The research concerns the future of professional arts outside the capital and aims to examine the situation of professional theatre art in the regions, comparing the impact of state theatre and municipal theatre status on artistic processes. The study focuses on comparing the operating models of two Latvian regional theatres – the Liepāja Theatre and the Daugavpils Theatre. Both theatres are the only professional theatres in their respective regions and have similar objective parameters. However, their management models differ – the Daugavpils Theatre is a direct state administration institution, while the Liepāja Theatre is a municipal capital company or a limited liability company with all shares controlled by the Liepāja City Municipality. The study compares the budgeting principles of the two theatres and analyses the statistical data and the tasks set for the theatres by the supervisory institutions. Likewise, it compares the artistic principles of the two theatres and records the results of their professional activities, using nominations for the national annual prize “Spēlmaņu nakts” as a criterion. The study concludes that the theatre management model does not directly impact performance in the short term. However, in the long term, the municipal model poses several risks. The remuneration criteria in public theatres are considerably more transparent, whereas in a municipal theatre, they are determined by the subjective decisions of two board members. Therefore, changing the board without changing the operating model does not guarantee a positive change in the theatre.

Statement of the problem. Vocal pedagogy in the drama theater arts has a shorter history than the training of academic singers. Unlike the academic tradition, which preserves fixed teaching methods, vocal training for actors is constantly changing to respond to new stage practices and to give students relevant skills. The study of approaches by Kharkiv teachers to actor’s vocal training is important not only from a historical point of view; it is that allows us to see their individual contribution to the development of the performance arts in the region. In the article, we focused on several vocal teachers, including both, the famous singers and the specialists, whose work was devoted mainly to vocal pedagogy. Recent research and publications. In historical discourse, the topic of vocal training for student actors within the Kharkiv school of theatre has yet to attract significant scholarly attention. Brief biographical sketches of some vocal instructors can be found in the two-volume encyclopedic publication prepared by the Kharkiv I.P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts to mark its centenary in 2017. A more comprehensive overview dedicated to theater education in Kharkiv is provided in detailed article from the second volume of this edition (Botunova, 2017), which offers insight into the historical contexts and institutional transformations that shaped the principles and methods of vocal pedagogy for actors. A significant information was also gathered from archival documents housed at the Kharkiv I.P. Kotlyarevsky National University of Arts. These include personal files of faculty members, as well as administrative orders issued by the Kharkiv State Theatre Institute, the Kharkiv State Conservatory, and the Kharkiv State Institute of Arts during the relevant periods. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The purpose of the study is to fill in historical gaps in knowledge about vocal pedagogy in Kharkiv theater education in the 1930s–1960s and to investigate trends in the vocal training of actors during this period. The novelty of the work lies in drawing attention to the problems of developing vocal education for student actors in Kharkiv’s higher education during the mid-20th century, highlighting the figures of vocal teachers and their methods for the formation of a singing actor. Historical and chronological, documentary and biographical approaches were used, as well as archival work with documents and personal files of teachers, and an analytical method to reconstruct the vocal training system of student actors during the 1930s–1960s. Research results. The Ukrainian theatrical tradition has always emphasized the importance of the vocal component as one of the basic elements of acting. In the 20th century, this was also supported by Les Kurbas’s associates. The figures of the vocal teachers are considered, in particular Zinaida Maliutina, a famous singer and teacher who significantly influenced the vocal education of both actors and singers; Liudmyla Kurilenko, who occupied a significant place in vocal pedagogy in Kharkiv; Liia Shamesh, who worked exclusively with actors for over three decades; Tetiana Chubuk-Oleksiienko, an opera and chamber singer and vocal teacher, who enriched acting training with her deep practice of the Ukrainian singing repertoire. The archival documents allow us to reconstruct the “official” position regarding vocal pedagogy in Kharkiv. The problems faced by the teachers were identified, both, the external factors, such as wartime conditions, and the internal factors – lack of resources and political pressure. Despite the difficulties, the teachers managed to adapt their own methods to the specific needs of dramatic actors. Conclusion. Until the mid-20th century, academic vocal technique was dominated in the training of actors, who were expected to skillfully use the capabilities of their vocal apparatus for professional performance. This was achieved through the pedagogical traditions of academic voice training carried out by teachers of that period. Further archival research is needed to examine methodological materials and collect testimonies from graduates. This will help reconstruct the history of actor vocal training in Kharkiv.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s adaptation of Euripides’ Trojan Women presents women’s suffering in the aftermath of war. In contemporary Turkish theatre, this classical text has been reinterpreted both through linguistic translation and performative acts that reframe the original work. Drawing on Morini’s (2022) assertion that “theatrical performance is itself a form of translation,” and applying Lefevere’s concept of rewriting to multimodal translation, this article examines two recent Turkish stage productions, Tatavla Theatre and Trabzon State Theatre, as examples of translational rewriting shaped by aesthetic choices. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of archival recordings, the study investigates how these productions recreates the source text through distinct performative strategies. While the Tatavla performance centers on collective grief and despair, employing minimalism and stillness, the Trabzon production brings resilience and agency into focus through dynamic movement and cinematic strategies. By comparing these approaches, the article demonstrates how translation becomes a site of gendered reinterpretation, one that goes beyond linguistic transfer, but actively shapes the visibility, voice, and bodily presence of women on stage.

