TO BE A STROLLING PLAYER

A production of "Hamlet" is being staged in Baku by the famous London "Globe" Shakespeare theatre. This is a fairly remarkable event in the city's cultural life, all the more so since the National Academic Drama Theatre, at which the performance was organised with the support of Azerbaijan's Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the British Council, staged the first premiere of this season literally the day before.

About the "Globe" theatre

The first theatre of that name was opened in London in 1599. Fourteen years later, owing to a faulty theatrical prop, a cannon, the building burned down during a performance of Shakespeare's "Henry VIII". A new building erected on the fire-gutted site existed until 1642 when it was demolished and the theatre's location remained unknown until 1997 when the foundations of the old building were discovered under a car park in Park Street. The third new "Globe" theatre started its life in 1997. Now it is called the Shakespeare "Globe" theatre, so that it is not confused with Britain's Royal Shakespeare Theatre in the town of Stratford-on-Avon with its artistic director Dominic Dromgoole. The theatre's repertoire consists of plays by William Shakespeare. This is not a memorial, but a lively modern theatre. A theatre about which the English actor, modernist-epoch theatre and opera director Edward Gordon Craig, who was a major representative of symbolism in theatrical art, once dreamt.

Gordon Craig and Konstantin Stanislavsky

They were united by the dream of a super actor, capable of being free of the "material state" of his own body and able to rise to the level of higher feelings and lofty thoughts. They also shared the quests for an ideal artistic form capable of representing the idea of the production. Craig proposed an architectural approach to the construction of the area on the stage. This meant that the actor's voluminous, mobile body should fit in with the large and mobile decorative scenery, making it possible to obtain a maximum number of different moods, which were all to create the necessary atmosphere for the play.

They both recalled that a situation was brewing (and that was in 1907) when Gordon was in a production of "Hamlet" in Moscow, which demanded a radical reorganisation of theatre affairs. Stanislavsky was immersed in quests for new means of artistic expression, resolving problems like how the scenery should express the spirit of the play and not just illustrate the location.

Craig's quests had already produced some results in that direction. Craig thought that the ideal actor was only a marionette actor, but not a marionette controlled by the strings of the puppeteer director, but one who is governed by his own emotions according to the ups and downs in the plot. He wanted a marionette who was born in spirit under the influence of the work which was the commander and owner of the actor's body, mind and soul. 

Stanislavsky did not think that all this was possible solely by making a thorough and detailed study of the material relating to the role's logical content. On the basis of a study into the "spirit of the role", he thought that this should not be a spontaneously emitted emotion, but an in-depth psychological study. With all the different variants in the approaches to the artistic process, both masters understood that the situation arising at the start of the 20th century required changes to be made.

From Gordon Craig's book on "The Art of the Theatre" which said that there was no bogatyr-like tribe of workers at in the theatre of the time and that mental and physical decline ruled. He asked whether it could be otherwise. He said that nothing testified to this decline more clearly than the constant assertions of all those working in the theatre that things in theatre had never been better and the theatre had reached the peak of its development at the time. He asked whether they should be worrying about the same problems.

On the work on "Hamlet"

The work on "Hamlet" revealed the contradictions existing between Craig and the Moscow Arts Theatre: Stanislavsky's system was hardly suitable to meet Craig's demands, but Craig's dreams of a clear tragedy outside time and space, in the centre of which there would be the struggle between spirit and material was not brought to life and mastered by the Arts Theatre. The combined creative quests, however, the arguments and differences did bring results which laid the foundation for experiments in drama in the so called improvisational theatre.

On the improvisational theatre

What is the improvisational theatre? This is a trend in contemporary theatre which came into being in the second half of the 20th century. It is rooted in the theatre of Antiquity, the Italian commedia dell' arte (the comedy of masks - a type of Italian folk (open-air) theatre, the productions in which were created by a method of improvisation), and the quests of Vasiliy Karatygin (1802-1853), the famous Russian tragedy actor. At the beginning of the 20th century elements of the improvisational theatre could be found in the studies and quests of Mikhail Chehov, Aleksandr Tairov, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Yevgeniya Vakhtangova, Sandro Akhmeteli and Maria Knebel.

