! Each of them looks at the theater in their own way. For some, this is “a fun time”, and for others, “a department from which you can say a lot of good to the world” (N.V. Gogol). For each reader, the material should be useful.

In most cases, reviews are written by people who have been trained to understand the theatrical art from the inside - these are theater critics. Graduates of the Moscow school (GITIS), St. Petersburg (RGISI) and others. People with a diploma of a journalist do not always fall into the sphere of culture. If we compare a theater expert and a journalist, we get an interesting analogy: both have their own advantages and disadvantages when writing performance reviews. Critics who graduated from the theater department do not always have an idea about the genres of journalism. It even happens that, behind a large number of terms, they forget that a non-elite reader will quickly get bored with an abundance of incomprehensible words. Critics with a journalistic education fall short in terms of their parameters: they often lack the characteristic knowledge about the theater, about its features, as well as professional terminology. They do not always understand the theater from the inside: they simply were not taught this. If the genres of journalism can be learned quite quickly (although not the first time), then it is simply impossible to master the theory of theater in a couple of months. It turns out that the disadvantages of some are the advantages of others.

Photo from FB Pavel Rudnev

"Theatrical text has ceased to be a means of earning money, the cultural pages in the media have been reduced to impossibility, the rest of the newspapers have sharply corrected, - says Pavel Rudnev, theater critic and theater manager, candidate of art criticism. - If in the 1990s a performance in the capital could garner 30-40 reviews, today press secretaries are happy when at least one review is published about a performance. The most resonant works cause ten reviews. Of course, this is a consequence, on the one hand, of the market, squeezing out what cannot be sold, on the other hand, it is a consequence of distrust in modern culture, the new theater, new people coming in culture. If you can put up with the first, then the second is a real disaster. Many say that the critic today becomes a manager, a producer. And this, alas, is a forced thing: you need to provide for yourself, your family. But the problem is that the reputation and authority of a critic is still, first of all, created precisely by texts and analytics. And the fact that today there are very few opportunities for young theater critics is a disaster, since the maturation of a critic is a long-term process. No one comes out of universities fully prepared and equipped.

When I started, I was given invaluable help by senior theater experts, to whom I am grateful for this trust - Olga Galakhova and Gennady Demin in the newspaper Dom Aktora, Grigory Zaslavsky in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. And this had its own meaning: there was continuity - you help me, I help others. The problem is that today there is nowhere even to stretch this line. Today, alas, only the free features of the Internet can offer their possibilities. For example, the Youth Council of the STD RF created a blog for young critics “Start Up”. The field for texts is wide, as it affects not only the cultures of the capital, but, above all, the regions. But it's bad that we don't pay anything for texts. That's shameful!"

Theater critic is a creative profession, many disinterestedly devote their whole lives to it. However, before you can become a professional, you have to work hard. A critic should be able to objectively evaluate the author's creative idea and accurately and clearly state his opinion. You need to be able to notice the details, skillfully master the word and learn to perceive the picture of the world presented on the stage. Is it simple? No. But when did difficulties stop us? Never. Forward!

Dissertations are decrepit, critical studies remain.

L. Grossman

It always seemed to me that we rarely deal with theatrical criticism proper. Just as an actor in his life only a few times (according to the notes of the great ones) feels the states of flight, weightlessness and this magical “not me”, called reincarnation, so a writer on the theater can rarely say that he was engaged in art criticism. It is hardly worth considering theatrical criticism in its true sense, fluent and glib statements about the performance or theatrical conclusions pointing to its place among other stage phenomena. Our texts, especially newspaper ones, are a kind of symbiosis of theater studies and journalism, they are notes, considerations, analysis, impressions, whatever, while the nature of theater criticism, which determines the sovereignty of the profession, is something else. It always seemed that theatrical criticism was a deeper, more organic, originally artistic occupation.

When directors or actors (and this always happens) say that the nature of their work is mysterious and incomprehensible to critics (let them go and put on a performance in order to understand ...) - this is amazing. The relationship of the critic with the text of the performance, the process of its comprehension resembles the act of creating a role or composing a director's score. In a word, theater criticism is similar at the same time to directing and acting. This question has never been raised, and even that criticism should be literature is often not obvious to fellow theater critics.

Let's start with this.

CRITIQIS AS LITERATURE

Don't be offended, I'll remind you. Russian theater criticism arose under the feathers exclusively and only of great writers. They were the founders of many genres. N. Karamzin is the author of the first review. P. Vyazemsky - feuilleton (let's take at least the one on "Lipetsk Waters"), he is also the author of one of the first portraits of the playwright (V. Ozerov's life story in the posthumous Collected Works). V. Zhukovsky invented the genre of "actor in role" and described the girl Georges in Phaedra, Dido, Semiramide. A. Pushkin gave birth to “remarks”, notes, P. Pletnev wrote perhaps the first theoretical article on acting with theses literally “from Stanislavsky”. N. Gnedich and A. Shakhovskoy published correspondence ...

Russian theater criticism became famous for outstanding writers - from A. Grigoriev and A. Kugel to V. Doroshevich and L. Andreev, it was dealt with by people whose literary gift, as a rule, was expressed not only in theatrical critical work, the critics were in the broad sense writers, so there is every reason to consider Russian theater criticism a part of Russian literature, a certain artistic and analytical branch of prose, existing in exactly the same different genre and stylistic modifications as any other type of literature. Theater reviews, parodies, portraits, essays, hoaxes, problem articles, interviews, dialogues, pamphlets, verses, etc. - all this is theater criticism as literature.

Domestic criticism developed in parallel with the development of the theater itself, but it would be wrong to think that only with the emergence of theater studies as a science did it acquire a different quality. Already at the time of the formation of Russian criticism, serious definitions of creativity of this kind were given. “Criticism is a judgment based on the rules of educated taste, impartial and free. You read a poem, you look at a picture, you listen to a sonata, you feel pleasure or displeasure, that is the taste; analyze the reason for both - that's criticism, ”wrote V. Zhukovsky. This statement affirms the need to analyze not only a work of art, but also one’s own perception of it, “pleasure or displeasure”. Pushkin argued with Zhukovsky's subjectivism: "Criticism is the science of discovering beauty and flaws in works of art and literature, based on perfect knowledge of the rules that guide an artist or writer in his works, on a deep study of samples and on long-term observation of modern remarkable phenomena." That is, according to Pushkin, it is necessary to understand the very process of the development of art (“long-term observation”), according to Zhukovsky, one should not forget about one’s own impression. Two centuries ago, points of view converged, expressing the dualism of our profession. The dispute is not over to this day.

