Chinese Studios in the Russian Theater University. Ethnopsychological Approach in Teaching Stage Speech

Veledinsky Oleg Valerievich ORCID: 0000-0003-0131-4346 Master of Theater Arts, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Stage Speech, Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (St. Petersburg) 140251, Russia, Leningradskaya oblast', g. Saint Petersburg, ul. Mokhovaya, 34-35 o_veled.@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction.

Since 2015, an innovative international theater and educational project "Interactive Chinese-Russian education" has been implemented in Russia.  The Central Academy of Drama (TSAD, Beijing) and the St. Petersburg State Academy of Theater Arts (now the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts - RGISI) signed an Agreement on cooperation on bilateral interuniversity exchanges in 2014.  Within the framework of this agreement, two courses were recruited sequentially in 2015 and 2017, who mastered a four-year training program: two years in St. Petersburg and two in Beijing [1. pp. 57-66]. Thus, acting creative workshops, and in fact, foreign national studios, homogeneous monolingual groups, appeared within the framework of the RGISI. in which students from China studied. The experience of these studios in the aspect of speech training will be summarized in this article.

The offer to teach stage speech in a Chinese course was unexpected for me, but at first it did not cause objections or wariness.  I believed that the basic approach to mastering the primary skills of stage speech is the same in working with students of any nationality (and now I think the same!). It is based on the physiology and mechanisms of word generation common to all people. I had at my disposal the techniques, methods of work and classes taken from the rich methodological arsenal of the Department of Stage Speech of the RGISI ^[2]. I first thought about the importance of ethnopsychological, mental and national-cultural factors inherent in this contingent of students when compiling a working curriculum.

Russian Russian Theater School's system or model of speech education of Chinese students as a kind of social innovation, a sequential step-by-step movement from one speech educational cycle to another, carried out using two languages (Russian and Chinese) in Russia, and then in China, was discussed in general terms earlier ^[3].  But there were other, equally important issues.

Chinese students in Russia. As soon as this topic is touched upon, regardless of what and where these students study, a similar or similar subject of discussion immediately arises ^{[4, 5]}. The fact that the Chinese ethnic group has a specific mentality and psychological characteristics is a common place in every publication about interethnic interaction with the Chinese in any professional field. The need for an ethnopsychological approach is declared, discovered, and justified by almost every article or book about the studies of Chinese students in Russia ^{[6, 7]}. Probably, the training of Chinese actors in the Russian theater school will not be an exception: in this case, it is also necessary to take into account the psychological characteristics, mentality and national-cultural specifics of the Chinese ethnic group.

Here and further, these concepts are considered as follows.

Ethnopsychological features are aspects of personality that are expressed through the specifics of perception, thinking, motivation of behavior and activity, the originality of interpersonal and intergroup interaction.

Mentality is a mindset, a set of mental characteristics, value orientations and attitudes inherent in a social or ethnic group, nation, people.

         National-cultural specificity is something special that exists in each national culture, which distinguishes it from the cultures of other peoples ^[8].

Chinese civilization, the Chinese as an ethnic group have always been a subject of interest for travelers, missionaries, business people and the object of close attention of scientists.  Numerous memoirs and travel notes remained. Philosophy and sociology, ethnography and ethnology, philology and art studies are not a complete list of sciences whose representatives have devoted their works to the study of China, its history, language, culture and the Chinese themselves. The literature on this subject is truly immense.  One of the latest monographs on the Chinese, published in the 3rd edition in the series "Scientific Book", contains, for example, 430 items in the list of sources in three languages: Russian, Chinese and English ^{[9, pp. 120-147]}.  Among this literature there are purely scientific publications and practical manuals ^{[10, 11]}. The French, the British, and the Germans see the Chinese in their own way and very differently ^[12].

The Chinese themselves are a separate and very extensive topic ^[13,14,15]. Chinese researchers are very strict, almost merciless in assessing themselves. It became obvious that this subject of discussion is very delicate: hasty and unreasonable conclusions and judgments can cause rejection, national resentment, rejection by the studied ethnos.

