ФИЛОСОФИЯ ТЕАТРА М. УГАРОВА И ЕГО ПЬЕСЫ ПРЕДДОКОВСКОГО ПЕРИОДА («ГАЗЕТА “РУССКИЙ ИНВАЛИДЪ” ЗА 18 ИЮЛЯ», «СМЕРТЬ ИВАНА ИЛЬИЧА»)

Abstract

The article makes an attempt to analyze some selected plays of Mikhail Ugarov, the founder of the documentary Teatr.doc and the New Drama movement (“The Newspaper ‘Russian Invalid’ Dated July 18” and “The Death of Ilya Ilyich”). Although these plays were written in the so called «pre-doc» period and seem to be entirely different with respect to style and content from verbatim and New Drama aesthetics, they express Ugarov’s most important views on dramatic and theatre art formulated later. In these texts one can find philosophical ideas which subsequently formed the basis of documentary and modern dramatic theory. The author concludes that Ugarov’s early plays have mainly a metaliterary character and can be analyzed as an artistic manifesto in which the playwright elaborates the following ideas: negation of classical drama features (composition, action, character); the horizontal structure of the literary work; “zero-position”; cancellation of an event; rejection of grand narratives; rejection of the author’s will and self-expression; negating art as an entertainment; the documentary approach (attention to the details of everyday life). The author indicates that there is a certain contradiction in Ugarov’s doctrine – on the one hand, he admitted the primacy of the dramatic text over the director, on the other hand, - along with his work as a director and a teacher in the Teatr. doc, he ceased to write plays (after “The Death of Ilya Ilyich” Ugarov wrote only a remake-play, “The Masquerade”, in 2013). During this period he created mostly scenarios based on verbatim material. Therefore, the principle of a traditional dramatic work serving as basis for the theatre performance was being deconstructed, which makes it reasonable to relate the theatre aesthetics of Mikhail Ugarov to the postdramatic paradigm.