Nothing simplifying
That evening at the Bolshoi Theater Mikhail Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila was going on. The overture sounded, asserting the idea of heroism, loyalty, courage. Then the curtain opened, and the girl sitting at the barrier in the box, quietly gasped - with delight in the colorful scenery, the brightness of the costumes of the artists in the wedding scene of Lyudmila, the daughter of the Kiev prince. And although she knew the content perfectly - my father read to her the poem of Alexander Pushkin in early childhood - the girl relived the disappearance of Lyudmila, listened with excitement in the aria of the main characters, into the choral singing.
Irisha Vashkevich was at the Bolshoi Theater for the first time."Will understand, because the opera is so multifaceted, deep?" - worried father. Mother did not doubt: she would understand - it's not the first year she has been engaged in the choir.
The opera was distinguished by its humanity, its simplicity. It was attended by subtle lyricism, and heroic, and philosophy and humor. The main emotional key was, of course, patriotism."Ruslan and Lyudmila", in fact, a lyrical and epic tale of heroism, Russian oppression. Everything is permeated with faith in the future glory of Russia - every character, event, sound. And it is clear - we must fight for happiness. With Chernomor, other enemies. True happiness is what is won in the struggle.
More than once and not two houses returned to the opera, talking with the Irish. And the father after the service, and mother and grandmother. The play produced, perhaps, an impression more powerful than the books that the girl loved and read willingly. There was also music, acting of actors, their singing. Even the scenery.
There is an opinion - for children, they say, it is necessary to show fairy tales, specially written plays for them. .. Do not hammer their heads with complexities, deep thoughts, problems of modern life, searching for heroes, their throwing. In other words, to transfer to the stage life in a simplified version. Allow me to disagree.
Even the baby( unfortunately, they are not always allowed to play performances in the daytime) will intuitively manage to take something valuable for themselves from the opera they have heard, the ballet they saw, the adult play. And the more so a teenager. For them, there are their own, children's theaters, the Theater for Young People, where both modern plays and classical music go. We are very fond of talking about education through art. But a person is especially affected by something that resonates with his personal experience, with his thoughts, that will touch his feelings.
Sometimes a teenager looks at the play of a famous playwright completely dispassionately, nothing touches him. And suddenly, from one or another situation, the soul starts to get excited. The thought will wake up, the threads from stage to boy will stretch. There is a force field that excites the mind and heart of the viewer.
Do not assume that the play re-educates instantly, right in the auditorium rebuilds consciousness. No, this is a complicated process. Help to deepen his thoughts after the performance, the conversation of the young spectator with parents, discussion of problems, their solutions, offered by the playwright, director, actors. The plays by A. Vampilov, A. Gelman, A. Galin, L. Petrushevskaya lead to long discussions, involuntarily turning into a conversation about life. There is the very development of beliefs that is so necessary for our young generation, if we want it to be thinking, seriously, deeply thinking.
Very useful meetings of the creative team with young spectators after the performance.
In the Chelyabinsk Youth Theater, for example, a good tradition has been established to invite parents to such talks. Together, with children, they watch this or that play, then together they try to understand all that the authors and artists wanted to say to the intricacies. The conversation is sincere, not according to the learned script, as is practiced sometimes in schools. Often, parents at such times make a kind of discovery - they recognize their son or daughter from an entirely different angle, they become closer to each other.
The performance of K. Skvortsov's play The Legend of the Chudes is interestingly performed in this theater. Created on a folklore basis, involving music, ancient rituals, he narrates about the legendary tribe in the Urals, calls not to forget his story.
For a long time in the hall after the performance, the exchange of opinions took place - is it clear to the viewer how vital the situation is, whether the actors played truthfully. It was about the past and the present of the country, about the people's memory, about the possibilities of the theater. In search of truth, the characters, persons and adolescents, and adults were brightly displayed. They complemented each other, argued, with all their behavior confirming the educational role of the play.
Such meetings had another unexpected result. Relations in families between children and adults have changed, no matter who these adults are - metallurgists, teachers, officers, doctors. ..
In the Moscow Youth Theater, they often turn to classics.
On his stage repeatedly went "The Insulted and Injured" based on the story of F. Dostoyevsky. A difficult spectacle is a complex collision, an unadorned truth. Not everyone considered it possible, like this, without simplifications, to show teenagers the tightly twisted vicissitudes of life. But the director recreated the plot of the story, nothing to smooth. Thus, the theater taught the young spectators a serious attitude to the work of the classic, to the problems that the real reality is constantly presenting to us. And now, too.