The book by N. A. Speshnev, Professor of St. Petersburg University, "The Chinese: Features of National Psychology"^[16] helped to understand a lot about China and the Chinese.

As an important feature of the spiritual appearance of the Chinese, the author notes the practical orientation, the phenomenon of the value of the concrete, because the concrete or visual is perceived by the Chinese best [16. p. 26]. Real action, tangible result, promotion, and the conquest of something new for the Chinese is the main thing. But our stage business is real, concrete. Perhaps this side, this mental feature, will definitely affect and should be taken into account in the teaching of stage speech in this studio.

Within the framework of our topic, the notes of the actress, director, theater teacher, associate professor of our institute E. K. Lepkovskaya (1901-1989) turned out to be very useful ^[17]. For almost two years she worked with Chinese artists, graduate students and students in Shanghai and Beijing in 1956-57. Evgenia Konstantinovna testifies: Chinese students and artists are very active, "clockwork", they are capable of excessive returns, long-term hard work at the limit of their strength, if they are passionate about a big and responsible business, I think the information is important and it needs to be tested by practice: after all, this is how significant creative successes of students are most often born.

And yet, familiarity with special literature does not give grounds to judge how Chinese students will manifest themselves in such a specific, special field as theater education. The answers to this question were still hypothetical, the future was only supposedly viewed "through a magic crystal". We had to realize that we were teaching people of a different civilization. Familiarity with the literature on Chinese studies gave some initial orientation, of course, observations of Chinese students studying Russian as a foreign language were useful ^[6,7,18]. But all this was of little use to the training of future actors in general and to the teaching of stage speech in particular. The ethnopsychological approach stated in the title of the article had to be worked out along the way.

This article is based on the ethno-cultural experience gained during the training of Chinese acting students. The results of observations and practices will be compared and verified by the materials of existing publications. This is an attempt to create a kind of generalized portrait of our students in the process of speech learning, based on the discovered features of their real behavior.

                                The main partMy work as a teacher of stage speech with Chinese courses began against the background of previous events and facts, which are preliminary, initial conditions, prerequisites of the whole process.

Let's talk about them briefly.

It is clear that the training of Chinese actors will be carried out on the basis of the Russian theatrical tradition and the teachings of K. S. Stanislavsky. Speech training is in Russian. This is the language of Russian theater science and theater education. But you can't do without the Chinese language. More on this later. By the way, students from China have already completed preliminary, "closed-circuit" Russian language training for several months at the Central Administrative Center in Beijing, some of them speak English to one degree or another.

With the first set of Chinese students, a survey was conducted on the motives for choosing a profession, country and place of study ^{[1, pp. 58-59]}. It turned out that only 6 people out of 25 (24%) had been to a professional theater before, and special theatrical and educational motives occupy a far from central place in their minds. The reasons are different: they attracted getting a diploma in Russia (it's prestigious!), gaining independence, leaving parental care. Yes, they are open to the method of teaching offered at the Russian theater school, but they do not at all represent the amount of work that awaits them, and the difficulties that will require overcoming the acquisition of an acting profession.

As for the presentation of an ethnopsychological approach to the teaching of stage speech to Chinese acting students, it can be implemented in two ways. Based on the information contained in the scientific literature, it is possible to form a generalized, averaged image of a Chinese student in his psychological, mental, national-cultural manifestations and try to find these features in his students. Such variants are quite possible ^{[19, 20]}. However, as already mentioned, an exceptional variety of points of view is fixed, our "generalized portrait" acquires new colors, the lines are doubled, split, some manifest, others fade into the shadows. Moreover, this almost does not take into account the shifts in the ethnic processes of modernizing China, and most importantly – the originality and uniqueness of the environment itself – a foreign acting studio in a Russian theater school. Therefore, in our case, a different way of presenting the topic is preferable.

