The Nature of stage Transformation as a Problem (L.S. Vygotsky's virtual dialogue with a modern theater psychologist)

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

The specifics of the actor's game are usually seen in reincarnation. "The acting actor," P.V. Simonov and P.V. Ershov write, "performs actions whose purpose includes the goals of the person he portrays on stage, but is not identical to them. This is the peculiarity of acting. Remaining himself, the actor must become different. Not to turn into another, but to reincarnate. Reincarnation is the deepest essence of acting…Different theories correspond to different practices. According to some, an actor should never forget that he is playing a role, that he is not the person who portrays, that he must constantly and firmly adhere to this or that attitude to this person, and the viewer should always see it. Such a theory is opposed by the opposite beliefs: an actor must fully and sincerely believe that he is a person; an actor must get into his skin, assimilate everything that is peculiar to him, and live his life completely and holistically ? this tradition comes from Gogol, Shchepkin and Stanislavsky. These are extreme views. They are formulated in different ways and more or less categorically. The struggle between the supporters of extremes has not stopped throughout almost the entire history of the theater… Reincarnation is specific, inherent in the art of acting (and only to him!) instrument…Not so long ago, maximum reincarnation was revered by many as almost the sole purpose and purpose of acting. Now it is more often completely rejected. And the task is to use it skillfully and creatively every time." ^[15]             So is reincarnation a means of acting or its essence? A lot has been written about the nature of the incarnation: by philosophers, art historians, and psychologists. But the scientific nature of the explanation is claimed mainly by psychologists. They also formulate the tasks of studying reincarnation. For example, N.V. Rozhdestvenskaya, whom we will make a participant in a virtual dialogue, asks: "What changes in the personality of the actor himself in the process of stage transformation? What are the reasons for personal adjustments during rehearsals? Why are some people able to change internally in the new proposed circumstances, even if they exist only in their imagination, while others do not? To what extent do these changes in the psychology of the actor himself contribute to the birth of a new personality, one in which the viewer believes, which he mentally follows? And not only empathizes and complements the life of King Lear, Uncle Vanya or Alexei Turbin in the imagination, but also evaluates, condemns, laughs, despises: after all, in the theater they not only empathize, but also reflect, and the actor organizes this work of spectator perception" ^{[13, p. 165]}.  

Rozhdestvenskaya explains reincarnation, relying, on the one hand, empirically, as well as in terms of phenomenology, on Stanislavsky's concept, on the other ? on the classical psychological concepts of motivation, attitude, imagination, experience, personality. At the same time, reincarnation as an ideal object of psychological theory is interpreted by it as a process of "switching". In this process , Rozhdestvenskaya distinguishes: a) acceptance and emotional assimilation of motives that are dictated by the stage role, b) formation of an attitude to an imaginary situation that allows the artist to act and live in "given circumstances", c) restructuring and functioning of the personality already during the performance in these given circumstances. It is important that this restructuring of the personality, in turn, changes the mental processes of perception, sensations, experiences.

"Among the many motives that determine human behavior," Rozhdestvenskaya writes, "we can single out those that are associated with deep life needs, and those that are caused by a change in some specific situation. As a rule, directing offers the performer exactly such “tactical” motives, based on the strategic motives (super-tasks) of the role. And in order to act expediently and consistently on stage, the actor must make the motives of his hero his own motives.             Only having emotionally experienced them, the performer acts “on his own behalf”, starts from his own motivating reasons, changing the direction of the action, i.e. his goals, after the motives. And this happens when an actor easily switches from one goal to another and from one motive to another. The condition for such a switch is the ability to enter into the proposed circumstances of the role, to live in them and, identifying himself in imagination with his hero, emotionally experience the motivating reasons for his actions. This is greatly facilitated by the analysis of the situations of the play, which the actor produces together with the director during the rehearsal period. A special place in the assimilation of character motives is occupied by the processes of identification and projection. The actor not only gives the character his own motives, but also assumes some of the motives of the role. The actor's emotional attitude to the motives of the actor helps him to find personal motivations for acting in the same direction with his character. It is they who make possible the first step on the path to reincarnation - the emergence of a common motive of the actor and his hero. No less important are the ways to achieve the goal. It is important for the viewer to understand not only what the character wants, but also how he achieves it. This “how” is determined by the preconfiguration of perception and reaction, the holistic state of readiness for action, that is, the “installation”.             Setting on an imaginary situation... Stage action differs from life action in that it is formed when there is an attitude not to a real, but to an imaginary situation. After all, both space and time are conditional in the theater, and people are not at all who they pretend to be. Knowing about the unreality of this world, the actor also knows that an imaginary situation will not satisfy his real need…Long-term experimental studies of the installation action of imagination, conducted by R.G. Natadze, confirmed the close connection between the ability to stage transformation and the ability to develop an installation based on imagination ... the willingness to act in the proposed circumstances arises when an actor vividly presents an imaginary situation. The more detailed the situation is reproduced, the more significant the information available for creative processing, the closer the fictional situation is to the life situation and the easier it is to develop an attitude towards it…If a variety of relationships arise on the basis of evaluative relationships on behalf of the role at the performance, a genuine stage experience is born. Fears, love, enmity, rivalry ? all the variety of feelings of the character arises, obviously, on the basis of the evaluative relations of the actor himself ? a person enriched by individual experience, having certain value orientations and moral criteria…