It would be wrong to think that only with the emergence of directing and with the development of theater studies did the text of the performance become the subject of theater criticism. Not at all, from its very inception, criticism has separated the play from the performance (Karamzin, in his review of Emilia Galotti, analyzes the play and then evaluates the performance of the actors), carefully described the acting of the actor in one role or another (Gnedich, Zhukovsky), using examples of acting creations for polemics about the directions of theatrical art, turning criticism into "moving aesthetics", as V. Belinsky later called it. Already in the early 1820s, remarkable examples of the analysis of acting art appeared, P. Pletnev, in an article about Ekaterina Semenova, brilliantly writes about the methods of acting, about the internal structure of the actor. With the development of the theater, depending on what dominated the stage at that moment, criticism either delved into the characteristics of trends and genres, then dramaturgy became the main thing, then the actor, and when the rudiments of directing began to appear in the theater, Russian theater criticism groped its way in this direction. direction.

With the advent of director's theater and theater studies as a science, theater criticism acquired a theoretical foundation, organically assimilating theatrical criteria. But it has always been and remains literature. It is hardly possible to consider criticism ascertaining theatrical statements about the performance, naming its properties that determine the direction to which this performance belongs. Although there is an opinion that this is also criticism, that the business of a theater critic, having caught a “butterfly”, which was a live performance yesterday, is to “stab it on a pin”, place it in a collection of other butterflies, classifying the phenomenon and assigning it an “identification number” .

It seems that theater criticism, like any art criticism, “does not replace science, does not coincide with science, is not determined by the elements of scientific character included in it”, “while retaining its meaning of artistic creativity and its subject - fine arts, it can take on an aesthetic, sociological character. or journalistic, without at all becoming aesthetics, sociology or linguistics from this ... So poetry can be scientific or political, remaining essentially poetry; thus a novel can be philosophical, social or experimental, remaining a novel to the end. In the work of N. Krymova, K. Rudnitsky, I. Solovieva, A. Svobodin, V. Gaevsky, A. Smelyansky and other major critics of the second half of the 20th century, many of whom were theater critics by basic education, we will find examples of aesthetic, sociological criticism , journalistic, etc. in the same way as it was in other historical eras.

* Grossman L. Genres of art criticism // Grossman L. P. The struggle for style. M., 1927. S. 21.

Theatrical criticism as a moving aesthetic develops in parallel with the theatrical process, sometimes ahead of it, sometimes lagging, with the development of the theater its categorical apparatus and system of artistic coordinates change, but each time texts can be considered true criticism, “where specific works are judged, where it is about artistic production, where a certain creatively processed material is meant and where judgments are made about its own composition. Of course ... criticism is called upon to judge entire trends, schools and groups, but under the indispensable condition to proceed from specific aesthetic phenomena. Non-objective arguments about classicism, sentimentalism, etc. may refer to any theory, poetics or manifesto - they do not in any way belong to the realm of criticism.

In order to write poetry, one needs knowledge of the laws of versification, but also "hearing", a special mindset, etc. Knowledge of the basics of poetry does not turn a writer into a poet, just as it does not turn a person who writes about the theater into a theater critic, the totality of theater studies knowledge. Here, too, we need a "hearing" for the performance, the ability to lively perceive it, reflect and reproduce on paper an artistic and analytical impression of it. At the same time, the theatrical apparatus is an undoubted basis: the phenomenon of the theater must be placed in the context of the theatrical process, correlated with the general situation of the time, general cultural issues. On this combination of the objective laws of the existence of the theater and the subjective perception of the work, as in the time of Zhukovsky-Pushkin, the critic's internal dialogue is built with the subject of his reflection and research - the performance.

The writer explores at the same time the reality of the world and his soul. The theater critic explores the reality of the performance, but through it the reality of the world (since a good performance is a statement about the world) and his soul, and it cannot be otherwise: he explores an object that lives only in his mind (more on that below). Willy-nilly, he captures for the history of the theater not only the performance, but also himself - a contemporary of this performance, its eyewitness, strictly speaking - a memoirist who has a system of professional and human criteria.

This does not mean at all that the lyrical "I" of criticism dominates, no, it is hidden behind the "image of the performance" in the same way that the actor's "I" is hidden behind the role, the director's - behind the text of the performance, the writer's - behind the figurative system of the literary text.

The theater critic “hides” behind the performance, dissolves in it, but in order to write, he must understand “what is Hecuba to him”, find a thread of tension between himself and the performance and express this tension in words. “The word is the most accurate tool that a person has inherited. And never before (which constantly consoles us ...) no one has been able to hide anything in a word: and if he lied, his word betrayed him, and if he knew the truth and spoke it, then it came to him. Not a person finds a word, but a word finds a person ”(A. Bitov“ Pushkin House ”). I often quote these words of Bitov, but what can I do - I love it.

Since many colleagues do not agree with me, and even in the collective monograph of my native (really native!) Department "Introduction to Theater Studies" edited by Yu. nature of our work, then, naturally, I rejoice when I meet with unanimity. Here in a recent interview with A. Smelyansky, published on the Internet by S. Yolkin, I read: “I consider real theatrical and any other criticism in the broad sense of the word to be part of literature. The criteria are the same and the tasks are the same. You must watch the performance, you must be absolutely naive at the moment of watching, remove all extraneous influences on you, absorb the work and form your feelings into an artistic form, that is, convey the impressions of the performance and infect the reader with this impression - negative or positive. I don't know how this can be taught... It is impossible to engage in theater criticism outside of literary talent. If a person cannot write, if language is not his element, if he does not understand that a theatrical review is an attempt of your artistic writing about a performance, nothing will work ... The great Russian theater criticism began with Belinsky, who described the drunk actor Mochalov. Drunk, because he sometimes got drunk playing Hamlet. Belinsky watched the performance many times, and the article "Mochalov plays Hamlet" became, it seems to me, a great beginning of what can be called art criticism in Russia. Vygotsky, a specialist in the psychology of art, famously said: “The critic is the organizer of the consequences of art.” To organize these consequences, you need to have a certain talent" (http://sergeyelkin.livejournal.com/12627.html).

The creative activity of a theater critic in his dialogue with the subject of research, the creation of a literary text are designed to turn the reader into an enlightened, emotionally and analytically developed spectator, and in this sense, the critic becomes a writer who, according to V. Nabokov, “awakens the reader’s sense of color through language , sight, sound, movement, or any other feeling, conjuring up in his imagination images of a fictitious life that will become for him as vivid as his own memories. The task of the theater critic is to awaken in the reader a sense of color, appearance, sound, movement - that is, to recreate by literary means color, sound, namely “fictional” (although not invented by him, but after the end of the performance fixed only in the memory of the subject-critic, living exclusively in his mind) the figurative world of the performance. Only a part of the stage text lends itself to objective fixation: mise-en-scene, scenography, light score. In this sense, references to any reality of what happened on the stage this evening are meaningless, two professional theater critics, critics, specialists, professors, reprofessors sitting side by side sometimes simultaneously subtract different meanings - and their dispute will be groundless: the reality that they remember from differently, disappeared, she is a product of their memory, an object of memories. Two critics sitting next to each other will see and hear the same monologue in different ways, in accordance with their aesthetic and human experience, the same "Zhukov's" taste, memories from history, the volume seen in the theater, etc. There are cases when different artists were asked to draw the same still life at the same time - and the result was completely dissimilar paintings, often not matching not only in painting technique, but even in color. This happened not because the painter deliberately changed the color, but because the eye of different artists sees a different number of shades. So it is with criticism. The text of the performance is imprinted in the mind of the critic in the same way as the personality of the perceiver, what is his internal apparatus, disposed or not disposed to “co-creation of those who understand” (M. Bakhtin).

