Provincial "Gorky Theater": Institutional and Aesthetic
The article suggests that the concept of «Gorky theater» should be considered as a kind of historical and cultural metaphor, the meaning of which is significantly correlated with the adjective «provincial». Institutional in the concept of the provincial «Gorky theater» is defined by the social and cultural tradition of the totalitarian state, in which for most of the twentieth century Gorky's name was given to many theaters, and for many of them the author was not a source of creative inspiration, but a formally significant «patron». Aesthetic in relation to the concepts of «Gorky theater» and its provincial discourse has several features. The first feature of «Gorky theater» is that the theatricality is in principle inherent in the Russian self-consciousness. Under the theatricality can be understood ecstatic, didacticism, metaphorical judgments, metaphorization rather abstract concepts (N. Berdyaev, V. Soloviev, V. Rozanov, writers of classics). The second feature of the Gorky theatre is Gorky's constant and varied interest in the theatre, which is not to a small extent evidenced by his theatrical feuilletons, which continued the tradition of theatrical journalism (A. Grigoriev, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A. Chekhov). The third feature of the Gorky theater, which was not noticed by contemporaries and people of later times, is the special genre preferences of Gorky, genre mixes, which was a natural feature of the world avant-garde. The aesthetic specificity of the works intended for theatrical realization is associated with the «low», though beloved by the audience, genre of melodrama, perceived as a manifestation of provincial. Signs of this genre are found in many plays («the Commoners», «at the Bottom», «the Last», «Barbarians»), paying special attention to the purely provincial set of characters and the construction of the plot «Fake coin». It is concluded that the theatricality of Gorky-provincial - is an artistically original and consistent expression of his specific anthropology.