A change of attitude based on an imaginary situation causes corresponding changes not only in the relationship of the individual to the reality surrounding her in the play. There is a special mental state of the actor in the role, and, accordingly, the parameters of all his mental processes change. For example, in the role of a blind person, the quality of sensations, the nature of perception, thinking, gait, etc. may change. Khlestakov-the character thinks, evaluates, moves, speaks differently than the actor himself ? the performer of this role.. Let's summarize the results. Starting from his own psychological nature, the actor in the process of a logically constructed, expedient, organic stage action changes some essential characteristics of his own personality… On the basis of all these changes, a living person appears on the stage, flesh of the actor's flesh, but generated by his creative nature.             As K.S. Stanislavsky wrote, “when they invade the soul and body of the artist, some elements of the role and its future performer find a common kinship, mutual sympathy, similarity and closeness by analogy or by contiguity. The 'elements' of the artist and the actor portrayed by him partially or completely converge with each other, gradually degenerate into each other and in their new quality cease to be just lines of the artist himself or his role, but turn into lines of aspirations of the artist-role" <...>

In the psyche, there is no fundamental difference between the models of oneself and the many models of other people that are formed as they become known. All of them are implemented on the same mechanisms that localize the corresponding life experience (one's own or manifestations of someone else's experience) in certain areas of the brain (Note that this localization is not topological, but spatially dispersed.). During hypnosis, the focus of attention of the Ego of any person can be transferred to one of these models and the person becomes a different person as much as he knows her well. He can become a "talented" artist, etc. A good actor is able to translate his Self into one of the models existing in him." ^[13].

In support of the psychological explanation of reincarnation proposed by Rozhdestvenskaya and, from our point of view, quite acceptable, I will also give a good explanation of this phenomenon important for the theater, but already by the art critic (musicologist) I.I. Silanyeva. In her dissertation, the phenomenon of reincarnation is explained within the framework of the new humanitarian discipline of "virtualism" as a special virtual reality (the author also contributed to the formation of this discipline ^{[4; 10, pp. 7-17]}), but also using the concepts of traditional philosophical and psychological concepts of consciousness, imagination, memory and personality. And here immersion in virtual reality changes psychological processes, but already associated with vocal behavior, which has been interpreted as "musical intonation" since the time of Boris Asafyev.

"The approach to the problem of reincarnation from the point of view of virtualism," writes Silantieva, "allows, within the framework of the well?known Pushkin formula "The truth of passions, the plausibility of feelings in assumed circumstances", to establish a psychically homogeneous system "character in assumed circumstances" or "character virtual consciousness in the virtual space?time of the performance." The performer appears as a carrier of the virtual consciousness of the character, which affects the most exquisite “matter” ? vocal-dramatic intonation…

The ability to transform largely determines the factor of memory During the period of work on the role from conception to stage embodiment, memory is continuously and capaciously filled with various impressions, from the elements of which the personality of the character is built As a result of the continuous process of assigning character contents, the total Ego of the evolving personality of the performer is formed. Imagination in the context of the problem of reincarnation is considered primarily as a tool for creating virtual reality, it directs, concentrates and retains psychic energy in the sphere of character consciousness Detailed, intense and long-term imagination gives content and life itself to the character, because his stage existence is a continuous imagination by the performer of the mental and mental state of the character at every current moment, A gift of nature to the performer is the ability of procedural internal conduct, which is not inferior in brightness to the perception of the real world, as well as sensory imagination, the ghostly touch of which causes a physiological reaction in the singer, up to the influence on the texture of the voice…