Russian Russian course, if we were faced with the task of ensuring the successful study of one or two Chinese students in a Russian group, then any ethnic differences could be considered their personal psychological traits. The strategy of acting and speech training as a whole would remain general, and unusual ethnopsychological and mental manifestations of students would be taken into account to some extent within the framework of an individual approach. In this case, one can even try to distinguish from the general ethnopsychological list the distinctive features positively ("strengths") or negatively ("weaknesses") influencing or able to influence the studies of Chinese single students. It is possible to separately note the "neutral" indicators in relation to acting and speech training, manifestations of ethnicity, if any are found.

Another thing is a homogeneous, mono–ethnic group, a Chinese acting course. Here, the approach of dividing into strengths and weaknesses does not work. All of them in this group are carriers of the originality and specific features of their nation. They are what they are. This is a given that has no alternative. The task is not to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of students as representatives of their ethnic group, but to transform and improve our methods in relation to the unique characteristics of this particular contingent of students.  Developing the approach of T. M. Balykhina and Zhao Yujian, tested when teaching Chinese to Russian, we can say: not just techniques are needed here, but an ethnooriented learning model that will allow to properly build pedagogical communication, improve speech training, and improve its quality ^[6].

What can be said about the groups of Chinese students in the "2+2" project as a whole?  First of all, most of them have established parents who have the financial means to send their grown–up children to study abroad. These students have already achieved a lot, successfully graduated from high school (and this is very difficult!), passed the national competition among graduates, know their worth. Undisguised pride in national independence and the successes of modern China is felt to a high degree. You can hear the opinion: Beijing is the center of the world. But this is not ethnocentrism as a set of attitudes about the superiority of Chinese culture over others. In recent years and even decades, a new trend has emerged and is quite noticeable: to enrich yourself, your culture, opening up to the world and discovering it for yourself. This is the result of the policy of openness towards the external environment carried out by the Chinese leadership.

The first meeting with new students is unforgettable. I enter the classroom for group classes and hear loud foreign speech, I see: bags, street shoes, piles of outerwear on the floor, in the corners. It feels as if I am not in my native university since my student years, but somewhere far away, in a foreign country, that I am invading the territory occupied and appropriated by the new owners. And immediately there is a dilemma: to take the situation for granted or to do as we do – there are only objects and things necessary for work in the audience. I decide that (as with Russian students) it is appropriate to indicate the rules of conduct here, I ask you to put the audience in order. And only then I say hello, introduce myself, greet and congratulate you on the beginning of a new life. I would like to note that greeting as a kind of ceremony turned out to be a very important part of our classes in the future. Chinese students are very attentive to the beginning, tone, and content of the first words of the lesson. Every time it is a kind of ritual, a sign, a trait, a signal of transition from everyday relationships, everyday well-being to the educational, creative process.

That's how our classes started. Almost everyone writing about Chinese students notes the presence and manifestation of the Confucian tradition – a respectful attitude towards the "teacher" almost as the head of the family, "father".  Outwardly, this is indeed the case.  But loyalty to the established order does not prevent, for example, complaining to the head of the course when the requirements seem excessive, something does not like it, Chinese students are no strangers to intrigue, demonstrate flexibility and the ability to adapt to the situation, which are characteristic of the entire Chinese ethnic group. There is often a struggle of characters, the desire to gain the upper hand by any means. The Chinese need to make sure that the exercises are undoubtedly practically effective, and positive results are achieved in their studies. The natural model is: take, use mine, doing your own. Learn "mine" and you will be "great". If they are actually convinced that this will happen, then they are respectful, ready to submit. Looking ahead, I will note: the feeling of a well-known confrontation, "elasticity", resisting the external influence of the body was produced by each "team" of our Chinese students and almost every training session.

Students react vividly to any moments in their studies related to the realities of Chinese life, the history and culture of China. This was clearly manifested when it became known that the initial exercises of phonation breathing and phonation training, with which we started stage speech classes, are of Oriental origin, based on the principles of breathing gymnastics of Indian yoga and complexes of breathing and motor exercises that have existed since ancient times in India, China, Japan ^[21]. 