In the plays of contemporary authors, many social and moral issues are solved. The role of the theater has now increased noticeably, on the stage we see today's life in all its complexity, contradictions. And we parents can not underestimate his influence on a teenager, even if he does not live in a big city, but in a small village that has only an amateur drama circle. But even there the TV screen leads directly to the house of the capital's actors, the best performances that excited thousands of spectators. In your home, too, there will necessarily be a conversation that will last more than one day. Of course, if the performance interests you or your children, it will require each decision to solve certain problems, their frank assessment. Without hypocrisy and half-truth.
Our society is in the process of restructuring today. And therefore we have no right to answer children, even after a performance on the acute topic of our time, lightly, veiledly, without naming things by their names, afraid to sow confusion in the soul of a teenager. If the play provokes reflection, it means that we talked with the son or daughter seriously, without embellishment, from the stage. We need art to educate genuine patriots, people who are enterprising, energetic, able to do great things for the good of the people.
Those who acknowledge the benefit of discussions of only modern plays reflecting our reality are mistaken. Are the sharply saturated works of AN Ostrovsky, ruthlessly beating the old, terrible orders, do not need conversations between the elders and the younger ones? Or historical plays?
In the same Moscow Theater for Young Spectators, teenagers watched M. Shatrov's play "The Sixth of July".Back home, Dimka long asked his father, why on the program was written - a documentary drama, not a historical play? Both of them tell, probably, about history? Why is "The Sixth of July" not considered historical?
Father spared no time-he explained to the teenager that Shatrov had written the play, not departing from the original documents in a letter, that the genre of documentary is extremely precise and even slightly dry. The boy, however, did not notice this dryness. It is no accident, sharing later impressions with his parents, tried literally right there, in the room, to reproduce the actors' play. There, on the stage, heroes acted, about which Dimka wanted to learn as much as possible, historical events really excited him, "at the will of the author and the director the action unfolded swiftly and breathtakingly."
The bright light of the projectors lit up the blue velvet that covered the scene. Shostakovich opened the monumental Kremlin gates with two towers on each side - and a group of people appeared in the doorway, Bolsheviks who came to the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets moved to the edge of the stage: Lenin, Sverdlov, Dzerzhinsky, Socialist Revolutionaries, all historical figures
Slightly incoherent, but basically clearly depicted all the events that evening, Dimka, and because he was heard, explained why the Socialist-Revolutionaries all revolted, the boy felt a little older, wiser., today he suddenly looked in that historic year, personally watched the events of July 6.
The history of the country, books devoted to it, plays always excite young people. The performance based on M. Bulgakov's play The Days of the Turbins attracts teenagers like a magnet. Especially those who, not content with primitive militants, want to understand how the revolution was going on, a civil war was taking place.
"The people are not with us. The people are against us, "Colonel Alexei Turbin coins
, dismissing his regiment and sending the cadets to their homes. The political situation is very clear to him: "There are two forces in Russia: the Bolsheviks and we. We'll meet again: or we'll bury them, or rather they'll take us. "Bulgakov traces the fate of the heroes at one of the critical moments of history. The mass scene in the gymnasium, and the Turbins' disputes in their apartment, and the entry of the reds into Kiev are vividly written out. In the end, the words of Nikolai, the younger brother of the deceased Alexei Turbin, sound prophetic: "Gentlemen, this is a great prologue to a new historical play."
With the help of Bulgakov's master pen in the imagination of adolescents for a long time all the events of that terrible, turbulent time are imprinted. From a homogeneous mass of whiteguards, the guys are already beginning to identify those who managed to figure out which side is right and join the ranks of its defenders.
The repertoire of theaters is diverse. It acquaints viewers with the life of other peoples, other eras, and our contemporaries. In each play you can find pictures, scenes containing wonderful material for patriotic education of children.
We have already casually touched on with what a vivid interest the children perceive historical episodes unfolding on the stages of theaters. That's why I want to advise closer, more often to introduce my son or daughter to the history of our Motherland, to reading historical books, going to museums, and excursions to my native land. We will talk more about this in a special section. And now let us recall the well-known words of NK Krupskaya. Art, said Nadezhda Konstantinovna, allows you to "more deeply understand your thoughts and feelings, to think more clearly and feel deeper. ..".