* Nabokov V. Lectures on Russian literature. M., 1996. S. 279.

The critic, whose entire body is attuned to the perception of the performance, is developed, open (“no prejudice of your favorite thought. Freedom” - according to Pushkin’s testament), should give the performance in theatrical critical review as lively as possible. In this sense, criticism differs both from theatrical journalism, which is designed to inform the reader about certain theatrical events and give a rating assessment to the theater phenomenon, and from theater studies proper. Theatrical studies are no less fascinating, but they set the task of analyzing a literary text, and not a plastic verbal recreation of the image of a performance that, ideally, can evoke an emotional reaction in the reader.

It's not the details of the description. Moreover, in recent years, with the advent of video recordings, it began to seem to many that the performance is most objectively captured on film. This is wrong. Sitting in the hall, we turn our heads, dynamically perceiving the action in its polyphonic development. Filmed from one point, the performance loses those meanings, close-ups, accents that exist in any live performance and which, according to the will of the director, marks our consciousness. If the recording is made from several points, we are faced with the interpretation of the performance in the form of a montage. But that's not the point. Listening today to the recordings of Yermolova or Kachalov, it is difficult for us to understand the power of their influence on contemporaries. The texts of Kugel, Doroshevich, Amfiteatrov give a living Yermolov in her living influence on the viewer, person, society - and the literary, figurative side of their critical studies plays a huge role in this.

CRITICISM AS DIRECTING

The relationship of the critic with the text of the play is very similar to the relationship of the director with the play. Let me explain.

By translating a verbal text (a play) into a spatio-temporal (stage) text, composing, “embroidering” according to the words of the play, interpreting the playwright, reading it, seeing it according to individual optics, plunging into the world of the author, the director creates his own sovereign text, possessing professional knowledge in the field of action, dramatic conflict, having a certain, subjective, internal figurative system inherent in him alone, choosing one or another method of rehearsal, type of theater, etc.

Translating the spatio-temporal laws of the performance into a verbal series, into an article, interpreting the director, reading his stage text according to individual optics, guessing the idea and analyzing the embodiment, the critic creates his own text, having professional knowledge in the same area as the director (knowledge of theory and theater history, directing, dramaturgy), and in the same way he is concerned about the composition, genre development and internal vicissitudes of his text, striving for the utmost literary expressiveness. The director creates his own version of the dramatic text.

We create our own versions of the stage text. The director reads the play, the critic reads the performance (“Both we and you are equally fiction, we give versions,” a well-known director once told me to confirm this idea). M. Bakhtin wrote that “mighty and profound creativity” is largely unconscious, and the diversely understood (that is, reflected by the totality of “understandings” of the work by different critics. - M. D.), is replenished by consciousness and revealed in the variety of its meanings. He believed that “understanding completes the text (including, undoubtedly, the stage text. — M.D.): it is active and has a creative character.

Creative understanding continues creativity, multiplies the artistic wealth of mankind. In the case of the theater, the understanding of criticism not only replenishes the creative text, but also reproduces it in the word, since the text disappeared at 22.00 and will no longer exist in the version that it is today. In a day or a week, actors will appear on the stage, in whose emotional experience this day or week will change something, the weather will be different, the audience will come to the hall with different reactions, etc., and despite the fact that the general meaning of the performance will remain approximately the same, it will be a different performance, and the critic will gain a different experience. Therefore, it is so important to “catch” the performance and your own feelings, thoughts, feelings parallel to it, right in the hall, with a notebook. This is the only opportunity to capture reality at the moment of the emergence and existence of this reality. A definition, a reaction, a word spontaneously written down during the action is the only documentary evidence of the elusive text. Theatrical criticism is naturally characterized by the dualism of professional perception: I watch the performance as a spectator and empathize with the action as a human being, while reading the stage text, memorizing it, simultaneously analyzing and fixing it for further literary reproduction, and at the same time scanning myself, my perception, soberly reporting, why and how I perceive / do not perceive the performance. This makes theater criticism absolutely unique among other art critics. To this we must add the ability to hear the audience and, reuniting with it, feel and understand the energy dialogue between the audience and the stage. That is, theater criticism is by nature polyphonic and similar to directing. But if the director speaks about the world through the play being interpreted, then the critic speaks through the reality of the performance seen, realized and reproduced in the article. “You can describe life artistically - you get a novel, or a story, or a short story. You can artistically describe the phenomenon of theater. This includes everything: life, characters, destinies, the state of the country, the world "A. Smelyansky (http://sergeyelkin.livejournal.com/12627.html). “A good critic is a writer who, if I may say so, “in public”, “aloud”, reads and analyzes a work of art not as a simple sum of abstract thoughts and positions only covered by “form”, but as a complex organism” *, wrote outstanding esthetician V. Asmus. It is said as if about directing: after all, even a good director in public, aloud disassembles and transforms into a spatio-temporal continuum, into a complex organism, the literary basis of the performance (let's take only this type of theater for now).

* Asmus V.F. Reading as work and creativity // Asmus V.F. Questions of the theory and history of aesthetics. M., 1968. S. 67-68.

In order to “read and analyze” a performance, the director needs all the expressive means of the theater, and the theater critic needs all the expressive means of literature. Only by means of it is the stage text fixed and imprinted, it is possible to transfer the artistic series to paper, discover its figurative meaning and thereby leave the performance for history only by means of real literature, as already mentioned. Stage images, meanings, metaphors, symbols must find a literary equivalent in a theatrical critical text. Let us refer to M. Bakhtin: “To what extent can one reveal and comment on the meaning (of an image or a symbol)? Only with the help of another (isomorphic) meaning (symbol or image). It is impossible to dissolve it in concepts (to reveal the content of the performance, resorting only to the conceptual theatrical apparatus. - M. D.). Bakhtin believes that ordinary scientific analysis provides a "relative rationalization of meaning", and its deepening goes "with the help of other meanings (philosophical and artistic interpretation)", "by expanding the distant context"*. "Distant context" is associated with the personality of the critic, his professional education and equipment.

* Bakhtin M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. M., 1979. S. 362.

The genre of the performance and the genre of theatrical-critical utterance (as well as the genre of the play with the genre of the performance) should ideally correspond, each performance requires a certain vocabulary from the critic (like a play from the director), possibly equivalent images that translate the space-time continuum into a verbal series , the performance gives a rhythmic breath to the theatrical-critical text, "reading" the stage text. Generally speaking, we often play a performance “according to Brecht” on paper: we enter the image of the performance, and then exit it and explain, talk about the life we ourselves described ...