It is appropriate to note here that at the beginning of speech training in Chinese studios, the author's methodology of Professor E. I. Chernaya was used, which was defended by her as a PhD thesis ^[22]. The technique is based on mastering the technique of phonation breathing as the most important initial stage of educating the voice and speech of a future actor based on exercises of the East. Further training focuses on the interaction and mutual influence of rhythmic breathing and attention. I had a chance to study and master this technique under the guidance of the author, working as her assistant from 2010 to the present.

We try installation, preparatory exercises, work on the mobility of the abdominal muscles, master the problem of explosive exhalation and reflex automatic inhalation. Students are active, willing to explore the possibilities of their body. It helps that the training exercises are simple and extremely specific. But it is very difficult to achieve exhalation with the indispensable active participation of the abdominal muscles and silent free nasal inhalation.  The problems became obvious:  the sequence of actions gets lost, the rhythm does not improve, the breath turns out noisy and tense. In the conditions of working through an interpreter, explanations and screenings at the group were not enough, more detailed personal setup was required with the inclusion of attention, imagination, games, and individual classes in the first semester were not provided.

In addition, there is a need for independent extracurricular work of each student.

The first difficulty was resolved, individual classes were introduced into the educational process. But with regard to independent work, everything turned out to be much more complicated. The problem continued to exist and remain acute throughout the first year of study. I will explain in more detail.

One of the obvious, universally recognized features of the Chinese people is diligence. Such a statement is found in almost all sources as a kind of commonplace. Having worked with Chinese students for several years, I can confirm that as a result, ultimately, this is indeed the case.  But only in the end, after a certain path has been passed. They are cautious (at first), even shy, but they have the ability to adapt quickly, adapt to the situation.  In everyday work, especially in the first year, there are tangible difficulties:  it is difficult for students to "turn on" when tasks, exercises require a lot of tension;  they are ready to be content with little in their studies; they like to live comfortably, without fuss, without haste ("It is not necessary to strain too much, we have already worked hard at school!"), they skillfully bypass obstacles, difficulties, if they cannot overcome them. "In order to succeed, a Chinese student considers it necessary to be <... > executive and at the same time resourceful" ^{[9, p. 116]}.

Their distinctive feature is the regulation of the performance of various types of actions, the tendency to evade excessive efforts. ("We have fulfilled the requirements, what are you dissatisfied with?"). It is significant that T. S. Balykhina and Zhao Yujiang, who worked a lot as Chinese students in Russia and China, note: "Unfortunately, the traditional Chinese diligence has not been preserved in its former form among young people" ^{[18, p. 21]}. It is no coincidence that modern Chinese students are called "the generation of rational hedonists" ^{[4, p. 262]}.

         When the scope and importance of independent work on stage speech became obvious, the group split up: some, based on the traditional idea of what is due, understood it as a duty, as a necessity that has no alternative and worked hard during extracurricular time, others began to look for an opportunity to evade. But they can also be influenced by creating a situation of possible "loss of face".

A good name, reputation, the concept of personal honor, the assessment of a person by a group are very important. It means to be worthy of your place in the group, not to be worse than others for a minute. "Face preservation" is often manifested in external signs: to maintain an image, "look", be handsome, show visible signs of success. Essentially, "looking good, successful" is more important than being truly skilled.

Personal public criticism in the presence of a group is a very strong and effective means, sometimes still necessary if others do not act: indirect influence through appreciation of the achievements of comrades, appeal to moral and ethical, Confucian norms (diligence in studies is everyone's duty to himself, to parents, to other people).  When the "face" is affected, it turns out that the Chinese are highly dependent on their emotions.