The independent development of the improvisational theatre was most vividly embodied in the practical quests of Anatoliy Vasilyev ("The School of Dramatic Art" theatre) and his pupils - Boris Yukhananov, Igor Yatsko, Aleksandr Ogarev and others. The improvisational theatre fundamentally differed from the theatre of psychological realism in the approach to the preparation and understanding of the actor's task, in the work on the productions' scripts and in the interpretation of the basic concepts such as the structures of the plot, the playwright, the characters and so forth. The improvisational theatre possesses enormous potential but is undeservedly left in the shadows by the directors' interests. It is developing and audiences find it interesting so it has a promising future. The improvisational theatre is the theatre of yesterday, which may be a life-saver in resolving many of today's problems.

On the production

The action begins with the actors from the troupe of the "Globe" theatre coming onto the stage, one after the other, and offering the audience an opportunity to join in Mr Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" together with them. The story is an old one like the world, and the actors have no doubt that we are well informed about what is happening in the play. They know that we know who is who in this story and why he acts as he does and not in another way.

The actors do however offer their own improvised version of the plot and they encourage us to go through the ups and downs with them, after getting new ideas and sensations from the newly experienced feelings. Like strolling players, they themselves act, they themselves sing, dance and tap out the rhythm with the heels of their shoes, promising the audience that the story will neither be boring nor frightening. We only make out that all this is "the truth", they sing, and we eagerly agree with this.

Here a black actor presents Hamlet to us, and a girl who was just holding a violin becomes Ophelia. They have changed their clothes in our eyes as one detail of the costume has appeared, for example, a cloak; it is not a Shakespeare theatre actor we see, or a strolling player, but a character named 

Claudius, or Polonia, or Gertrude. Therefore it seems to us absolutely justified that the role of Guildenstern and the courtier Cornelia are played by black actors! What's special about that? These are not the "servants of the Lord Chamberlain" but simply "strolling players". 

With the framework of the conventions in the improvisational theatre they can allow themselves to present the characters like masks as in the commedia dell'arte. The system of existence in the improvisational theatre, which is deprived of the canons of realistic theatre conventions, allows this type of improvisation. It must be said that the audience really likes this improvisation, just as they like the performances of the actors in the pantomime. Just like their characters, the actors in the Shakespeare theatre who become the strolling players invited to the castle by Hamlet to enact scenes of King Hamlet being murdered, perform this scene brilliantly.

You have a whole plot about Claudius' bloody, evil deeds embodied in gestures, plasticity and mime. The production is not overloaded with psychological concepts, but it is not opposed to action with illustration. This act of illustrating which is limited by the actors' lack of sincerity, makes the audience bored with the incomprehensibility of the director's interpretation of the chosen material in the play and the stock characters of the actors. Even Hamlet's long monologue "to be or not to be?" was perceived in the production as an assertion that the improvisational theatre can exist, even today, because the theatre has been copying real human life for too long. After the age of directors, then the acting period in the theatre came, followed by the time of the producers, but it did not justify itself either. It looks as if the theatre itself needs to get out onto that path which humankind itself determines. But it is looking back increasingly often, returning to the sources. Possibly, after casting aside all the achievements of civilisation, mankind is trying to find the truth about itself in its primitive roots? How can we find out?

Epilogue

Since 23 April 2014, London's Shakespeare theatre the "Globe" has been travelling around the world, presenting the immortal works of the classic of world drama, William Shakes-peare, to audiences to judge in America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. The world tour is due to end on 23 April 2016. The purpose of the project was to demonstrate in all countries and to many peoples that Shakespeare knows how to speak to the whole world in the universal language of art. It seems to me that the "Globe to Globe Hamlet" project has justified itself even today. It has gone out into the world where it was understood and accepted by an enormous number of people…