“The critic is the first, the best of readers; for him, more than for anyone else, the pages of the poet are written and intended ... He reads himself and teaches others to read ... to perceive a writer means to a certain extent to reproduce him, to repeat after him the inspired process of his own creativity (emphasis mine. - M. D.). To read is to write."* This reasoning of Yu. Aikhenwald directly applies to theater criticism: having comprehended and felt the performance, understanding its inner artistic law, placing the performance in the context of the theatrical process, realizing its artistic genesis, the critic in the process of writing "reincarnates" in this performance, "losing" it on paper, builds his relationship with him according to the laws of the relationship between the actor and the role - entering the "image of the performance" and "leaving" it (more on this below). "Outputs" can be either scientific commentary, "rationalization of meaning" (according to Bakhtin), or "expansion of a distant context", which is associated with the critic's personal perception of the world of the play. The general literary level of the article, the talent or mediocrity of the text, imagery, associative moves, comparisons given in the text of the article, references to images in other types of art that can lead the reader-spectator to certain artistic parallels, make him an accomplice in the perception of the performance are associated with the personality of the critic. through the theatrical-critical text and the general artistic context, to form his assessment of the artistic event.

* Aikhenwald Yu. Silhouettes of Russian writers. M., 1994. S. 25.

“An invaluable understanding is impossible… A person who understands approaches a work with his own, already established, worldview, from his own point of view, from his own positions. These positions determine his assessment to a certain extent, but they themselves do not remain unchanged: they are exposed to the work, which always introduces something new. The one who understands should not exclude the possibility of changing or even abandoning his already prepared points of view and positions. In the act of understanding there is a struggle, as a result of which there is a mutual change and enrichment. The inner activity of the critic in the dialogue with the artistic world of the performance, with the "beauties and shortcomings" in the process of mastering it, gives a full-fledged theatrical-critical text, and if the critic watches the performance many times, he lives with it, as with a role, creating its image on the stage. paper gradually and painstakingly, he is invariably subjected to the “impact of the work”, since something new appears at each performance. Only this work of creating the score of a performance on paper is, ideally, theater criticism for me. We "play" the performance as a role.

* Bakhtin M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. pp. 346-347.

This happens extremely rarely, but it is necessary to strive for this if you really engage in criticism, and not state judgments on paper.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE OF CRITIQUE. QUICK READING BY MIKHAIL CHEKHOV

In fact, we often look like tired performers who, having run into the theater fifteen minutes before going on stage, pronounce the role on autopilot. Real theatrical criticism is akin to the artistic creativity of an actor - let's say, in the form that Mikhail Chekhov understood it. When I read his book “On the Technique of the Actor”, I always thought that it could become a textbook for a critic, that it would be good for us to perform many exercises to train our own psychophysical apparatus.

I always wanted to write about it in detail, at length, slowly, but there was always not enough time. It is not there even now, therefore, instead of slow reading Chekhov, for the time being I risk suggesting speed reading ...

Where does Chekhov begin?

Evening. After a long day, after a lot of impressions, experiences, deeds and words, you give rest to your tired nerves. You sit down with your eyes closed or the lights in the room turned off. What emerges from the darkness in front of your inner eye? The faces of the people you meet today. Their voices, their conversations, actions, movements, their characteristic or funny features. You run the streets again, pass the familiar houses, read the signs... you passively follow the colorful images of the memories of the day. (Fragments of the book by M. Chekhov* are highlighted hereinafter.)

* Chekhov M. On the technique of the actor // Chekhov M. Literary heritage: In 2 vols. M., 1986. T. 2. S. 177-402.

This, or almost this, is how a critic who comes from the theater feels. Evening. He needs to write an article... So or almost like this, a performance appears in your mind. You can only remember it, because it does not live anywhere except your consciousness, imagination.

In fact, we enter the world of imagination from the first minutes of the performance, living a certain inner life parallel to it, I have already written about this. And then the performance that ended this evening turns out to be imprinted only in our memory, we are dealing with virtual reality, with the product of our consciousness (moreover, the text of the performance is imprinted in the mind of the critic in such a way as to what is the personality of the perceiver, what is his internal apparatus and "perceiving devices").

We begin to remember the performance as a reality, it comes to life in your mind, the images that live in you enter into relationships with each other, play scenes in front of you, you follow events that are new to you, you are captured by strange, unexpected moods. Unfamiliar images involve you in the events of their lives, and you are already actively starting to take part in their struggle, friendship, love, happiness and unhappiness ... They make you cry or laugh, resent or rejoice with more force than mere memories.

Only the reality of the performance is not invented by the critic, but seen and recorded in memory and in a notebook. The critic's attention is focused on remembering - reproducing the image of the performance when he writes. In the process of attention, you internally perform four actions simultaneously. First, you keep invisibly the object of your attention. Secondly, you attract him to you. Thirdly, you yourself aspire to it. Fourth, you penetrate it. This is, in fact, the process of comprehending the performance and theater criticism: the critic holds an invisible object-performance, attracts it to himself, as if "settling" in it, living in the nooks and crannies of the stage text, more and more detailing and deepening his understanding of the performance, rushes towards it. with its own inner world, criteria, enters into an internal dialogue, penetrates into it, into its laws, structure, atmosphere.

The critic, like any artist, knows such moments. “I am always surrounded by images,” says Max Reinhardt ... Michelangelo exclaimed in despair: “Images haunt me and force me to sculpt their forms from rocks!”

The image of the performance he has seen begins to haunt the critic, the characters who have settled in his mind really force them to express them in words, in the plasticity of language, to materialize again what, being material every second during the performance, has turned into the form of the ideal and again asks for the world from the cramped cell of the consciousness of the theatrical criticism. (How many times did it happen: you watch a performance without intending to write about it, but it is persistently present in your mind, and the only way to “get rid of” it is to sit down and write.) Unlike M. Chekhov, who proved to the actor the independent existence of creative images, the theater critic need not prove it. They really exist against his will, for some time they are observed by the auditorium. And then they disappear...

Chekhov begins with a protest against creativity as a "product of brain activity": you are focused on yourself. You copy your own emotions and depict the facts of the life around you with photographic accuracy (in our case, you capture the performance as factual material, striving for photographic accuracy). He calls to take power over the images. And, plunging into the world of the performance, we undoubtedly master the figurative world that lived on the stage and lives inside us. Having a certain artistic task, you must learn to dominate them, organize and direct them according to your goal. Then, subject to your will, the images will appear before you not only in the silence of the evening, but also during the day, when the sun is shining, and on a noisy street, and in the crowd, and among the day's worries.

But you should not think that the images will appear before you complete and complete. They will require a lot of time to change and improve to achieve the degree of expressiveness you need. You must learn to wait patiently.

What do you do during the waiting period? You ask questions of the images in front of you, as you can ask your friends. The entire first period of work (penetration into the performance) takes place in questions and answers, you ask, and this is your activity during the waiting period.

The theater critic does the same thing as an actor. He thinks. He asks questions and waits for the artistic reality of the performance that lives in his memory to begin to answer his questions with the birth of a text.

But there are two ways to ask questions. In one case, you turn to your mind. You analyze the feelings of the image and try to learn as much as possible about them. But the more you know about your character's experiences, the less you feel yourself.

