Innovativeness of Anatoliy Vasiliev’s directing pursuits

Anatoly Alexandrovich Vasiliev is a world-famous director, teacher and honoured artist of Russia and reformer of the Russian theatre of the turn of the 20-21th centuries, who opened new ways of stage art. The innovation of experimental pursuits of A.A. Vasiliev is considered, he managed to creatively develop a method based on the achievements of the Russian psychological school and obtained in GITIS from the hands of M.O. Knebel, former student of K.S. Stanislavskiy. In the unique author’s theater “School of Dramatic Art” created by him which has no analogues in the world the director subjected the research and development of the method of analysis of the play and the actor’s work on the role in the psychological theater. A.A. Vasiliev tried to develop a method of acting technique in the acting theater. For the period of work in the Theater named after K.S. Stanislavskiy, Taganka Theater, in the laboratory of “School of Dramatic Art” on the material of plays M. Gorky, V.I. Slavkin, Plato, T. Mann, A.S. Pushkin he sought to overcome the psychological theater, to find a way of the actor’s existence in the acting theater, to educate an actor capable of combining spirituality and morality with a special technique of the game. A.A. Vasiliev in the process of setting performances on A.S. Pushkin opens a new way of work of the actor on the role. Not immersion in the proposed circumstances of the role and assignment, but the appropriation of the author’s thoughts and remote removal of the person-actor from the image of the “character” and the establishment of game relationships between them. In the “Cry of Jeremiah” by V.I. Martynov, “Joseph and His Brothers” by T. Mann, the director tried to connect religion and theater. The laboratories conducting research work in the theater “School of Dramatic Art”, A.A. Vasiliev’s students and associates, continuing experimental work after his departure in France, are discussed.

director, innovator, experiment, theatre, school, laboratory, psychological theatre, acting theatre, method, a way of being an actor in the play structures