  At the same time, criticism does not work in private. One-on-one with a teacher – a thousand reasons and explanations, an argument, an attempt at manipulation ("Yes, I'm weak, this is my problem. It's hard for you with this, I really understand"...), and it's almost impossible to surpass the cunning man in a logical confrontation.  Students know this very well and often approach: "I want to talk to you, I want to clarify whether I understood correctly ...". An attempt to "take yourself out" from the general circle, to translate official, working relationships into interpersonal, friendly, to shorten the distance is a common phenomenon.

Chinese students are mostly closed people, restrained in the external identification of emotions, often wearing the usual "mask" on their face, focused on the assessment of others (bosses, bandmates, friends). As a kind of defensive reaction, the lower jaw is pressed against the upper one, the lips are compressed into an almost horizontal line, maintaining this position to a certain extent even during speech. The peculiarity of the articulation base of the Chinese language is that the lips are denser than in Russian, pressed against the teeth and somewhat tense ^{[23, p. 112]}. Here, exercises are needed to release the lower jaw, to ensure its free movement (up and down) in the speech flow. When relaxation of the lower jaw is achieved, the mouth is released at the moment of concentration and attention, the person forgets about the mask and the need to "hold the face", there is a "revival of the face", which is important for the natural freedom of speech of the actor, regardless of the language used.

At the initial stage of training, the education of nasal inhalation takes place step by step, the mentioned "problem of the lower jaw" is solved, the connection of inspiration and attention is realized and mastered, the regulation of phonation exhalation and the natural organics of the lips are studied.  I will say right away about the difficulty I had to face: breathing exercises were performed technically correctly, without connecting with attention, imagination and play. It was not immediately possible to "revive" them and encourage them to improvise. The shift occurred only at the moment when the students were offered a national game material close to them for training in motion. The exercise, which later became known as "Masters of Kung Fu", became a turning point in the translation of technical achievements of voice-speech training into an actor's existence, practically showing students the closest connection between external technology and the inner life of an actor ^{[3, p. 2773]}. 

Practice has shown that by setting Chinese students a learning task of increased difficulty, and by making high demands on the performance of tasks, significant results can be achieved. For example, you need to master the unusual articulation of individual sounds of the Russian language. Hard and soft consonants [l] and [r] are a well-known difficulty for Chinese students due to the discrepancy in the phonetic systems of interacting languages, the absence of a similar analogue in Chinese. The production of these sounds, the skill of pronouncing them in the flow of speech, the ability to perceive a sound sample by ear and adequately reproduce it requires a lot of independent work, monotonous training using a standard set of techniques used for dysfunction of the tip of the tongue. In this case, according to the fair remark of academician L. V. Shcherba, "... it is necessary to help the organs of speech to find those unusual movements for them that are necessary to achieve the right effect" ^{[27, p. 161]}.

The articulation of these sounds, the location and nature of the work of the speech organs necessary for sound formation are explained in the classroom, but many students still pronounce these consonants vaguely, much softer, weaker than they should. Correct pronunciation is ignored by some students for various reasons. And in each case, the problem is of a personal nature, which is why individual work with the teacher is important. If the "teacher" does not forget, does not get tired, does not accept, does not reduce the requirements, the result is achieved. And then [l] and [r] will sound quite clearly and distinctly, much more in line with the orthoepic norms generally accepted in the Russian language.

The collective principle inherent in theatrical art and theatrical education turned out to be in many ways close to the worldview of Chinese students. The Chinese are collectivists by definition – this is also a common place in many reviews of representatives of this nation. Historically, the consciousness of the Chinese is group-oriented. The Chinese individual, as a rule, is integrated into the group, subordinated to its norms, while the members of the group are bound by mutual aid and duty.  For example, in various informal groups (and in Chinese studios too), students can feel and call each other "brothers" and "sisters" in everyday communication. Sometimes there is even mutual complimentarity, which is unnecessary when discussing the results of speech training.

