THEATER ARTISTS BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE NON-CITY: THE SPRING OF WITHDRAWALS AND RETURNS

Abstract

In the West, theater has always been strongly associated with city culture and urbanization processes. By combining the methods and insights of the arts and psychology, the article aims to explore the impact of the city and non-city environments on the work of theater artists, to find out what happens when a creator withdraws from a usual city environment. Qualitative approach – case study analysis – is applied in this research by interviewing two theater artists. The research identified four meta-themes: move back and forth, together and separately, change of perspective, create a new universe. Analysis of the aforementioned themes revealed that withdrawal from the city, as from the usual creative space, is useful and productive for the theater artists, but becomes meaningful only when the latter come back to the city. The metaphor of the spring is suitable for describing this process: creativity is most stimulated by dynamics of withdrawals and returns, which determines the change of perspectives and, at the same time, creative states, rather than withdrawal from the city itself. Withdrawal provides impulses for new universes to emerge: both in the aesthetic plane of creation and in the psychological plane.