Lietuvių teatrologijos pradmenys: Balys Sruoga skaito Maxą Herrmanną

LTBalį Sruogą laikome pirmuoju profesionaliu lietuvių teatro kritiku ir istoriku. Nuo 1926 m. jo prie VDU įsteigto teatro seminaro1 skaičiuojame lietuviškos teatrologijos amžių, ką jau kalbėti apie Sruogos įtaką teatro raidai bei pokyčiams, juolab jo taikomąją kritiką. Sruogos asmenybė įvairiapusė, tačiau tarp kitų jo veiklų teatrologija, kaip suprantame ją šiandien, užima išskirtinę vietą. Galima sakyti, kad būtent Sruoga, nepaisant prieštaringų paties pažiūrų į tam tikrus teatro reiškinius ar kūrėjus, dėjo lietuvių teatro mokslo pamatus, formavo lietuviškos teatro kritikos mokyklą. Toks Sruoga pateikiamas bene išsamiausiai jį kaip teatrologą pristatančioje Algio Samulionio knygoje Balys Sruoga – dramaturgijos ir teatro kritikas (1968). Sakytume, knygos išleidimo metai savaip simboliški ne vien politiniu, bet ir naujos teatrinės eros pradžios požiūriu. Vis dėlto turint galvoje, kad laikas pakoreguoja žinomus faktus, o kalba apie teatro kritiką, kaip ir apie teatro mokslą, visada susijusi su aktualiais scenos meno pokyčiais, norisi grįžti prie Sruogos straipsnio „Naujos idėjos teatro moksle“ (1926), kuriame jis supažindina lietuvių teatralus su teatrologijos pradininkais – vokiečiu Maxu Herrmannu ir rusu Aleksejumi Gvozdevu.

ENSruoga is Lithuania’s first professional theatre historian and critic; after his studies at Munich University (1921–1923) his writings about Lithuanian theatre show him to have been a very knowledgeable and demanding theatre critic who knew both the school of German theaterwissenschaft (Artur Kutscher and Max Herrmann) and the Russian teatrologia (Aleksej Gvozdev). Sruoga’s founding of the theatre seminar in 1926 at the Lithuanian University marks a turning point in Lithuanian theatrical criticism – critics began to define their work as a methodologically based analysis of current performances and theatre history. This article presents an analysis of Balys Sruoga’s text “New tendencies in theatre science” (1926), where he introduces Max Herrmann’s research in his book “Medieval and Renaissance German theatre history studies” (1914). However, Sruoga read not only Herrmann’s book but also Gvozdev’s articles “German theater science” (1923) and “The results and goals of scientific theater history” (1924), where Gvozdev presents Herrmann’s method as the reconstruction of historical performance and comparative analysis of the available text and image material. Gvozdev can be attributed to the Russian formal school – methodological access of this school is also characteristic of Gvozdev’s articles about the theatre. Gvozdev, as did Herrmann, emphasised the concept of the theatre’s autonomy from [the history of] literature but focused on the phenomena of theatricality. According to Gvozdev, theatricality as the meaning of the whole performance, the scenic imagery and performing techniques, now depended on the director, in the previous epochs – it depended on the participants (performers and spectators) of the performance and on the space in which the performance was staged.This aspect of theatricality was characteristic to researchers of the formal school; Sruoga often used the concept of theatricality, but critically looked at a purely formal approach to theatrical creation. This critique is reflected in his view of Herrmann’s book. Nevertheless, Sruoga was the only one to have drawn attention to the theatrical science in the 1920s that was developing in full force, as well as the necessity of professionalism and methodology both in historical theatre investigations and in the field of criticism. In this way, the root of Lithuanian theatre studies (theatrology) and its theoretical foundations can be linked to the most advanced German and Russian theatre research schools. Sruoga, influenced by them, formulated the concept of the dramaturg, which is equivalent to today’s conception; he actualised the idea of theatre and the theatre director’s autonomy and added new theatrological terms to the critique dictionary. Most importantly – he began research on Lithuanian theatre history, the results of which were published in the study “Lithuanian Theatre in St. Petersburg” (1930), “by reconstructing” not the performances of “Lithuanian Evenings”, but the whole ideological and organisational process of their emergence and development. Although one of the most important of Sruoga’s texts – the analysis of Andrius Oleka-Žilinskas performance of “Šarūnas” (1929) – is difficult to attribute to one method, we can see the influence of Herrmann and Gvozdev’s theories: Sruoga compares theatrical technique (dramaturgical composition, stage visualisation and acting) of performance with the structure and composition of Lithuanian folk songs and distinguishes the “singing musicality” of performance as the meaning of directing.