This study aims to reveal how children's theater posters construct multilayered cultural narratives through visual and textual elements. The research adopts a qualitative design based on semiotic analysis. To enable an in-depth examination, the scope was limited to 10 posters exhibited by State Theaters in Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir. Each poster is systematically analyzed using Roland Barthes’ semiotic framework. The significance of the study lies in demonstrating that these posters serve not only as promotional tools but also play a key role in the reconstruction of social values. The analysis reveals both idealized childhood themes such as innocence, freedom, hope, and creativity, and broader themes including social and individual identity, critical thinking, and free will.

The paper covers the issues of periodization and functioning of the information and analytical bulletin Teatralna Dekada (Theatre Decade) published by State Theatre Trust in Kharkiv, the capital of the Ukrainian SSR at the time (1931–1934). It was established which similar publications from other republics of the USSR the editors of Teatralna Dekada were guided by. Additionally, the features of their first Ukrainian counterpart were clarified. The traits of theatrical writing at the first stage of issuing Teatralna Dekada in Kharkiv were revealed. The bulletin was published irregularly, with only five issues appearing in 1931–1934. Every time the impetus for the beginning and then for another attempt to recommence publishing Teatralna dekada was the change in the power dynamics of the theatre scene of the capital (the discussion around the opening of the Theatre of Revolution, the removal of Les Kurbas from the management of the State Theatre Berezil and the opening of the Theatre of Russian Drama in Kharkiv in counterposition to the Berezil Theatre). It was revealed that the editorial board of the bulletin paid attention to the work of dramatic and musical theatres and the theatre of national minority (State Jewish Theatre); at the same time, the activities of the ensembles of the All-Ukraine Model Puppet Theatre, Children’s Theatre, TROM (Theatre of Working Youth), the Variety Show “Merry Proletarian” and workers’-and-peasants’ fit-up companies were not analyzed. The changes in the composition of the columnists and the principles ofselecting materials under different editors-in-chief were studied. Changes in the visual concept of the theatre bulletin were traced. The publication genres included an editorial, a review article about plans for the theatre season, a review of the results of the past theatre season, a review, a theatre quiz, an obituary, a feuilleton, and an official document. It is established that the editorial board of“Teatralna Dekada” practiced quoting materials from other publications. The bulletin also included commercial advertising—announcements of premieres and theater repertoires. The originality of the editorial policy of“Teatralna Dekada” among other theatre magazines of the first half of the 1930s issubstantiated.

From the Theater of War to the Theater Stage: The Militarization of the State Theatre Pretoria (1981)

This article revisits Odysseus Elytis’ poem Alvaniada, first presented on the Greek National Radio Foundation (EIR) in 1956. I approach the Alvaniada as a radio poem, highlighting its role in the development of Elytis’ intermedial poetics, which aims at inventing, in his own words, ‘new fixed forms that facilitate the poem's transition from the domain of the book to the domain of the theatre or to music and song’. The case of the Alvaniada directs attention to the 1950s as a critical, yet understudied, decade for Elytis’ acquisition of canonical status: it was then that his works became widely disseminated via national cultural institutions such as the state theatre and radio.

