Mikhaylova A.M. Vasily Sakhnovsky Speaks about Alexander Ostrovsky's Theatre. Staging 'The Thunder Storm' at Moscow Drama Theatre

Abstract: The article is devoted to studying Vasily Sakhnovsky's intepretation of Alexander Ostrovsky's playwriting. Artistic legacy of a theatre director, theorist and teacher Vasily Saknovsky who had been on the periphery of theatrical science until recently is a rather broad cultural issue. The research of theoretical works written by Sakhnovsky about Ostrovsky and his speeches made during meetings of the theatrical section of the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as analysis of Sakhnovsky's performances do not only extend our idea for Ostrovsky's playwriting but also reveal a number of important features of Sakhnovsky's directing method. The object of the research is Vasily Sakhnovsky's interpretation of Alexander Ostrovsky's plays. The following several subjects of the research should be stressed out: Vasily Sakhnovsky's work 'The Theatre of Alexander Ostrovsky', his speech devoted to the discussion of Vsevelod Meyerhold's play 'The Forest' and his theatrical interpretation of the play 'The Thunderstorm' at Moscow Drama Theatre. In the course of her research Mikhailova has used the contextual, historical-cultural, comparative and theatrical analysis. The researcher has made the following conclusions based on the results of the research: in his interpretation of Ostrovsky's plays, Sakhnovsky adopted the views of Apollon Grigoriev who saw Ostrovsky as the founder of the first national Russian theatre. Through analyzing Sakhnovsky's performance of 'The Thunderstorm' and his attitude to Meyerhold's theatrical experiments, the researcher reveals why Sakhnovsky was so poorly appreciated by the social and cultural communities of the 20's. 

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