The other way is the opposite of the first. Its basis is your imagination. When you ask questions, you want to see what you are asking about. You watch and wait. Under your inquiring gaze, the image changes and appears before you as a visible answer. In this case, he is the product of your creative intuition. And there is no question that you could not get an answer to. Everything that can excite you, especially in the first stage of your work: the style of the author and the given play, its composition, the main idea, the characteristic features of the characters, the place and significance of your role among them, its features in general and in details - everything you can turn these into questions. But, of course, not every question will get an immediate answer. Images often take a long time to complete the transformation they need.

Actually, there is no need to reprint M. Chekhov's book here. Everything that he writes above is completely adequate to how, ideally (I generally write about what is ideally, and not in unfocused everyday life that betrays our profession every day!) the artistic and analytical process of connecting the critic with the performance takes place, as intrastage connections are sought (the relationship of one person to another person, about which Chekhov writes...), how a text is born that not only explains to the reader how the performance works, what its law is, but allows one to feel, to get used to the subject - how an actor gets used to the role.

Those artistic images that I observe, like the people around me, have an inner life and its outer manifestations. With only one difference: in everyday life, behind the external manifestation, I can not see, not guess the inner life of the person standing in front of me. But the artistic image that awaits my inner gaze is open to me to the end with all its emotions, feelings and passions, with all the plans, goals and most hidden desires. Through the outer shell of the image, I "see" its inner life.

Extraordinarily important in our business seems to me the Psychological gesture - PZh according to Chekhov.

A psychological gesture makes it possible ... to make the first, free "charcoal sketch" on a large canvas. You pour your first creative impulse into the form of a psychological gesture. You create, as it were, a plan according to which you will carry out your artistic intention step by step. You can make an invisible psychological gesture physically, physically. You can combine it with a certain color and use it to awaken your feelings and will.

Just like an actor who needs to play a role by finding the right inner well-being, critics also need PJ.

COMING TO CONCLUSION.

TOUCH the problem.

BREAK relationships.

GRAB the idea.

SLIDE OUT OF RESPONSIBILITY.

FALL into despair.

ASK a question, etc.

What are all these verbs talking about? About gestures, definite and clear. And we make these gestures in the soul, hidden in verbal expressions. When we touch a problem, for example, we touch it not physically, but mentally. The nature of the mental gesture of touch is the same as that of the physical one, with the only difference that one gesture is of a general nature and is performed invisibly in the spiritual sphere, while the other, physical, has a particular character and is apparently performed in the physical sphere.

Recently, in a constant race, doing something like not criticism, producing texts on the border of theater studies and journalism, I rarely think about PZh. But recently, due to “production necessity”, while collecting a collection, I reread a mountain of old texts, about a thousand of my own publications. Reading my old articles is torture, but something remained alive, and, as it turned out, these are the very texts in which, as I recall, the PZh that I needed in one case or another was exactly found.

Let's say I couldn't get close to Dodino's "Brothers and Sisters" (the first newspaper review does not count, I went out and went out - it was important to support the performance, this is a different genre ...). The performance was shown at the beginning of March, April was ending, the Theater magazine waited, the text did not go. On some business, I went to my native Vologda, stayed with my mother's old friend. And on the very first morning, when a bare foot stepped on a wooden floor and the floorboards creaked (not Leningrad parquet - floorboards), the pancreas arose, not the head, but the leg, remembered the childhood feeling of wood, the frosty smell of firewood by the stove, wet mounds under the March sun, washed in the heat of the floors, wooden rafts, from which women rinsed their clothes in the summer ... Kocherginskaya wooden wall, the scenery, without losing its constructive and metaphorical meaning, approached me through the found PZh, I was psychophysically able to enter the performance, attract it, settle in it and live his.

Or, I remember, we are renting a room, I have not written a review of “P. S." in Alexandrinka, a performance by G. Kozlov based on Hoffmann's Chrysleriana. I run to the office along the dark Fontanka, the lights are on, the beauty of Rossi Street is visible, the wind, winter, sleet blinds my eyes. Tormented by production, tired, I am late, but I think about the performance, I draw it to me and repeat: “Inspiration, come!” I stop: here it is, the first phrase, the pancreas is found, I'm almost the same nervous Chrysler, which does not work, snow in the eyes, mascara flows. "Inspiration, come!" I write in a notebook right under the snow. It can be considered that the article has been written, it is only important not to lose this true feeling of well-being, its rhythm, and even to analyze it theater studies - this can be done in any state ...

If the performance lives in your mind, you ask it questions, attract it, think about it in the subway, on the street, while drinking tea, focus on its artistic nature - PJ will be found. Sometimes even clothes help the right pancreas. Let's say, sitting down to write, it's useful to put on a hat sometime, sometime a shawl (watching what a performance!) or smoking - all this, of course, is in the imagination, because we communicate with an ideal world! I remember (excuse me, that's all about myself ...), I could not start writing about "Tanya-Tanya" at Fomenko's, until in the summer in Shchelykovo I suddenly came across a sheet of pale green paper. That’s it, and it’s suitable for this text - I thought, and, sitting in the loggia, having brewed tea with mint, I wrote only one word on this sheet: “Good!” The pancreas was found, the article arose by itself.

All this I mean is that real theater criticism is not a mental activity for me, it, in essence, is ideally very close to directing and acting (and, in fact, to any artistic creativity). Which, I repeat, does not negate theater studies, knowledge of history and theory, the need for contexts (the wider, the more beautiful).

A separate section could be devoted to an imaginary center that would be good to determine the criticism that writes the text ... This is directly related to the targeting of the profession.

But at the same time, the text written by hand is one PJ. On a computer, it's something else. Sometimes I make experiments: I write part of the text with a pen, I type some. I believe more in the "energy of the hand", and these pieces definitely differ in texture.

Here we need the past tense: I wrote, I believed, I was looking for PJ ... We are less and less engaged in our own professional training, as less and less often the actors come to the dressing rooms three hours before the performance and tune in ...

AND A LITTLE BIT OF TODAY

Unfortunately, now there are fewer and fewer examples of what we want to consider precisely theater criticism. Not only are there few literary texts on the pages of our publications, but the spectrum of genres is extremely narrow. As I said, something that was born at the crossroads of theater studies and journalism dominates.

Today, a critic with complete information is almost a producer: he recommends performances for festivals, creates a reputation for theaters. You can also talk about the conjuncture, engagement, fashion, serving names and theaters - however, to the same extent as it was at all times. “The class of criticism is tested on the material when you didn’t like it, and you don’t play around, don’t hide, but speak out to the end. And if such an article inspires respect for the person you are writing about, it is a high class, it is remembered, remains in the memory of both him and yours. The compliment is forgotten the next morning, and negative things remain as notches in memory. But if you didn’t like something and you wrote about it, get ready for the fact that the person will stop greeting you, that your relationship with him will end. The artist is physiologically arranged in this way - he does not accept denial. It's like saying to a girl sincerely: "I don't like you." You cease to exist for her. The seriousness of criticism is tested in these situations. Can you stay at the level when you do not accept some phenomenon of art and deny it with all your being,” says A. Smelyansky (http://sergeyelkin.livejournal.com/12627.html).

