Between Replica and Innovation: To the Definition of the Figure of the Director

Abstract

Philosophical and anthropological understanding of the director's figure, despite all the study of the problems of creativity, play, performance, theater, remains insufficient. The methodological dimension of such a gap in the anthropology of representation can be explained by the complexity of the object itself, which is located at the intersection of theatrical, historical, pedagogical, and art history discourses proper. The authors present an analysis of the translation of knowledge from the director to the actor and the viewer, the interpretation of this process as a cultural and anthropological practice. The specifics of the director's activity are revealed by us through an appeal to the methodology of M.K. Petrov in his studies of the problem of inheritance of knowledge. Through the concepts of translation and transmutation, we come to the internal contradiction of directing practices related to the reproduction of already existing semantic content, but also the indispensable requirement of a ban on repetition. The second circuit of contradictions is the contradiction between pedagogical and creative, on the one hand, and administrative practices in the director's activities, on the other hand.