The second phase of the process is a transitional period in the psyche, the formative forces begin to act, their purpose is to form a new system from the elements of basic consciousness and other passive structures, which is consciousness in its altered state, the consciousness of the character.  Reincarnation is associated with a change in the quality of consciousness…One of the most important abilities of the actor's consciousness is the combination of actualized secondary personalities ? character consciousnesses, which are carried out on stage as modes of being of the performer's personality" ^[14]. Unlike Silantieva, I consider reincarnation as the formation and functioning, not of virtual, but of "artistic reality", the explanation of which, as I show in my works, presupposes socio-cultural, semiotic and event interpretation ^[5].

In addition, to explain this phenomenon, it is necessary to involve the hypothesis of "modes of the psyche" ^[6]. I will briefly explain the ideas I have introduced about psychic and artistic realities. "Events of different realities (art, dreams, everyday life, science, etc.) are lived by an individual, and this is a condition of his behavior and activity. The events of reality are subject to certain logic and conventions that differ for different realities. For example, in art we allow one convention of events, in dreams another, in everyday life a third, in science a fourth. Realities are the internal conditions of a person's life and behavior, they are formed during the resolution of his problems, suggest switching attitudes of consciousness and methods during the transition from one reality to another.

An important role in the formation of realities is played by "semiotic schemes" (graphic or narrative), as well as the self-organization of the psyche, which ensures the switching of realities and the change of the conditionality of events. It is the schemes that provide a solution to the problems that a person is aware of, they set a new vision and allow for a new way of acting.

For example, the well-known scheme of the Moscow metro allowed designers to organize flows of visitors, and for passengers to navigate in the subway (choose routes, change from one to another, get out of the car at the right stations, and so on). As a result, the reality of the metro has been formed for the Muscovite, in which an individual lives certain events that serve as a condition for his effective behavior. This reality is different for a person from other realities, when going to the subway or leaving it, the individual's attitudes change, the events and behavior he lives change accordingly.

 Another important characteristic of realities is this: the pyramid of realities of an individual determines the organization of his sensuality (sensations and perceptions). For example, in a schizophrenic, a pyramid of realities deformed relative to the norms of sociality sets a sensuality different from an ordinary person: he sees and feels his deformed reality in the logic of events. “Sometimes," writes the Moscow psychotherapist G. Nazloyan, "patients are surprised by the shape of their ear, nose, eye pattern, lips, chin. This is the first way out of autistic captivity, the first look at oneself from the outside, the first attempt to compare oneself with other people without vicious mythologization and dysmorphophobic attitudes that distort the vision of the world in general and the world of human relations in particular. Sergey V., for whom the forehead was a "testing ground", the surface of the nose was a "launch pad", and the mouth was a "cave", eventually recalled this with an ironic smile, as well as the developed delusional system and inadequate actions associated with the fact that he was an Alien from the Future. Another patient, Vladimir U., who has yet to be treated, "sculpts" horses, cats and other animals out of his cheeks, and then "erases" them. What is hidden behind all this?”.

From the point of view of the theory of psychic realities, the patients' vision of their face is completely determined by the features of the deformed reality. Precisely because Sergey V. considers himself an alien from the future and, consequently, an astronaut, he perceives his nose as a "launch pad" and his forehead as a "space polygon"" ^{[11, pp. 88-89]}. 

 "The artistic reality of a work of art is the world of events that an artist (writer, composer) creates, expressing his attitude to the events of the ordinary world (sometimes depicting these events, sometimes elevating and idealizing, sometimes only having them in mind, because, as a rule, he solves his problems in this way, and they are very different). The viewer (reader, listener) enters these events, for this he must correctly "read" and understand the work of art, enters in order to live them and solve his problems already. At the same time, both the artist and the viewer should get aesthetic pleasure (this is a condition of artistic communication) both from artistic communication and solving their problems. Pleasure, the poles of which are just pleasant entertainment or, on the contrary, catharsis and ecstatic experience. Since the problems and life worlds of the artist and the viewer do not coincide (coincidences happen, but not so often), in general, the artistic realities that they create do not coincide either.  