The situation in our criticism quite closely repeats the situation at the turn of the past centuries. Back then, entreprise flourished, that is, the art market was expanding, crowds of theater reporters, ahead of each other, carried hasty illiterate reviews to daily newspapers, journalists who had grown into observers - to larger newspapers (the reader got used to the name of the same observer - an expert, as now), the "golden feathers" V. Doroshevich, A. Amfiteatrov, V. Gilyarovsky - wrote to the largest newspapers, and A.R. Kugel with a circulation of 300 copies. began publishing the great theatrical magazine Theater and Art, which existed for 22 years. He created it at the very end of the 19th century, so that the art of growing capitalism would feel a professional eye and not lose artistic criteria.

The current theatrical literature consists of a wave of newspaper announcements, annotations, glamorous interviews - and all this cannot be considered criticism, because the artistic object is not at the center of these publications. This is journalism.

The array of Moscow newspaper criticism, responding quickly and energetically to all significant premieres, creates the impression that the profession seems to exist (as at the beginning of the last century). True, the circle of attention is strictly defined, the list of persons of interest is also (in St. Petersburg these are Alexandrinka, Mariinka, BDT and MDT). Reviewers of major newspapers dunk their pens in the same inkwell, the style and views are unified, only a few authors retain their individual style. Even if an artistic object is in the center, then, as a rule, the language of its description does not correspond to the essence of the object in literature, there is no talk of literature at all.

In St. Petersburg, even newspaper theatrical criticism came to naught. Discussions are now taking place on social networks and blogs, this is a new form of dialogue and correspondence, but now letters do not come for several days, like from Gnedich to Batyushkov and from Chekhov to Suvorin ... All this, of course, has nothing to do with criticism. But blogs seem to be some kind of “circles”, similar to those that existed in the “era of enlightened theatergoers”: there they were going to discuss the performance with Olenin or Shakhovsky, here - on the Facebook page of NN or AA ...

And I, in fact, there too.

Short reference

Alisa Nikolskaya is a professional theater critic. Graduated from GITIS, Faculty of Theatre. For 13 years she has been working in her specialty, also producing theatrical productions, photo exhibitions and other projects.

Professional guide: Alice, tell me, why do we need a theater critic? Who needs it in the theater: the audience, the artist, the director?

Alisa Nikolskaya: Theater is an ephemeral art. The performance lives for one evening and dies with the closing of the curtain. The critic, on the other hand, fixes what is happening on the stage, allows him to live longer. Delivers information to a wide range of people. That is, it performs the function of a historian and archivist. In addition, the critic finds words for everything that happens in the theater; formulates, analyzes, explains. In a word, in a single theatrical process, the critic is responsible for the theory.

ProfGuide: How does a critic work? I present it like this. He goes backstage and says to the director: “Listen, Petya! You put on a good show. But somehow it's not quite perfect. I would like to shorten this scene a little, change the ending a little bit. The director listens to criticism, changes and cuts. Because the critic hit the nail on the head with his remarks. So?

Or a critic watches a performance, goes home, writes a review and publishes it in the Kultura newspaper or in the Theater magazine. Then he is thanked for his work, for his understanding and glorification.

A.N.: It may be so, and so. When a live conversation happens between a critic and a director-actor-playwright, it's wonderful. It is not for nothing that the oral discussion genre is popular at Russian theater festivals. That is, the critic comes, watches the performances and analyzes them in conversation with the creative team. This is useful for both parties: the critic hones his ability to formulate and learns to hear and respect those who worked on the performance, and the creative team listens to professional opinion and takes it into account. There are almost no such things in Moscow, and talk about performances happens one-time, at the initiative of one side or the other. It seems to me that professional conversations are a very important thing. This is a living opportunity to move the process forward.

Written texts affect the process much less. In general, the value of the printed word decreases over time. In our country, let's say, a negative review of a performance does not affect the box office, as in the West. And the director, whose performance receives negative reviews, most often does not pay attention to them. Perhaps because a lot of non-professional people write about the theater, and trust in the profession itself has been undermined. Dialogue today is not very good. And the artist's need for criticism, and even the criticism of the artist, is minimal.

ProfGuide: Evil tongues say: whoever does not know how to do it himself, goes into criticism.

A.N.: Yes, there is such an opinion. It is believed that critics are those who failed to become an actor or director. And from time to time such people meet. But this does not mean that they become bad critics. As well as a critic who has received a profile education is not always good. Talent is needed in our profession.

ProfGuide: I think that modern theater especially needs a critic. He must explain. Because the modern theater is often like a crossword puzzle - it is not clear. You have to think with your head, not just with your heart. What do you think of it?

A. N .: Of course, it is necessary to explain. Formulate. Analyze the process. Today, the scope of the theatrical spectacle has greatly expanded, elements of cinema, video art, music, and various types of art are being introduced into it. It's insanely interesting. Understanding new pieces, for example, or modern dance, where everything changes and is completed extremely quickly, is created before our eyes. Just take it easy and comprehend. Although the heart can not be turned off. After all, today's theater affects the viewer at the sensory level, and it will not be possible to perceive it only with the head.

ProfGuide: How do you feel about modern theater in general? What is this phenomenon, and what questions does modern theater answer or try to answer?

A. N .: Nowadays, there is a huge gap between the theater, which exists on the model of half a century ago, and the theater, trying to capture today's rapidly changing time, to respond to it. The first type of theater does not answer anything. He just lives. Someone needs it - and for God's sake. Although the categorical unwillingness to let in today is a misfortune and a problem. And the second type of theater, embodied in small, as a rule, groups or individuals, seeks nourishment from what is around. In the thoughts and feelings of a person who comes to the auditorium and longs for the echoes of his own soul. This does not mean that modern theater is fond of sociality and topicality - although it is impossible to do without these components at all. There is an approach to the sacred theater. Sensual, Returning to the origins of human nature.

Professional guide: What do you think, Alisa, what is the main problem of modern theater in Russia? What does he lack?

A.N.: A lot of things are missing. The main problems - social and organizational plan. There is no contact, dialogue with the authorities: with rare exceptions, the authorities and the artist do not contact, the authorities are not interested in this conversation. As a result, the theater is on the margins of public life, the theater has no influence on society. One-time, single exceptions.

Another trouble is the distance between, say, people who have a building and subsidies, and people with brains and talent. Look: in all major theaters there is a groan - "where is the new blood?". And this new blood is - and directorial, and acting, and dramaturgy. And these people are here, there is no need to fly to Mars for them. But for some reason they are not allowed or admitted to a minimum in these structures. And the theater management still sits and dreams of some kind of “new Efros” that will fall from the sky and solve all problems. It saddens me to see all this. It is bitter to see how the directors, not having time to really take place in the theater, leave to shoot serials. It is bitter to see actors endowed with talent who have not had a decent job for years. It is bitter to see students warped by the education system and not understanding, not hearing themselves, their individuality.

