In 2024, every schoolchild in Russia will be able to take the stage

School theaters have risen to the highest level. In the sense that the minister of education, the presidential administration, and even the president himself are talking about their need. Why is the “Temple of Melpomene” so important for school-age children, “MK” spoke with experts.

The Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Sergei Kravtsov spoke about the 12,000 school theaters already created throughout Russia in the summer. According to him, by 2024 every Russian school will have its own theater. And, for example, the first deputy head of the Academy of Arts, Sergei Kiriyenko, draws parallels between school stage productions and literature lessons: through the theater, the classics are better absorbed. And recently, at a meeting with participants in youth movements and organizations, the president spoke about how important theater is in schools for understanding literature and history…

“It’s hard to disagree,” says Vlad Skvortsov, an 11th grade student at a Moscow school. – Last year we staged Balzaminov’s Marriage at the school theater, I got the main role. And the truth is, when you read a book, it’s not perceived that way. And here the text penetrates deeper into you, and the era according to which the play was written, you feel, you try on yourself along with the costumes. In general, I did not regret that I played this role in the theater, it was an interesting experience. The only pity is that in our theater, mostly girls play, even in male roles. Our theater has been working at the school for 6 years and is based on the enthusiasm of one teacher, teacher of Russian language and literature Antonina Maksimovna. If not for her, I think there would be no theater.

In order to popularize theatrical art not only among schoolchildren, but also among teachers, many festivals, master classes and competitions have been held in recent years. Recently, master classes were held in one of the Moscow theaters, where the acting theater director and artistic director, Honored Artist of Russia, told how best to organize a theater and involve children in it. The “Commonwealth of School Theaters” was created, which also holds various events, including the “School Classics” festival-competition.

About why it is so important to play performances at school, “MK” talked with experts.

– Theater is a synthetic art, says Vadim Baranov, teacher of the DPO, head of the theater studio. – Literature, recitation, movement, dance, music, the development of the artistic perception of the world through scenery and costumes… It is difficult to say what kind of art is not in the theater. And the theater is also communication, which the modern “generation of gadgets” lacks so much. This is communication, the removal of bodily clamps, the emancipation of clamped children. After all, even the fear of answering a lesson in front of the whole class will help the theater to remove, this is not a rare problem. Also, over the years of managing the studio, I noticed that children who read poorly and reluctantly, through memorizing the texts of the play, penetrate the material, and sometimes the author. We had a case, for example, we decided to stage one-act plays by early Chekhov. And not all children understood, thought that it would be very serious, boring. And after the premiere, they were delighted and said – Chekhov is cool. He’s very funny, in fact. So staging the classics is perhaps the right approach to ensure that children at school overcome some fundamental works of our brilliant writers, perhaps. Or at least get to know them.

The neuropsychologist Svetlana Stepanova talks about the healing power of the theater.

“Yes, that’s right, exercises in scenes of movement relieve bodily tightness, and on stage, sound perception and spatial orientation are helped,” says Stepanova. – And the full development of space is the key to mastering written Russian, for example, with its complex adverbial phrases. But this is not the whole benefit. Theatrical warm-up absorbed the experience of many generations of actors and outstanding masters of the Russian theater. The best for improving speech, memory, attention was sometimes selected intuitively. For example, breathing exercises that are carried out to make the voice sound from the stage enrich the deep parts of the brain with oxygen, which is very useful and develops memory and quick thinking. Memorizing text with a certain rhythm also enhances the interaction of the two hemispheres of the brain. As well as exercises on diction or training of elements of scene movement, especially cross-sections, which actors use in their warm-up.

But the most important thing is getting used to the image, that very acting, which distinguishes acting, helps to develop the higher departments and lobes of the brain. Which by age in humans mature only by the age of 16-18. This is a block of planning, programming, structuring and control. Therefore, firstly, for the development of mathematical abilities in a child, oddly enough, theater can be useful. And, getting used to someone else, trying on the personality of the character, the child develops, becomes more mature and smarter.