I tried to show that an important role in the process of creating artistic reality is played by the problems of the artist and the viewer, as well as schemes and other semiotic constructions that are created to solve these problems. Another necessary condition for the construction of artistic reality events is the creation of a new objectivity based on schemes, artistic techniques and expressive means (the concepts of "genre", "composition", "theme", "drama", "melody", "harmony", "content", "image", etc., which differ significantly for different types of art)" ^[12].

From the point of view of these concepts, reincarnation can be understood as follows. First, it is necessary to distinguish between the formation of this ability of an individual and its action when it is already formed. Formation is the development of schemes and other semiotic means (concepts, symbols, narratives, etc.) that characterize the features of theater, stage art, interpretation and comprehension of his works and many other knowledge and ideas, ideally forming the culture of the artist. At the same time, a pyramid of realities of his personality as an artist is formed (let's call it "scenic"), including as a necessary condition sensuality that supports this pyramid of realities. The stage pyramid of realities exists along with the usual (so to speak, "everyday"), formed by the artist in the course of his life. The peculiarity of the stage pyramid of realities consists in particular in the fact that, while learning the role, the artist corrects the stage pyramid of realities on the basis of appropriate schemes and other semiotic representations that are directly or indirectly related to the upcoming performance. The stage reality also includes the ability to actualize the adjusted pyramid of realities, resulting in the process of "living the events of the artistic reality of the performance." Such living is not only conditional and virtual, but also quite real and sensual ? just another form of life, artistic, in art. Having played his role in the play, the artist returns to ordinary life, conditioned by the action of the everyday pyramid of his reality.   

The author understands perfectly well that the interpretation of reincarnation proposed here is no better than the other two presented above, it is carried out in a different approach, with the help of other concepts developed by the author during his creative evolution. Such a discrepancy and different explanations of the same phenomena are now a completely normal phenomenon in the humanities, which, as L.S. Vygotsky believed in the early twenties of the last century, does not require criticism and overcoming. Moreover, an attentive reader may notice the complementarity in the explanation of reincarnation in the three concepts considered. However, we will now give a voice to Vygotsky himself, who sharply objected to the analysis of scenic phenomena in a logic that does not take into account their historical development and social nature.

"If before," Vygotsky writes in the article "On the psychology of the actor's creativity," the testimony of this or that actor, of this or that epoch has always been considered from the point of view of the eternal unchangeable nature of the theater, now researchers approach this fact primarily as a historical fact that is being committed and that must be understood first of all, in all the complexity of its historical conditionality…

Not the eternal and unchangeable laws of the nature of acting experiences on stage, but the historical laws of various forms and systems of theatrical play become in this case a guiding indication for the researcher. Therefore, the refutation of the Diderot paradox, which we find in many psychologists, is still affected by an attempt to solve the issue in an absolute plane, regardless of the historical concrete form of the theater whose psychology we are considering. Meanwhile, the basic premise of any historically oriented research in this area is the idea that the psychology of an actor expresses the social ideology of his era and that it has changed in the process of human historical development as well as the external forms of the theater, its style and content have changed. The psychology of the actor of the Stanislavsky Theater differs much more from the psychology of the actor of the Sophocles era than a modern building differs from an ancient amphitheater…

the laws of refraction and interweaving of the feelings of the role with the feelings of the actor should be resolved first of all in terms of historical, not naturalistic (biological) psychology…

It is necessary to identify the function of stage play in a given era for a given class, the main trends on which the actor's impact on the viewer depends, and, consequently, to determine the social nature of the theatrical form in which these stage experiences receive a concrete explanation.…

The actor's experiences, according to a happy German expression, are not so much a feeling of "I" as a feeling of "we". The actor creates impersonal feelings, feelings or emotions on the stage, which become the emotions of the entire theater hall. Before they became the subject of an actor's embodiment, they received a literary design, they were carried in the air, in the public consciousness" ^{[2, pp. 321, 323, 324]}.

  Unfortunately, having formulated these rather correct provisions, as well as a more general cultural-historical theory in psychology, Vygotsky was unable to concretize and expand this theory and demonstrate analyses in the spirit of the declared cultural-historical approach ^{[7, pp. 44-54, 97-124; 8]}. It cannot be said that psychologists do not know this theory, on the contrary, they speak about it out of place and out of place, however, as I show, they continue to analyze the psyche not as a historical and cultural phenomenon, but as a universal and natural one, obeying eternal laws ^[8]. So in the study of Christmas reincarnation is set as a process not conditioned by history and culture. Silantieva and your humble servant acted similarly.