ProfGuide: To be a theater critic, one must love the theater ("...that is, with all the strength of your soul, with all the enthusiasm, with all the frenzy that you are capable of..."). But what qualities should be cultivated in oneself in the course of training and preparation for this profession?

A.N.: A critic is a secondary profession. The critic fixes and comprehends what he sees, but he himself does not create anything. This is a moment that is difficult to put up with, especially for an ambitious person. You have to be ready to realize this. And to love the theater is a must! Not all of them, of course. The formation of one's own taste, self-education are also very important things. Who needs a critic, choking with delight after any performance, not distinguishing good from bad? As well as the one who goes to the theater, as if to hard labor, and grumbles through his teeth “how-I-hate-everything-this” is not needed either.

ProfGuide: Where is the best place to learn to be a theater critic?

A. N .: The unforgettable rector of GITIS, Sergei Alexandrovich Isaev, said that theater studies are not a profession, but a set of knowledge. This is true. At the theater department of GITIS (which I graduated from, and most of my colleagues who are now practicing critics) they give a very good liberal arts education. Having received it, you can go, say, to science, or, on the contrary, to PR, or you can even switch from theater to something else. Not every person who graduates from our theater department becomes a writing critic. But - and not every critic comes into the profession from the theater department.

In my opinion, for a person who has chosen the path of "writing", the best teacher is practice. Writing is impossible to teach. If this is hard for a person, then he will never get used to this business (I have seen many such cases). And if there is a predisposition, then the knowledge gained at the university will simply help you go where you want. True, today theatrical criticism for the most part has turned into theater journalism. And this bias is not in universities. And people, leaving the walls of the same GITIS, may be unprepared for further existence in the profession. Here a lot depends on the teacher and on the person himself.

The theater department of GITIS is perhaps the most famous place where they teach "criticism". But not the only one. If we talk about Moscow, then the theater studies direction is offered by most liberal arts universities. RSUH, for example, where the quality of education is high.

Professional Guide: What does a theater critic's career look like?

A.N.: It's hard to say. It seems to me that the career of a critic is the degree of his influence on the process. This is the development of an individual style by which critics are recognized. And the moment of luck, the opportunity to be "at the right time in the right place" is also there.

ProfGuide: You are now producing performances. Where did it come from? Run out of patience? Has something sprouted to the soul? How did you understand that IT GROWN? How did it enrich you?

A.N.: There are many factors. A few years ago, I got the feeling that I was not very satisfied with the existing theatrical reality. She is missing something. And when something is missing, and you understand what it is, you can either wait for changes, or go and do it yourself. I chose the second. Because I am an active person, and I do not know how to sit in one place and wait.

I really like trying new things. Five years ago we came up with a wonderful photo-artist Olga Kuznetsova project "phototheatre". We combined the acting work on the camera and the originality of the space. One project, The Power of Open Space, was shown at the Na Strastnoy Theater Center as part of a large exhibition of three photographers. The other is “Royal Games. Richard the Third", much more voluminous - was made a year later and shown at the Meyerhold Center. In short, we tried - it worked. Now I understand how interesting this direction is, and how it can be developed.

Exactly on the same principle of "interesting - I tried it - it turned out" my other projects are being made. The work of young film directors became interesting - a program of showing short films at the TsIM was born. I was carried away by the club space - I began to make concerts. By the way, I really regret that I left this job. I want to return to it. And if tomorrow I like something else, I'll go and try to do it.

As far as theater is concerned, here I am still at the very beginning of my journey. There are many ideas. And all of them are focused, in many ways, on people - actors, directors, artists - whom I love, whose vision of the world and theater coincides with mine. Teamwork is extremely important to me. The feeling when you are not alone, you are supported, you are interested is extraordinary. Of course, there were mistakes and disappointments. With painful and bitter consequences. But this is a search, a process, this is normal.

You know, this is a delightful feeling when you see, for example, some extraordinary artist, or you read a play - and suddenly something starts to pulsate inside, you think “this is mine!”. And you begin to invent: for an artist - a role, for a play - a director. You build the whole sequence of work in your head and on paper: how to get money, how to convince people to work with you, captivate them with your own burning, how to assemble a team, how to promote the finished product, arrange its fate. The amount of work is, of course, huge. It is important not to be afraid, but to move forward without interruption.

ProfGuide: What is your credo in the profession of criticism?

A.N.: The credo, no matter how trite, is to be yourself. Dont lie. Don't kill with words. Do not go into disassembly, showdown. It happens that a certain character - an actor or director - is frankly unpleasant, and talking about his work you involuntarily begin to look for what is bad. And when you find it, you really want to roam on this soil. This is not good. We must moderate our ardor. I always say this to myself. Although it happens that I do not hold back.

Professional guide: What is the main difficulty of the profession for you? What is the obligation of this profession? So I see that you spend almost all your evenings in the theater. Isn't this hard labor?

A.N.: No, not hard labor at all. I do not get tired of saying that the profession, even if it is very beloved, does not exhaust the whole life. And it is impossible to exhaust. Otherwise, you can become a very unhappy person. And I have such examples before my eyes. Yes, the theater takes up a significant part of my time. But it's a conscious choice. A lot of the people I love, with whom I communicate are people from the theater circle. And I'm terribly interested in talking with them, including about the profession. But I also have friends who are completely non-theatrical, and non-theatrical hobbies - and thank God that they are. You can't lock yourself into work. It is necessary to be a living person, breathing and feeling. And work should not be approached as hard labor. Otherwise, you just can't do it. It is necessary to expand the boundaries of perception.

I never understood those who go strictly to dramatic performances, for example. Now all kinds of art penetrate each other. I go to opera and ballet, to concerts and films. And for me this is not only pleasure or entertainment, but also part of the work.

The difficulty for me, for example, is not to lie to myself and not to be fake. Sometimes you look at some incredible spectacle - and you don’t know how to approach it in order to convey in words what you saw. It's rare, but it happens. And then you leave the hall, you burn, you burn, and as you sit down to write - martyrdom. But there are torments, and when you are dealing with a very bad performance. How to say that this is bad, but not to splash poison and not to stoop to abuse, but to clearly state all the “what” and “why”. I have been in the profession for thirteen years. But it often happens that a new text is an exam for me. To myself, first of all.

Professional guide: What is the main sweetness of this profession for you?

A.N.: In the process itself. You come to the theater, you sit down in the hall, you look. You make notes. Then you write, think, formulate. You are looking inside yourself for associations, sensations, echoes of what you have already seen (or read). You draw parallels with other art forms. All this is an amazing feeling that cannot be compared with anything.

And one more pleasure - interview. I don't really like to do interviews, but there are people who meet with delight and happiness. Yuri Lyubimov, Mark Zakharov, Tadashi Suzuki, Nina Drobysheva, Gennady Bortnikov... These are space people. Yes, and many others can be named. Each meeting is an experience, recognition, understanding of nature, human and creative.