Chinese studios are characterized by high cohesion, especially visible in a situation of collective action, when joint efforts are needed to achieve the desired result. Collective interest was clearly manifested in all creative presentations on stage speech: public screenings, master classes, educational control events.  The result of stage speech training in a Chinese studio (reception 2017) was a speech performance "Eugene Onegin. Selected stanzas" based on the novel by A. S. Pushkin, almost completely solved as a training "collective story". It presented joint samples of three, four, five storytellers, and, in the end, the entire composition of the course. Thus, the final work was seen as a collective test, when all the participants are continuously – emotionally, meaningfully, plot – present on the site, alternately entering into the main action and remaining in it from beginning to end. (Here the concept of "trial" is used, borrowed from the terminological arsenal of L. A. Dodin, In this case, "trial" is a search and verification of meanings, experience or an estimate of the embodiment" ^{[25, p. 8]}). Gradually, being inside the "collective story", knowing the whole story, having already felt it as their own, students began to live as a single organism, following the acting partner with attention and thought, as people united by a common artistic interest.

Chinese students in Russia also retain the influence of China's traditional educational system. Chinese schools use a method of teaching reading and writing based on the fact that in Chinese each character has its own unique meaning. The hieroglyph is drawn in the form of a picture that reflects and conveys its meaning. The image is as close as possible to the graphic writing of the hieroglyph. This allows students to memorize the hieroglyph itself, its meaning, and phonetic equivalent at the same time. Hieroglyphics determined the peculiarity of Chinese thinking: perception is mainly based on the visual channel, and the meaning is transmitted through some kind of image, prototype or combination of images. This gives reason to most researchers to attribute the Chinese to nations with a more developed right hemisphere, which means with a figurative type of thinking. According to the researcher of the processes of intelligence and creativity Alice Paul Torrens (1915 – 2003), where the right hemisphere is there, emotions, intuition and images drive the thought process ^[26].  That is why the Chinese are willing to join the game, they are distinguished by gambling, competitiveness, competition in game training.

A game, a game element. These ambiguous concepts are associated with the process of action and interaction, with an appeal to the imagination (a prank, a kind of dialogue with keen attention to a partner), with competition (a contest, a duel), with passion (fervor, mischief), with pleasure (fun, joy, drive). First of all, we are interested in the game as a special way of acquiring and developing speech skills, the possibility of repeating and developing natural reflexes necessary for free speech. But is there the desired Chinese specifics here? After all, in the same way, in the same function, it is proposed to use the game in training and in Russian courses ^{[27, pp. 126-127]}. Yes, the game is a universal means of educating an actor of any nationality. And yet the national and cultural specifics are visible in this case.

  At first, the game training for the Chinese is dominated by the desire to win, quickly and at almost any cost. In each case, this happens in different ways, but as a result, the game ends quickly, leaving a feeling of dissatisfaction. The obvious fact for us is that the main thing in the game is a process that is interesting to watch, in a public situation it often turns out to be a discovery for Chinese students. For example, an exercise with the text "There is grass in the yard, there is firewood on the grass" involved a dispute, finding out who should clean the "yard of firewood". And even here, the conversation took on the form of a sporting competition: to shout over, not to let them say, to force the partner to give up. It turned out to turn the exercise into a rhythmic dialogue by building a clear structure of the dispute, forming a rule of repetition and building up replicas, emphasizing the inherent cunning of the Chinese ethnic group in resolving conflict situations. When two cunning men argued, trying to gain the upper hand in the battle of minds, it became interesting to watch the game, especially when switching to Chinese.

For the Chinese audience of future actors, taking into account the peculiarities of their perception based mainly on the visual channel, in the process of speech training, it is possible to use pedagogical acting as a kind of object visibility. They need to see and make sure that the proposed actions are feasible, correspond to the circumstances, accurately solve the problem, are bright, unusual and interesting. We need the utmost concreteness and tangible usefulness of the proposed option.

This primarily applies to showing exercises in training, but also to working on artistic material. Here it is even more understandable, since it is associated with the complexity and sometimes even the impossibility of verbally explaining the necessary understanding, meanings and nuances through a translator. Such a teacher's demonstration does not always involve exact repetition, detailed reproduction of what is shown, is more often aimed at the student's imagination and stimulates independent understanding and solving the problem.