But if Vygotsky is right in his methodological guidelines, then how should we study and characterize the phenomenon of reincarnation? The first thing, in my opinion, then it is worth discussing is the question of whether the stage embodiment is universal, characteristic of any theater, both modern and, for example, ancient? Secondly, if we answer this question in the negative, when did the reincarnation take place, in what historical epoch, in what theater? The third question is, what was reincarnation, when did it appear and did it undergo a change in the course of historical development?      

If theaters n. Ostrovsky or Stanislavsky are not conceivable without the reincarnation of actors, then the ancient theater, where the artist played in a mask and all the roles and plots were canonized, is thought of rather as not requiring the reincarnation of actors. Perhaps the director's theater does not require reincarnation either, in any case, a certain direction. Take, for example, the Rimas Tuminas Theater. Here in the production of "Eugene Onegin" there is such an episode ? Tatiana communicates with her nanny, revealing that she is in love with Onegin. "Oh, nanny, nanny, I'm longing, / I'm sick, my dear: / I'm ready to cry, I'm ready to cry!.." / ? My child, you're not well; / Lord have mercy and save!

/ What do you want, ask... / Let me sprinkle with holy water, / You're all on fire... ? "I'm not sick: / I... you know, nanny... in love." / ? My child, the Lord is with you! / ? And the nurse, with a supplication, baptized the girl with an old hand.

   "Only the text remains of Pushkin. Everything else is from Tuminas: the bed on which Tatiana rushes and performs acrobatic steps, her own bed (bench), Tatiana lifts and drags along the stage; Tanya's enthusiastic emotional state ? in short, a magnificent theatrical action brilliantly performed by actresses Olga Lerman and Evgenia Kregzhde.

   Here you can no longer say that the reliance is on the reader's imagination alone: you see, you worry, you get infected emotionally, and the text is just the background, besides, many viewers remember it by heart, that is, they no longer worry" ^{[9, pp. 55-57]}.

In this episode, Tuminas, partly thinking like a postmodernist, solves two main tasks: deconstructs (in the logic of irony) Tatiana's provincial infatuation and translates this infatuation into the plane of modernity, where it appears as a real passion. He hardly needs the reincarnation of actors, it is important that they catch his idea and accurately play it, that is, how modern women remembered themselves in the period of falling in love (passion) and portrayed skepticism about Tatiana's infatuation. If there is a reincarnation here, it is completely different from the one that Stanislavsky had in mind when he said, "I believe" or "I don't believe". It would be another matter if we were talking about the theater N. Ostrovsky, then yes, the director would strive for the actors to truthfully reproduce Tatiana's experiences, and then it was impossible to do without the reincarnation of Alya Stanislavsky.

Three more episodes of Tuminas' performance belong to the same reality that does not require reincarnation. The first "decision to introduce two Onegins and two Lena.

"On stage," writes theater critic Alexander Minkin, "there are two Onegins: young and old. The young man hardly speaks. The old one talks a lot. Old Onegin has become wiser (everyone is strong in hindsight), softened (the steep slides rolled away) and remembers his outrages (they once seemed to him witty amusements): “How wrong I was! How punished!” His serpent of memories, his remorse is gnawing…

To old Onegin, these thoughts of the 23-year-old Pushkin are just right.

Old Onegin (artist Makovetsky) and young (Dobronravov)

And Lensky has aged. Smiling, he looks at himself young (there are also two Lenskys) and remembers himself sympathetically, but also with irony:

A fan of Kant and a poet!

Yes, he died young; Onegin killed him, so it happened. But, I'm sorry, the soul is immortal, and what prevents it from going on stage in the XXI century and remembering youth (think about it ? only 200 years have passed)" ^{[9, p. 51]}.

