Boris Blank’s Scenography in Vladimir Magar’s Productions

Abstract

The subject of the research is the poetics of the productions by director Vladimir Magar, created in cooperation with designer Boris Blank and staged at the A.V. Lunacharsky Sevastopol Academic Russian Drama Theater in the 2000s. The article analyzes the main features of creative style of the director and the designer, as well as the birth process of the director’s plot. There are discussed the main aspects of organization of the performances’ space and the opportunities of its transformation. Special attention is paid to the concept of unified playing environment. The role of details in scenographic design is examined in the paper.

The article is based on using of the comparative-historical method, personal audience experience of the author, analysis of literary sources. The creative collaboration of Vladimir Magar and Boris Blank in Sevastopol is comprehensively studied for the first time. The study of their creative methodology can become indicative for identifying the patterns specific to regional theatrical life and may restore some pages of the history of Russian theatre, which have been out of the scope of research so far. During 14 years, symbolic and gaming productions, with elaborate theatrical nature, were the result of the artistic collaboration of the director and the designer with a similar attitude. Those productions brought the theatre to a certain professional height.