The stable psychological features of the Chinese ethnic group noted above, which were clearly manifested in the practice of speech training, can be considered as some intermediate result of our reflections.  We have also fixed the mental characteristics of our student contingent: the tendency to shy away from excessive efforts (reference to rules, compliance with formal requirements, regulations), the attitude to concreteness, (visibility, practical benefits).  About the latter, you can add the following.

As our experience also confirms, the Chinese are very specific, objective people, they are focused on practical results, their ideal "junzi" is a model of the perfect. For example, they are not characterized by the way of working "the path as a path search". It is associated in their minds with uncertainty about the result. In confusion, students are internally removed:  "You don't know where to lead." For these students, precise explanations of intentions and motives are natural, they need literally instructions, clear algorithms. They must understand the procedure of actions, intuitively predict the result, its expediency, usefulness. The duality of interpretations, the large variability of the planned actions is often unacceptable, does not achieve the goal.  In training, variability is possible, but within rather narrow and very specific limits.

As already noted, Chinese students in Russia still have the influence of traditional teaching methods in the educational system of China. Here, the main task of the student is to memorize a large text material and reproduce it. This creates a high level of mnemic (memory-related) abilities: the success of fixation in memory, preservation and repeated repetition of the memorized. Therefore, students are able to master a significant text in a short time. We were convinced of this while preparing a composition based on A. S. Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin. Selected stanzas" first in Russian, and then in Chinese in the volume of almost an hour of sound.

Our experience has shown that Chinese students, according to their behavior in the educational and creative process, are typical representatives of reactive cultures, according to the classification of the famous linguist and specialist in intercultural communications Richard D. Lewis ^[28]. Culture is called reactive, because the actions and activities of its representatives are determined by the reaction to a specific situation and its change, and the response itself depends on "understanding the context".

We have already partially outlined these mental features of Chinese students at the theater university earlier (the desire to establish a trusting relationship with the "teacher", a passive position in the educational process, especially during the initial period of classes). They really prefer to listen rather than show initiative and independence. At the same time, Chinese students are very reliable in their work, in meeting deadlines for completing assignments or preparing control measures, but only if the tasks and requirements are explained in all details, clarified and specified, and the situation is clear in its integrity.  For example, they need to feel and be aware of the work as a whole, to know and understand the structure of the artistic text they are working on. This was fully revealed when working on the fairy tales of A. S. Pushkin, on the composition of "Eugene Onegin". At the same time, they are able to show flexibility, the ability to adapt to changed conditions, adjust and rebuild the direction and procedure of actions, if circumstances require it.

In conclusion, reflections on the ethnopsychological approach to the speech training of Chinese students at the Russian theater school – on the need to take into account the national and cultural characteristics of the Chinese ethnic group.

As already noted in the introduction to the article, the politics and social practice of modern China are characterized by rejection of isolation, openness to the world, readiness for interethnic and intercultural interaction.  Russian Russian State University students' main position was determined by this – openness to the perception of Russian culture, Russian theatrical tradition, methods of speech training of the Department of Stage Speech. They want to learn, and this creates a perspective, a space, a platform for interaction, a dialogue of cultures. And in this regard, the need to take into account one of the most important features of this category of students – the orientation of the Chinese to use the achievements of other cultures within the framework and interests of their national culture.

The realization of the significance of this trait of our students did not come immediately. Russian Russian, in line with the Russian theatrical tradition, we have found that Chinese students, not without difficulty, but quite successfully master the game way of educating speech techniques, speech training in motion and other components of complex speech training using the methods of the Russian State Pedagogical University. Obviously, this was to a certain extent facilitated by the adaptability of the Chinese speech and hearing aids to a bilingual and even multilingual environment, the multilingual competencies of our students created by the language environment of modern China and the school education system.