ProfGuide: Is it possible to earn money as a theater critic?

A.N.: You can. But it's not easy. A lot depends on your own activity. As one friend and colleague of mine says, “how much I ran, I earned so much.” In addition, it should be borne in mind that texts about the theater are not in demand by all media. Therefore, you live in a constant extreme. In search of a combination of internal, professional needs, and banal survival. Apply your knowledge and skills to the maximum.

“Damir Muratov from Omsk at the Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art in Moscow presented his work “Not everyone can offend an artist” – a conceptual inscription on canvas. As in any similar actionism, along with a playful pun, one can see an important meaning here, - says Alexei Goncharenko, theater critic. - Sometimes a sharp remark from a critic allows, leaving emotions aside, to change something in the scene and make it stronger, and sometimes an unexpected compliment can depress the author (he expected that they would note something more dear to him in the work). It is not necessary to simply scold directors and artists, just as simply praise, this can be done by the audience. It is more productive for the theatrical process to analyze, disassemble, ask questions and ask questions, and then along with the arguments an assessment of a work of art will be born, without which it is impossible, after all, a critic is not an author of odes, he does not blindly admire, but respects those about whom he writes ".

“As a representative of the theatrical profession, a critic must constantly doubt,” shares her opinion Elizaveta Sorokina, editor-in-chief of the “Badger-theater expert” magazine. - You can't just say. You have to keep hypothesizing. And then check whether it is true or not. The main thing is not to be afraid of mistakes, to appreciate each one. We must not forget that a theater critic is a profession as creative as all other theatrical ones. The fact that the critic is "on the other side of the ramp" does not change anything. The unit of statement of the director is the play, the actor is the role, the playwright is the play, and the criticism is its text.

In most cases, reviews are written by people who have been trained to understand the art of theater from the inside - these are theater experts. Graduates of the Moscow school (GITIS), St. Petersburg (RGISI) and others. People with a diploma of a journalist do not always fall into the sphere of culture. If we compare a theater expert and a journalist, we get an interesting analogy: both have their own advantages and disadvantages when writing performance reviews. Critics who graduated from the theater department do not always have an idea about the genres of journalism. It even happens that, behind a large number of terms, they forget that a non-elite reader will quickly get bored with an abundance of incomprehensible words. Critics with a journalistic education fall short in terms of their parameters: they often lack the characteristic knowledge about the theater, about its features, as well as professional terminology. They do not always understand the theater from the inside: they simply were not taught this. If the genres of journalism can be learned quite quickly (although not the first time), then it is simply impossible to master the theory of theater in a couple of months. It turns out that the disadvantages of some are the advantages of others.

Photo from FB Pavel Rudnev

“Theatrical text has ceased to be a means of earning money, the cultural pages in the media have been reduced to an impossibility, the rest of the newspapers have sharply improved,” says Pavel Rudnev, theater critic and theater manager, Ph.D. in art history. - If in the 1990s a performance in the capital could collect 30-40 reviews, today press secretaries are happy when at least one review is published about a performance. The most resonant works cause ten reviews. Of course, this is a consequence, on the one hand, of the market, squeezing out what cannot be sold, on the other hand, it is a consequence of distrust in modern culture, the new theater, new people coming in culture. If you can put up with the first, then the second is a real disaster. Many say that the critic today becomes a manager, a producer. And this, alas, is a forced thing: you need to provide for yourself, your family. But the problem is that the reputation and authority of a critic is still, first of all, created precisely by texts and analytics. And the fact that today there are very few opportunities for young theater critics is a disaster, since the maturation of a critic is a long-term process. No one comes out of universities fully prepared and equipped.

Elizaveta Pecherkina, rewizor.ru

theater critic

Theater critic is a profession, as well as a person professionally engaged in theater criticism - literary creativity, reflecting the current activities of the theater in the form of generalizing articles, reviews of performances, creative portraits of actors, directors, etc. .

Theatrical criticism is directly related to theater studies, depends on its level and, in turn, provides material for theater studies, since it is more topical and responds more quickly to the events of theatrical life. On the other hand, theater criticism is connected with literary criticism and literary criticism, reflects the state of the aesthetic thought of the era and, for its part, contributes to the formation of various theatrical systems.

Story

Here are some famous Russian critics:

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

Theater District (New York)
Theater Bridge (Ivanovo)

See what "Theatre Critic" is in other dictionaries:

Theatrical October - "Theatrical October" is a program for reforming theatrical business in post-revolutionary Russia, the politicization of the theater based on the conquests of October, put forward by Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold in 1920. Sun. Meyerhold - the "leader" of the Theater ... Wikipedia

CRITIC - CRITIC, criticism, husband. 1. A writer who criticizes, interprets and evaluates works of art. Literary critic. Theater critic. 2. The same as the critic (colloquial neod.). He is a terrible critic. “I’m terribly afraid of you ... You are dangerous ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

critic - noun, m., use. comp. often Morphology: (no) whom? criticism for whom? criticism, (see) whom? criticism by whom? critic, about whom? about criticism; pl. Who? criticism, (no) whom? critics to whom? critics, (see) whom? critics who? critics about whom? about critics ... ... Dmitriev's Explanatory Dictionary

critic - CRITIC, a, m A person who criticizes, evaluates, analyzes whom, what l. Vadim graduated from the university, received a diploma in art criticism, gave lectures, sometimes led excursions, and now he tried himself as a theater critic (A. Rybakov) ... Explanatory Dictionary of Russian Nouns

The Band Wagon (film) - The Band Wagon ... Wikipedia

Theatrical novel (film) - Theatrical novel Genre drama comedy Director Oleg Babitsky Yuri Goldin Script writer Evgeny Ungard ... Wikipedia

CRITIC - CRITIC, husband. 1. A person engaged in criticism (in 1 value); one who criticizes someone. Strict k. 2. Specialist involved in criticism (in 3 values). Literary k. Musical k. Theater k. | female criticism, s (to 2 meanings; colloquial ... ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

Theatrical novel - "Theatrical Romance" ("Notes of a Dead Man") is an unfinished novel by Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov. Written in the first person, on behalf of a certain writer Sergei Leontyevich Maksudov, the novel tells about the theatrical backstage and the writing world. ... ... Wikipedia

critic - a; m. 1. The one who analyzes, evaluates what, whom l. and so on. Critics of the published draft law. Critics of our position on this issue. 2. The one who deals with criticism (4 characters). Literary k. Theater k. Musical k. ◁ Criticism, ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

critic - a; m. see also. criticism 1) One who analyzes, evaluates what, whom l. and so on. Critics of the published draft law. Critics of our position on this issue. 2) the one who is engaged in criticism 4) Literary kri/tik. Theatrical Cree / ... Dictionary of many expressions

Books

F. V. Bulgarin - writer, journalist, theater critic, Vershinina Natalya Leonidovna, Bulkina I., Reitblat Abram Ilyich. Collection of articles prepared on the basis of reports at the conference F. V. Bulgarin - writer, journalist, theater critic (2017), organized by the journal New Literary Review and ...