The second solution is the scene with the bunny when Tatiana moves to Moscow: at first the hunter aims at him and wants to kill him, but then after a strange dance performed by the bunny, which ends with a kiss (the bunny kisses the hunter, who forgets about the gun and stands like a drunk), the bunny quietly disappears. One of their viewers writes the following. "The character "bunny" ? I don't remember this from Pushkin at all, I need to reread it. An aunt runs out on stage, in white tights, in a white tutu, in a large white cap with long bunny ears (do you remember how we dressed up three-year-old children in kindergarten?). So, here such an overgrown hare ran onto the stage with some secret mission.

Everyone was laughing. My son is also lucky here.

And I didn't understand at all ? what kind of hare and why the fuck is he needed here..." ^[49].

The third solution is a wanderer, resembling a medieval wandering artist; she often accompanies the heroes of the production. 

Onegin (Guskov), the wanderer with domra (Ekaterina Kramzina),

photo by Valery Myasnikov

After thinking about it, I reconstructed all three solutions of Tuminas. "Why, for example, two Onegins? And the fact is that Onegin at the end of Pushkin's poem has changed so much that, from the point of view of theatrical action, he is a different person. Of course, if Tuminas, like Pushkin, believed that a person develops and therefore changes, then he would have to think about how to express the "development" of the hero on stage. He went the other way: he depicted only the beginning and the end, besides, this decision gave a lot in visual terms, as well as images of character. True, it is unlikely that a person's character can change so much, but if Onegin is only the material for Tuminas' creativity, and not a real person, then why not? However, there were no special reasons for the split of Lensky.

The plot with the bunny is placed by Tuminas in the event of Tatiana moving from the village to Moscow. The move divides the events of the poem into two parts (stories): in the first, Onegin rejects Tatiana's love, the second ends with Tatiana rejecting courtship  Onegin. But then a natural interpretation suggests itself: the plot with the bunny is a caricature of the development of Onegin's relationship with Tatiana (the hunter is young Onegin at first, and old at the end). Why is it caricatured, why is Tatiana tossing on the bed and dragging her around the stage, why is the village hospitality at Tatiana's name day mocked, so Onegin is forced against his will to drink one cup of milk (cranberry water?) the other one? Probably because Tuminas is a postmodernist (hence irony, deconstruction, humor, detection of simulacra).

But the plot with the bunny makes it possible to understand a very important thing: this narrative is "reflexive" (the analysis of "Eugene Onegin" suggests), but Tuminas inserts it into artistic reality as one of the events. How to understand, in the unfolding relationship between Onegin and Tatiana, which has not yet been completed (completion is still ahead, at the end of the poem), a reflexive description of these relations, as already completed, is inserted. The whole is inside its part! But isn't it so often that a piece of music is built: some motive, melody or theme is just being outlined, they begin to be developed, but suddenly they are interrupted by a fragment in which the whole is viewed, up to the code.  

And the story with the wanderer is reflexive. To understand its meaning, let us recall that in "Eugene  Onegine" Pushkin is the most important narrator, and he addresses his reader. But in poetry, as we have said, this author-narrator relationship is not visually represented, it is implied, read by an enlightened reader. You can't do that on stage: go guess what old Onegin says not just like that, into space, but to someone, and to whom, I ask? So Tuminas introduces the wanderer into artistic reality. She not only closes the characters' monologues on herself, but also makes the viewer think "who is this", whether he is himself, "what is this", perhaps an indication of the nature of communication" ^{[9, pp. 57-59]}.

So, in order to play the three episodes considered, no reincarnation is required from the artist. For example, old Onegin, in fact, expounds Pushkin's thoughts; in whom, one asks, should an artist transform into Pushkin or Onegin? Who should the artist who plays the bunny transform into ? Tatiana, the fantastic hare or the vicissitudes of the fate of the heroes? Who should the artist playing the wanderer transform into? In short, in the director's theater of Tuminas, most of the roles probably do not require reincarnation.

When did the need for the reincarnation of an actor historically arise? I think she has not yet been in the theater of Racine and classicism, where there was a canon of acting that could not be violated. In the theater of that time, divine persons or noble heroes were depicted, whose characteristics and actions were introduced into a rigid framework and limited by rules. And in the theater of Enlightenment, where the interpretation of man as a natural being obeying eternal social laws was cultivated, there was still no need for reincarnation. The artist had to imitate the nature of the individual, which resulted in an external imitation.