As you know, under the single name "Chinese language" there are many dialects and dialects, in fact, of different languages. As for the linguistic unity of the People's Republic of China, in 1955 the State national language was introduced, which was called the "common language", or "universal language" – Putonghua. It is essential for us that the majority of Chinese are bilingual: they speak their native local language and, plus, Putonghua. The same situation is with representatives of national minorities (Mongols, Uighurs, Tibetans).  In addition, young people in China are actively learning foreign languages.

As a result, almost every high school graduate, except for his native language or dialect, speaks Putonghua and – to one degree or another – English or sometimes Russian. Knowledge of several languages as a result of co–study is an undoubted advantage in intercultural communication: these abilities help to navigate faster in the professional language environment of a theater university, trace language connections and build interlanguage "bridges".

Nevertheless, the insufficiency of such an approach was soon revealed, the need for the use of a kind of bilingualism was revealed. Having successfully completed the training exercise in Russian, the students immediately and with visible pleasure began to try it in their native language, preserving the freedom and naturalness of the sound.  They responded vividly to analogies, associations, references and comparisons of languages, realities of life in the two countries. All this led to the teaching of stage speech using two languages, to bilingualism in the educational process. Such a dialogue is ensured by the inclusion in the educational and creative process of the Chinese language and Chinese realities that are well known to students, the search for national analogies and associations, Practice has confirmed that this is essential both in the training of the initial period and in the work on a literary text, acquiring a slightly different character at later stages of training.

M. M. Bakhtin has repeatedly spoken about the "dialogic comparison of languages". In the process of getting used to the world of someone else's culture (and every lesson in the Chinese studio is an action at the crossroads of cultures), the dialogue is implemented practically, actually. At the same time, according to M.M. Bakhtin, the surrounding discord always serves as a "dialogizing background and resonator". This remark, made in relation to the word in the novel, is also true in relation to bilingualism in our case: "The dialogic juxtaposition of languages (and not meanings within the language) outlines the boundaries of languages, creates a sense of these boundaries, makes us feel the plastic forms of languages" ^{[29, p.176]}.

                                             ConclusionThis text is based on the ethno-cultural experience gained while teaching Chinese students and on a review of existing publications.

This is an attempt to consider the ethnopsychological, mental and national-cultural features found in our practice and affecting the process of speech learning. The use of the combination of these factors in the educational process will be an ethnopsychological approach to teaching stage speech to Chinese acting students at the Russian theater school.

During the training of stage speech in the Chinese studios of the Russian State Pedagogical Institute , the following psychological characteristics of Chinese students were revealed:

§ traditionalism (respect for knowledge, skill, teacher) adjusted for the realities of the 21st century;

§ collectivism, orientation to the contact group, concern for "saving face";

§ gambling, competitiveness, competition in the game;

§ ability (if necessary) to long-term, even extreme concentration of forces and capabilities to achieve results;

perception based on the visual channel.

In addition, it is advisable to take into account and rely on the mental characteristics of the Chinese ethnic group:

§ focus on concreteness (visibility, practical benefits); 

§ high level of mnemic abilities (successful memorization, preservation and reproduction);

§ tendency to avoid excessive efforts (reference to rules, compliance with formal requirements, regulations);

contextual approach to situations and tasks of the educational process (belonging to reactive cultures);

§ developed intuition, thinking with specific symbols-images encoded and fixed in the language (right hemisphere).

Our practice has allowed us to conclude that the following national and cultural characteristics are of key importance for teaching Chinese students at the Russian theater school:

Russian Russian culture, the Russian theatrical tradition) · openness to the perception of other cultures (in our case, Russian culture, Russian theatrical tradition);

· adaptability of the hearing and speech apparatus to bilingual (native dialect + Putonghua) and multilingual environment (+ English, Russian);

· a school education system aimed at memorizing and reproducing texts;

· focus on using the achievements of other cultures within their national culture (bilingualism in education, comparison  languages and cultures);

· using the national element: analogies, associations, customs and traditional actions familiar and understandable to young Chinese of the 21st century.