TRANSFORMATION OF STAGE GESTURE IN THE LATVIAN THEATRE IN MODERNISM: THE HISTRIONIC AND THE VERISIMILAR AS GESTURE CHARACTERISTICS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20th CENTURY

Abstract

This research is devoted to processes of professional formation and transformation of stage gesture in the Latvian theatre at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The terminological reference point for gesture analysis is the definition of the histrionic or the theatrical and the verisimilar or the realistic, proposed by the US scholar Roberta Pearson that characterises the qualitative changes of stage gesture over the above period. I have used Pearson’s reference to the French vocal teacher François Delsarte (1811–1871) and his so-called system of the concluding stage of the formation of the histrionic gesture, pointing out the stage existence of its elements in the period of modernism and putting forward a hypothesis about the universal nature of its separate principles. The analysis of stage gesture has been performed in the context of Latvian professional theatre education, its sources of influence and artistic interests on the basis of the facts of the creative biography and the theoretical essays of Ernests Kārkliņš or Zeltmatis (1868–1961) who was one of the founding fathers of the first Latvian professional theatre educational establishment “Latvian Theatre Courses”.