Theatre in Russia

THEATRE

Warm up

Exercise 1. Read and translate the following words and word combinations. Learn them by heart.

A performance – a performer – to perform – collaborative – to act – an action – an actor – an actress – a musical theatre – a repertory theatre – a youth theatre – a genre.

Exercise 2. Match the English words on the left with their Russian equivalents on the right. Learn the words by heart.

1. stagecraft	a) речь;
2. a gesture	b) основатель;
3. a speech	c) драматургическое мастерство;
4. to represent	d) вымысел;
5. fiction	e) воображать, представлять;
6. to express	f) драматург;
7. a director	g) руководитель;
8. a founder	h) поставить (пьесу);
9. a playwright	i) выражать, изображать;
10. to imagine	j) жест.

READING

Exercise 3. Read and translate the text on theatre in Russia. Use the dictionary when necessary.

Theatre in Russia

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance. Elements of design and stagecraft are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience.

Theatre today includes performances of plays and musicals. Although it can be defined broadly to include opera and ballet.

There are different types of theatre.

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action". Drama is often combined with music and dance: the drama in opera is generally sung throughout; musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs.

Modern musical theatre is a form of theatre that combines music, spoken dialogue, and dance. It emerged from comic opera, vaudeville, and music hall genres of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Theatre productions that use humour as a vehicle to tell a story qualify as comedies. This may include a modern farce. Theatre expressing bleak, controversial or taboo subject matter in a deliberately humorous way is referred to as black comedy.

Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in the viewing.

Russia is well-known for its great theatres. Among them are the Bolshoi Theatre, the Moscow Art Theatre, Lenkom Theatre and Sovremennik Theatre.

The Bolshoi Theatre is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by architect Joseph Bové, which holds performances of ballet and opera. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and most renowned ballet and opera companies in the world. It is by far the world's biggest ballet company, having more than 200 dancers.

The Bolshoi is a repertory theatre, meaning that it draws from a list of productions, any one of which may be performed on a given evening. It normally introduces two to four new ballet or opera productions each season and puts a similar number on hold. The sets and costumes for most productions are made in the Bolshoi's own workshops.

The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russia's dominant form of theatre at the time.

Lenkom Theatre is the official name of what was once known as the Moscow State Theatre named after Lenin's Komsomol. Designed by Illarion Ivanov-Schitz, it was built in 1907 to house a Merchant's Club, and was home to many theatrical and musical performances. Over its 80-year career, Lenkom has been a forerunner of new, fresh and experimental theatre in the Soviet Union, and now Russia.

Lenkom has featured many of the most popular Russian artists, well known by their work both in theatre and cinema, such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Yevgeny Leonov, Aleksandr Abdulov, Oleg Yankovsky, Inna Churikova, Leonid Bronevoy and Nikolai Karachentsov

Sovremennik Theatre was founded by a group of young Soviet actors during Khrushchev Thaw. Among the founders, all of whom graduated from Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio, were Oleg Yefremov, Galina Volchek, Igor Kvasha, Liliya Tolmachyova, Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev and Oleg Tabakov. The debut production was Victor Rozov's play Forever Alive. Theatre's first artistic director, Oleg Yefremov, left in 1970. Since then the theatre is led by Galina Volchek.

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