The theater of the 19th century was characterized by loud, passionate monologues, spectacular positions, preparing theatrical departures, that is, having effectively completed his stage, the actor emphatically theatrically withdrew, causing applause from the audience.
Behind the theatrical feelings, complex life experiences and thoughts disappeared.
Instead of complex realistic characters, stencil stage roles accumulated.
The officials who managed the "imperial" theaters stubbornly sought to turn them into places of light entertainment.
Two great events in theatrical life mark the end of the 19th century – the birth of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's drama and the creation of the Art Theater.
In Chekhov's first play, Ivanov, new features were revealed: the lack of division of characters into heroes and villains, a slow rhythm of action with a huge internal tension.
In 1895, Chekhov wrote a large play "The Seagull".
However, the performance staged by the Alexandrian Theater based on this play failed.
Dramaturgy required new stage principles: Chekhov could not be performed on stage without directing.
The innovative work was appreciated by the playwright, theater teacher Nemirovich Danchenko.
Who, together with the actor director Stanislavsky, created a new Art Theater.
The true birth of the Art Theater took place in October 1898 during the production of Chekhov's "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich".
On the stage, they saw not actors playing "the audience", but real living people talking to each other in the most ordinary, not upbeat tone, as if at home.
People moving freely and even turning their backs to the viewer (which seemed particularly daring).
The sincerity and simplicity of the game, the naturalness of semitones and pauses touched everyone with truthfulness.
Moreover, even those who played weekend and wordless roles were not mannequins, but created their own small artistic image.
The members of the team who created the play, guided by the director's will, were imbued and soldered by a single task.
And this created an unprecedented ensemble in the Russian theater until then, striking with its overall consistency.
In December, the premiere of "The Seagull" took place, which has since become the emblem of the theater.
The performance was all built on the mood, on the barely noticeable emotional movements in the external expression, unusual images that could not be shown, depicted, it was necessary to merge with them, they had to be lived.
The production of "The Seagull" contributed to the birth of the famous formula: "not to play, but to live on stage."
Stanislavsky came up with mise en scenes for the performance, which had never been in the theater.
So, together with Chekhov, the diversity was created, which largely determined the further development of the theater.
This required a new technique of acting performance.
After all, it is many times more difficult to live on stage than to imagine.
And Stanislavsky creates his own system of psychological realism, aimed at reproducing the "life of the human spirit".
And Nemirovich Danchenko develops the doctrine of the "second plan" when a lot of unspoken things are guessed behind what has been said.
In 1902, the famous Moscow Art Theater building was built at the expense of the largest Russian philanthropist S. T. Morozov.
Stanislavsky admitted that Maxim Gorky was the "main initiator and creator of the socio political life" of their theater.
In the performances of his plays "Three", "Philistines", "At the Bottom", the heavy share of workers and "the lower classes of society", their rights, and the call for revolutionary perestroika were shown.
The performances were held in crowded halls.
Further contribution to the stage production of Gorky drama is associated with the name of Vera Fyodorovna Komissarzhevskaya, who is close to revolutionary circles.
Languishing from the treasury, which was stifling the imperial stage, she left it and created her own theater in St. Petersburg.
In 1904, the premiere of "Summer Residents"took place here.
Gorky's plays became the leading ones in the repertoire of the Komissarzhevskaya Theater.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a new theatrical genre appeared.
In 1908, the first one act play theater in Russia was opened in St. Petersburg by V. A. Kazansky.
The theater on Liteyny was the third theater of the entrepreneur (after the Nevsky Farce and Modern).
The playbill of the theater was full of terrible names: "Death in the arms", "On a tombstone" and so on.
Critics wrote that the theater was engaged in an anti artistic, irritable business.
The audience was pouring in.
The Foundry Theater had a predecessor - the Paris theater of "strong feelings", headed by the creator and author of the plays Andre de Lord.
The Russian theater imitated him from the repertoire to specific means of influencing the audience.
But the spirit of Russian life did not resemble the atmosphere of the Parisian inhabitants.
The attraction to the terrible, repulsive captured various layers of the Russian public.
After two months, interest in the theater faded.
The main reason is that the horror theater could not compete with the horrors of Russian modernity.
The theater's programs changed greatly, and three years later the genre designation "Theater of Miniatures"was assigned to the theater.
The number of miniature theaters increased markedly after 1910.
Actors, for the sake of profit, move from drama to miniature theaters, many drama theaters somehow made ends meet, and miniature theaters grew like mushrooms after the rain.
Despite the different names and genre designations of the newly emerged theaters, the nature of their performances was the same.
The programs were based on one act comedies, operas, operettas, and ballet.
At the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century, the passion for luxurious productions, completely devoid of artistic ideas, is characteristic of the style of the pre revolutionary Bolshoi and Mariinsky theaters.
First class in their artistic composition, the collectives of a number of opera theaters only won their creative achievements in a difficult and intense struggle.
Russian Russian Seasons in Paris were organized by S. P. Diaghilev, one of the founders of the World of Art Association, who performed Russian ballet dancers in 1909-1911.
The troupe included M. M. Fokin, A. P. Pavlova, V. F. Nezhensky and others.
Fokin was a choreographer and artistic director.
The performances were designed by famous artists A. Benois, N. Roerich.
Performances of "Sylphids" (music by Chopin), Polovtsian dances from the opera "Prince Igor" by Borodin, "The Firebird" and "Petrushka" (music by Stravinsky) and so on were shown.
The performances were a triumph of Russian choreographic art.
The artists proved that classical ballet can be modern and excite the audience.
Fokin's best productions were "Petrushka", "The Firebird", "Scheherazade", "The Dying Swan" , in which music, painting and choreography were united.