"For example," Vygotsky notes, "the paradox about the actor Diderot is that an actor who portrays strong emotional passions and excitement on stage and brings the audience to the highest emotional shock, himself remains alien to the shadow of this passion, which he portrays and which shocks the viewer. Diderot's absolute statement of the question sounds like this: should an actor experience what he portrays, or is his performance the highest "ape", imitation of an ideal model? The question of the actor's internal state during the stage play is the central node of the whole problem. Should or shouldn't an actor experience roles? This issue has been seriously debated, and in the very formulation of the question it was assumed that it allows for a single solution…

In the beautiful words of Diderot, "before saying: "You are crying, Zaire" or "You will stay there, my daughter,” the actor listens to himself for a long time, listens even at the moment when he shocks you, and his whole talent is not to feel as you think, but to convey the external signs of feeling in the most subtle way and thereby deceive you. The cries of his grief are clearly marked in his hearing, the gestures of his despair are imprinted in his memory and were previously learned in front of a mirror. He knows with perfect accuracy at what moment to take out the handkerchief and when his tears will flow. Wait for them at a certain word, on a certain syllable, not earlier and not later. This trembling voice, these broken words, these strangled or prolonged sounds, shuddering body, buckling knees, fainting, violent outbursts — all this is pure imitation, a pre-approved lesson, a pathetic grimace, a magnificent "ape"" (D. Diderot, 1936, pp. 576 – 577). All the passions of the actor and their expression, as Diderot says, are an integral part of the system of recitation, they are subject to a certain law of unity, they are selected in a certain way and harmoniously placed" ^{[2, pp. 321-322]}.

Elements (rudiments) of reincarnation were required in the theater of Shakespeare and Moliere, but only elements, because the Aristotelian demand for imitation of life was understood very historically, in the logic of the ending medieval life, although in many ways the life of the third estate. In addition, Shakespeare and Moliere are talking about conformity to nature, and not specifically the inner life of a person. For example, Hamlet gives artists this instruction:

"... align action with speech, speech with action, and especially observe, so as not to overstep the simplicity of nature; for everything that is so exaggerated is contrary to the purpose of acting, whose purpose both before and now was and is to hold a mirror before nature..." (translated by M. Lozinsky).

The inner life of the artist and the heroes of stage works began to be discussed and compared only from the end of the XVIII and mainly in the XIX century, when psychology began to form first within the framework of philosophy, then as an independent scientific discipline. The projection of her knowledge on stage creativity led to the selection of the process, which is called "reincarnation". One of the conditions for the construction of this ideal object was the idea of the unity of the individual, which perhaps comes from the Kantian concept of "transcendental subject". "Everything diverse in contemplation," writes Kant, "has ... the necessary relation to [representation] I think in the very subject in which this diversity is located... only by virtue of the fact that I can comprehend a variety of representations in one consciousness, I call all of them my representations" ^{[3, pp. 191-192, 193]}. As single and identical subjects, the artist and the hero he played could be compared with each other for similarities and differences. In addition, psychological knowledge made it possible to discuss the question of the structure of the personality and actions of both subjects.

We have a different situation in the next century: due to the multiple and often indefinite identity, the subject and the personality cease to be perceived as single self-identical formations, which probably causes a decline in the interest of directors in the process of stage transformation. Seyla Benhabib sees behind this a deeper process of changing attitudes. "To be and become oneself means to include oneself in the discussion networks... Multiculturalism," Benhabib writes, "too often gets bogged down in fruitless attempts to single out one narrative as the most essential... The multiculturalist resists the perception of cultures as internally split and disputed. This is also transferred to his vision of personalities, who are then viewed as equally unified and harmonious beings with a special cultural center. On the contrary, I consider individuality to be a unique and fragile achievement of personality, obtained as a result of the interweaving of conflicting narratives and attachments in a unique life story… The interpretation of cultures as hermetically sealed, subordinated to their own internal logic of givens is untenable... Cultural assessments can pass from generation to generation only as a result of creative and lively participation and their newly acquired significance" ^{[1, pp. 17, 19, 43, 122]} (emphasis ours. ? V.R.)               

But since nothing disappears in culture and the old traditions are reproduced to a certain extent, the concept of reincarnation and acting, which does not require this concept, coexist in theatrical art. This is how the author sees an example of the implementation of Vygotsky's approach to the analysis of stage art declared in the last century. The three concepts of reincarnation discussed above, in his opinion, characterize primarily the psychological, traditional theater of the XIX and XX centuries.