Theater of State: A Dramaturgy of The United Nations by James R. Ball III (review)

In Nicaragua, the national penitentiary law holds that the primordial goal of imprisonment is the ‘penal re-education’ of incarcerated people. Constituting the institutional vehicle for so-called ‘change of attitude’, this politico-moral framework however shapes not only how re-education is enacted, but also who is considered deserving of the benefits it has become infused with, spurring a continuous performative battle between prisoners and authorities. At the hand of long-term ethnographic research conducted with (formerly) incarcerated people, this article seeks to elucidate not only the ways in which multiple moral orders can coexist and vie with each other, but also how morality and legitimacy are co-constituted. It does so by expanding on Jarett Zigon’s tripartite conceptualization of ‘moral assemblages’ to consider the potentiality of institutional ethical breakdown, focusing on the ethical practices of incarcerated young men as they struggle for moral recognition within and against the institution. Having considered in depth the moral politics and performances of penal re-education, I turn to the re-emergence of political imprisonment to elicit how moral and political breakdowns may strengthen one another, planting the seeds for institutional change. Yet nearly 7 years after the mass protests and their lethal repression, Nicaraguan criminal justice institutions appear more politically and morally unmovable than ever. Though local moral assemblages have certainly proven malleable, this politico-moral work ‘from below’ appears severely limited by the disproportionate amount of power amassed ‘above’. That is, by a system of powerholders who have radicalized their values, investing in the maintenance of their political position at all costs. As a result, the Nicaraguan case points to both possibilities and severe limitations for moral and institutional change under autocratic rule.

Thе article is focused on the history of creation and stage productions of Eugene O’Neill’s satire Marco Millions (1927) that reflected the playwright’s interest in the Orient. The paper analyzes different facets of interpretation of the play in forgotten and completely unknown to the Russian reader productions. Among them are spectacles directed by Rouben Mamoulian (Theatre Guild, New York, 1928; Liberty Theatre, 1930), Algirdas Jaksevicius (Kaunas State Theatre, Kaunas, 1938), Jose Quintero (ANTA Washington Square Theatre, New York, 1964), and also Tom Ridgely’s dramatic vaudeville Marco Millions (based on lies) (Lion Theatre, New York, 2006) inspired by Eugene O’Neill’s satire. A special attention is paid to the analysis of the title character – how it was conceived and created by the playwright and how the protagonist is interpreted in different stage productions. The final part of the article is dedicated to the translation and publication of the play in Russia where, unfortunately, Marco Millions was never performed on stage.

Primarily based on archival materials from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the Russian State Archive of Economics, the Russian State Historical Archive, the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg and the A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, the article provides the first detailed examination of a period representing a turning point in the history of the Bolshoi Theatre. During the two months between the end of October and the last days of December 1917, the Bolshoi Theatre experienced severe upheavals. The defeat of the Provisional Government during the October battles in Moscow was a shock for the troupe. The Bolsheviks’ cancellation of state financing in response to the failure on the part of the intelligentsia to recognise the legitimacy of their power created an atmosphere of complete uncertainty and lack of confidence in the future. However, even under these conditions, directors Leonid Sobinov and Feofan Pavlovsky strove to maintain the theatre’s artistic output. As well as maintaining contact with the chief commissioner for state theatres, Fyodor Batyushkov, they sought support from the troupe itself, and began to use the proceeds from performances as a means of ensuring the continued functioning of the theatre. However, a split was brewing in the troupe: the ambitious conductor Emil Cooper, who effectively ran the orchestra, informally led the “opposition” to Sobinov within the theatre. The contradictions that had accumulated by the turn of 1917–1918 prevented the Bolshoi Theatre from continuing its activities without significant changes, including a recognition of Bolshevik power and consequent restructuring of the management system within the theatre itself. Keywords: Bolshoi Theatre, Revolution of 1917, October Revolution, People’s Commissariat of Education, Leonid Sobinov, Emil Cooper, Elena Malinovskaya For citation: Gordeev, P. N. (2025). Opera and Revolution: The Bolshoi Theatre at the End of 1917. Contemporary Musicology, 9(1), 130―153. https://doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2025-1-130-153

This article focuses on two plays about socialist construction: The City at Dawn (1941), a collective composition by the students of the Moscow State Theatre Studio under the direction of Alexei Arbuzov and Valentin Pluchek, and The Three of Us Went to the Virgin Land by Nikolai Pogodin (1955). Written in different eras, these two texts are inextricably linked: the young creators of The City at Dawn could not help but look back to Pogodin’s ‘industrial plays’ of the 1930s, while in the 1950s Pogodin was openly inspired by the new dramaturgy, the foundations of which had been laid in The City at Dawn before the war. Both plays reflected the times in which they were created, but ended up very differently: The City at Dawn was supported by the state during the Stalin era, while the performance of The Three of Us Went to the Virgin Land at the Central Children’s Theatre was scandalously withdrawn during the Thaw. The article examines the theme of past and future on several levels: from the seeds of new theatre hidden in both dramaturgical texts to the ways in which the authors of the plays interpreted the categories of time. The article makes use of numerous archival materials: audience reviews of both plays, censors’ conclusions, transcripts of discussions around the plays, and other documents.

