From the author: Reflections on the more than once predicted death of the theater and the realities of creative life behind them. What is modern drama? A metaphor for existence, a key to the truth hidden in the heart, or a counterfeit of greatness? Does truth exist, or are we immersed in a world of illusion? Will theatrical art survive in a changed world? What will the theater of the future be like? And is he as necessary as his fans claim? Key to the head What is the essence of modern drama? The dramatic genre penetrates the heart better than others. Into the very depths of the unconscious. This has been the case since ancient times. The action taking place on stage mysteriously produces a transformation, the consequences of which we observe in ourselves after some time. Sometimes we like it, sometimes we don't. But as a rule, what happened is irreversible. In other words, drama is a time bomb planted by the author under our lives. With our active participation. Something explodes in your head, and the seemingly familiar world flies upside down. Ordinary circumstances cause anger, and habitual habits appear as base fraud. Then we begin to think, look into ourselves, look for reasons, and gradually change. However, changes that come suddenly do not always bring joy. Because of this, the languid urge to accomplish a feat and change one’s own life is usually stopped by unconscious inhibition. Desires inspired by the scene come into conflict with the realities of everyday life, social stereotypes and obligations to others. This causes suffering, which is mistaken for elevation of the spirit. Purification by participation Psychoanalysis borrowed the idea of ​​catharsis from ancient drama. Ritual cleansing from illusions and accumulated evil. Catharsis crowned the experience of the past. It became the result of living the story unfolding before our eyes. The viewer identified with the characters, living what was happening on stage. Events tried on oneself carried knowledge of one’s own soul and purified it. During the psychoanalytic procedure, the client becomes the author and stage of his own drama. Before his inner gaze there pass haunting plots born in the distant past. Their reliving, combined with a detached interpretation, gives a new understanding leading to liberation from pain. Habits and ideas that cause suffering are replaced by new, more adaptive ones. Subsequently, it turned out that participation in a theatrical production itself can have a profound therapeutic effect. Based on this, psychodrama methods were created. Its difference from psychoanalysis is that when entering it, internal reality is not only lived inside, but also played out in external space with the help of partners. Thus, the gift of antiquity became a soul-healing medicine. Secret joys But centuries have passed, and decayed bones remain of the ancient greatness. Today, the action on stage ends not with cleansing, but with the feeling of being dumped in the slop. However, there are enough amateurs for such pleasure. The pleasure of touching something wretched can fill the soul of many with meaning. The theater becomes a place that depicts not the triumph of the best impulses of the soul, but their collapse and desecration. Observing the triumph of evil leads to the experience of secret joy. Clearing inner darkness requires effort. Indulging your instincts makes life easier. The energy of long suppressed feelings, having thrown off the shackles, gives a feeling of euphoria. The world seems clear and simple, and many questions find answers. Psychoanalysis achieves the same effect by turning us to our roots and nature. However, in psychoanalytic practice, repressed feelings are exposed in order to do transformative work with them. Knowledge gives you the power to change yourself. Here, the process of releasing destructive impulses does not lead to their understanding and elaboration, but to a lowering of the threshold of consciousness and the dissolution of the ego in hedonistic pleasure. This can rather be compared to the effect of intoxication. The Collapsed Plot Over the long centuries of its history, drama has discovered, dissected, and presented on display the whole diversity of humanfeelings and stories. For thousands of years, the nature of our mind has not undergone significant changes. Religions and philosophies changed, and technological power developed endlessly. Morals softened, and public institutions became much more humane. But the essence of our feelings and the deep mechanisms behind them remained the same, just like the structure of the skeleton. Although the external surroundings and features of expressing internal reality have become different. We no longer grab the sword, and do not challenge our opponent to a duel. We do not kill unfaithful wives, and we do not send friends who displease us to execution. In any case, if we live in a civilized part of the world. As a result, the new drama has nothing to offer us. Everything happened, and more than once. There are three ways left. You can retell the classics, giving them a modern twist. You can cut out individual fragments from old stories and arrange them arbitrarily, turning them into a mosaic. Or completely destroy logic and plot, turning the action into an entertaining phantasmagoria. But then you will have to explain all this somehow. The Rise of the Expert Meanwhile, the institution of criticism underwent a transformation. Just two centuries ago, the word critic meant expert. His occupation was to reason about the essence of things. Gradually, analysis increasingly came to mean the search for imperfections. Destructive attention directed at shortcomings. Ultimately, the critique of the action became a critique of the viewer. That is, in a voluptuous denunciation of his supposed vices. Criticism will explain that if you didn’t like something, then it’s your fault. To instill a sense of inferiority in a psychologically healthy viewer, there is a theatrical press and an expert community. As one once popular image maker noted, a lie repeated many times becomes the truth. And a completely intelligent person, having repeatedly heard about his stupidity, feels like a fool. As a result, the viewer develops a persistent feeling of inferiority, ignorance and moral inferiority. Subsequently, he