This research explores the theatrical repertoire of the 2021-2022 season. The author aims at revealing the genre specificity of plays in contemporary Russian theatre. In this context the theatrical genre is understood not so much as a category of artistic creation in the narrow sense, but rather as a phenomenon of synthesis of literary, stage and media aspects of theatrical performance. On the whole, the appeal to genre markers remains important for the Russian theatre. At the same time, about a quarter of the plays are not marked in this way. Among genre markers comedy has an undoubted advantage over all the others occupying together with its numerous derivatives about a quarter of the repertoire. Of all other 359 variants traditional dramatic genres (for example, drama, tragedy, melodrama, etc.) stand out in terms of popularity. The predominant use of markers associated with both literary and theatrical genres separately is also characteristic. The genre classification of plays we offer also includes other parameters: the context of folklore and mythology, references to other art forms, the format of the theatrical performance, compositional features, the stylistic character of the production, its playful component, markers with the semantics of fantasy and imagination, discursive features of performances, their factual aspects, artistic time of the play, cultural markers. It is generally fair to conclude that the genre marker acts as a trigger for spectator attention, so the medial aspect of it dominates over the aesthetic one. Most indicative in this sense is the anomaly associated with comedy derivatives, which occur in about half of the total number of performances in this genre. The clarification, commentary and indication of genre variation undoubtedly demonstrates the populist nature of the use of this genre in contemporary theatre. All other popular genres have a much more modest percentage of derivation
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