BackgroundMost studies on injuries of professional dancers used a medical-attention and/or time-loss definition and did not analyse all health problems. Further, almost all studies included just one company. The aim was to analyse all self-reported health problems of professional ballet and contemporary dancers during one season and compare sexes and five companies in Germany.MethodsDancers of five professional companies completed weekly health questionnaires during the season (September 2022 to June 2023). Numerical rating scales were used for severity of all health problems, musculoskeletal pain, impairment of the ability to dance at full potential, physical and mental workload in the previous seven days. If the severity of all health problems were rated greater than “0”, the dancers were asked to report the type and consequences of their most severe health problem.ResultsDuring 43 weeks, 98 dancers (39.8% male) completed 3123 weekly reports (response rate 74.1%). The season prevalence of any health problem was 100% and of time-loss health problems 74.5%. The average weekly prevalence of any health problem was 62.7%, of musculoskeletal pain 83.4% and of impaired ability to dance at full potential, due to health problem 48.6%. While the season prevalence and type of health problems was similar between sexes, the average weekly prevalence of severe health problems was higher in female than in male dancers (Chi2 = 23.2; p < .001), and female dancers saw a qualified health professional more often than male dancers (Chi2 = 19.5; p < .001). Companies differed in almost all investigated variables, with more health problems in companies where more dancers rated their workload higher than “ideal”.ConclusionHealth problems are frequent in professional dancers and affect their ability to dance. Future studies should analyse the impact of physical and mental workload on health problems.

Created based on real events, the Meyerhold State Theatre play Roar, China! was of a political nature, corresponding to Meyerhold's interest in one of the areas of theatrical politics of the 1920s, associated with the genre of political review. The political nature of the play is reflected in the stage presentation of two opposing forces and two socio-political systems behind them. The expression of the contradiction between the people and the opposing sides became an important political task of the play. To achieve it, the director of Roar, China! used the montage principle in the theatre. Such a principle of montage also exists in traditional Chinese theatre; however, on stage, it appears in the form of conventionality.

This study focuses on the activities of the American impresario Sidney Ross, whose work has been little studied in both the USA and Russia. During the interwar period, Ross sym- pathized with the USSR and dedicated himself to organizing overseas tours for leading Soviet directors and theatres, including Vsevolod Meyerhold and his Moscow State Theatre, Constantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre, Alexander Tairov and the Moscow Kamerny Theatre, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and Music Studio at the Moscow Art Theatre). For the first time in Russian and American theatre studies, a brief creative biog- raphy of Sidney Ross is presented. The study is based on materials from the collections of both Russian archives (State Archive of the Russian Federation — GARF, State Archive of Literature and Art — RGALI, Moscow Art Theatre Museum) and American archives (Houghton Library at Harvard University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts). The documents identified allow for a reevaluation of Sidney Ross’s role in organizing the GosTiM tour in Paris in 1930 before the planned trip to the USA, as well as a reconstruction of the process of organizing this visit to the New World, which ultimately never took place. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the reception of Soviet theatre abroad and clarifies the picture of cultural relations between our country and the United States during the interwar period of the twentieth century.

The study is based on the material of the world soul monologue, embedded in Chekhov’s play “The Seagull”, and its intersemiotic translation, provided by the authors of the performance “The Seagull”, directed by Mark Zakharov in 2005. The study aims to examine the question under discussion in respect of the adequacy of intersemiotic translation relying on the analysis of the material. The research was carried out using methods of description and comparison, discourse analysis, as well as the method of functional analysis. It has been proven, that the interpretation of the Moscow State Theater “Mark Zakharov’s Lenkom” is primarily based on the divergence of graphic and intonation parcelling. The deliberately violate the principles of the actual division of syntactic structures in the text of A. P. Chekhov and create parcellemes that are not conditioned by the syntax of the invariant text. It is emphasized that there is a number of translation deformation in the theatrical text. The conducted research allowed to reveal cases of the exclusion or substitution of the original text (omission or replacement of conjunctions, substitution of some punctuation) and the inclusion of elements that were originally absent in the monologue and introduced into it by the authors of the theatrical text (discursive words, clarifying word, assertives).