masks it by demonstrating significance, aggression and other defense mechanisms. The mind, suppressed by dependence on authority, begins to demand victims on whom it will be able to take out its grievances. From a medicine for the soul, modern theater is turning into a mental illness. A conspiracy of the enlightened. Actually, the expert community is formed from this kind of sick people. They are forced to compensate for the feeling of personal insignificance acquired through years of continuous critical processing by humiliating others. This is how neurosis is reproduced, which in theatrical circles is revered as a sign of high spirituality. A healthy and reasonable person causes rage and streams of denunciations. An expert, as a rule, strives to behave with the greatest possible significance, refer to indisputable authorities, and speak from a position of a priori truth. He prefers to interpret any doubt in his words as a sign of your stupidity. At the same time, he is usually not able to answer any question on the merits. Which is quite natural, since there are no answers to them at all. A community of people who secretly despise themselves behave with ostentatious arrogance, demonstrating involvement in truths inaccessible to mortals. To do this, you have to make meaningful gestures and constantly complain about the squalor of those around you and their inability to read cultural codes. However, none of the self-appointed experts is able to explain what he means by these words. The destiny of the creator The life of the expert community is filled in equal measure with fear and envy, flowing between them like a river among steep banks. The fear of being exposed, of appearing before people in their true light, as narcissistic and ignorant people, transforms into hatred and accusatory rage. The self-instilled feeling of inferiority finds expression in passionate envy of the author. The creator who creates a dramatic work and translates it into a stage performance, from the outside appears to be a being of a completely different scale and nature. The author is like a godcreating worlds out of nothing. His will inhabits them with life boiling and struggling before our eyes. The power of other people's imagination usually fascinates people with paralyzed creative abilities. At the same time, the author’s inner world remains hidden from view. And serves as an ideal object for infantile fantasies about an ideal and powerful being. However, the realities are far from the carefully cultivated myth. Usually the author is a narcissist, obsessed with passionate self-love, and demanding veneration. Any other form of feedback is perceived as a personal insult. The joys of flowers A feature of the narcissistic state is sudden changes in self-esteem. Periodic powerful oscillations between two poles. On one, a person feels like the greatest genius, endowed with supernatural powers and a special higher purpose. Everything he created is brilliant and overshadowed by eternity. On the other hand, he is a nonentity. Everything created is disgusting, terrible and shameful. In a fit of greatness, the author creates a text that is not worth a damn, and takes it for a masterpiece. And in the next phase, he destroys sketches containing truly great insights. This is why it is believed that genius is not so much inspiration as hard work. Actually, inspiration is usually called the peak of the phase of greatness, accompanied by a feeling of the presence of higher powers and boundless delight. Accordingly, to create a high-quality text, the author needs to go through several peaks of delight, which give him energy for work and serve as a reward for his work. He also needs patience and endurance in order not only to survive the depressive phases, but also to use them for the most careful editing of his brainchild. However, this is the lot of talent. Usually we have a product of a completely different nature. New Shores In the harsh eras of past centuries, authors who were too keen on swinging on a narcissistic swing did not survive. Their subtle nature could not stand meeting with real life. This is the reason for the early death of many revered as geniuses. Those who survived were those who had flexibility, perseverance and a penchant for introspection. They created most of the classics. But today everyone survives. As a result, we have a paradoxical situation where the sick treat the healthy. Suffering from an acute form of narcissism, and often socially inadequate, the author becomes a teacher of life, proclaiming truths about the inner world of man. The community of professional critics unanimously depicts the king’s new dress around the latest genius. The main thing is to maintain a smart face. However, you won't get enough of your facial expression. As a result, we have a divide between the wretchedness of modern drama and the expert community praising it, on the one hand, and the amazed viewer, on the other. However, if you peer into the black square, sooner or later you will see God. The theater becomes a school of conformism, training hypocrisy. The viewer learns to agree, and to accept submission as thinking. The Next Sun All this has given rise to talk about the death of theater for many years. However, for now he is in no hurry to leave us. And it shows all the signs of further transformation. There is reason to believe that in the future it will be reborn, and in a completely different capacity. More precisely, in three new formats, which are a logical continuation of existing trends. However, it will not be quite theater. The first tendency will culminate in the final transformation of action into performance. A grotesquely costumed masquerade coupled with public nudity, profanity and sexual practices. The theater will finally leave the stage and move to the podiums of nightclubs and bar counters. Ballet will be combined with striptease, and the line between drama and high porn will be completely erased. The second will follow the healing power hidden in the theater. The beginnings laid by psychodrama, and continued by new studios and acting trainings, will be developed in the form of healing play. The therapeutic theater will become a medical tool, connecting the stage with the clinic and hospital. Surgery and public dialogue can.