Экран на отечественной театральной сцене. Первые опыты

Abstract

The article discusses the first attempts of introducing cinematography to the theatre stage. The undertakes to “cinefication of the theatre” were aimed not only at impressing the audience with this trick and ensuring the performance’s income. They were caused by the need to update the stage facilities. This allowed the stage and screen space to collide at the same venue, and ultimately revealed new meanings. Judging by the surviving materials, cinematic pictures first appeared in the children’s performance of the Korsh Theatre The Night of Magical Dreams (1906) as a means of documenting the events of reality, which gave them credibility. In 1908, in the Moscow Farce Theatre of S. F. Saburov in the performance 999 Cuckolds cinema was used as a clamp of reality hidden from the eyes, thereby violating the boundaries of private life and provoking awkward situations. Saburov’s original idea made it possible, on the one hand, to prolong interest in farce, and, on the other hand, it showed new possibilities for using cinema, which existed at that time as farce entertainment, as an attraction. The author does not consider it accidental that cinematography appeared on theatres’ stages oriented towards mass tastes and in the so-called grassroots genres, which have common origins with the newly born cinematography.