In the context of political liberalization in the 1960s, Hungarians in Romania, taking advantage of new cultural opportunities, quickly adapted to the new conditions. After the administrative reform, following cultural concessions, a phenomenon similar to that in Romania of reinventing and reproducing the historical past took place in Hungarian cultural institutions. Theatre played an important role in this cultural phenomenon. The State Theatre of Sfântu Gheorghe participated very actively in all the cultural initiatives to promote ethnocultural identity and local values initiated by the new political and cultural elite in Covasna County, founded in 1968. The main aim was therefore to rediscover, care for and promote the local historical past (Transylvanian and Szekler) in the context of the cultural policy of the time and the communist ideology through historical plays. The success, or lack thereof, of these plays should be sought in this context rather than in their literary and dramatic value. The theatre of Sfântu Gheorghe, in search of new forms after 1968, took up, accepted these plays, these historical themes, managed to slip them through the institutions of censorship and put them on stage. These plays are characterized by a lack of professional maturity, by ideological clichés. They are telling examples of how and to what extent the local Hungarian intelligentsia tried and failed to adapt to the new cultural conditions in the country, in these political-ideological conditions, how it tried to find Hungarian cultural alternatives and to what extent it managed to process and stage these themes.

The phenomenon of the Moscow State Theatre Studio under the direction of Alexei Arbuzov and Valentin Pluchek, which in February 1941 produced the play The City at Dawn about the construction of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, can be viewed from different angles. One of the most important aspects is the relationship between the creators of the play and its audience. This article examines a series of issues: who the audience of the play was, what response the play, written collectively by the students of the studio, found in the public, how the audience perceived the aesthetic innovations of The City at Dawn, and if the ambition of the Arbuzov Studio to become the ‘voice of the generation’ who graduated from schools and universities in the late 1930s and went off to war in 1941, was finally realized. The article publishes (mostly for the first time) the texts of letters and notes sent by the audience to the members of the Arbuzov Studio, the answers to questionnaires that the audience was asked to fill out, and the quotes from the studio journal of observations of the performance.

The article considers the artistic and informative approaches to the creation of the scientific film “Old Belarusian Folk Theatre”. The film was produced in Belevichi village of Slutsk district in April 1962 on the initiative of a group of scientists from the Institute of Art Studies, Ethnography and Folklore of BSSR Academy of Sciences and the Belarusian State Theatre and Art Institute V. I. Nefed, K. N. Sannikov, G. I. Baryshev and S. M. Misko. Considerable attention is paid to the study of the circumstances of making, scientific and creative motivation of the film’s authors, as well as to the issues of further use, scientific representation of this science-intensive film-documentary.The article actualizes the problem of using tools of newsreel fixation for science, particularly for preservation, research and popularization of Belarusian traditional culture, when a documentary camera-observer is able to connect the view of a scientist and qualified researcher with the view of a spectator.

Summary. The article gives an overview of the emergence of postmodern aesthetics in the Estonian theatre and the response it received in the theatre discourse during the transitional period. The postmodernisation of different arts occurred at various speeds and in a different scope. In the Estonian theatre, postmodernism was less pronounced than in other arts, being limited to individual directors and theatre groups. Postmodern aesthetics and the worldview that carried them permeated the Estonian theatre mainly through non-state theatre groups operating outside the state theatre system. The article first examines the short-lived theatre groups created in the late 1980s, such as Gregor and Ruto Killakund. It then focuses on the Von Krahl Theatre, founded in 1992 as the first Estonian private theatre, led by Peeter Jalakas. The article also analyses the postmodernist features of the productions of Mati Unt and Evald Hermaküla, directors who worked in state theatres. In general, postmodernism emerged in the Estonian theatre in the 1990s (although it did not become mainstream) and began to influence theatre aesthetics more strongly in the early 21st century. However, the theories of postmodernism did not take root in the theatre discourse. This developmental inertia is usually explained by the theatre’s institutionalism and the resulting dependence on audiences. The individual Estonian leading directors’ choices contributed to this, as well as a very weak conceptualisation of postmodernism in the theatre criticism of the time. The styles that were alternative to the mainstream were accepted in post-Soviet theatre discourse but were described as peripheral, largely because the private theatres of the 1990s were placed in the context of amateur theatre. The synchronic criticism constructed the theatrical canon based on state theatres, and therefore, postmodernist features in the Estonian transitional theatre have remained in the background. Keywords: postmodernism, Estonian contemporary theatre, Estonian theatre discourse, Von Krahl Theatre, Peeter Jalakas, Evald Hermaküla, Mati Unt