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СадыховаЛ. Г.
ПРЕПОДАВАНИЕ КУЛЬТУРОЛОГИИ: ТЕАТР В ТЕРМИНАХ КОММУНИКАЦИИ И ОБУЧЕНИЯ
One of the ways to raise the efficiency of learning social sciences and humanities, such as cultural theory, is the use of models - those objects which are characterised bythe traits of represented cultural realities under study, on the one hand, and concrete enough to be illustrative and understandable for students, on the other hand. Theatre, for instance, can be used as such a model [1], particularly while analysing communication.It can provide teaching with methods of training, through theatre-like communication, or interactive play as well.
Social sciences and humanities often operate with theatre metaphors to discuss their objects
[2] . In sociology, the concept of role acting has been traditionally used.Erving Goffman, for example, speaks of "performance", "presentation of self", "backstage" behaviour in everyday life.Elizabeth Burns writes that human being enacts social roles, which implies not only playing a socially approved mode of behaviour, but improvising the interpreted part. In a way, everyone builds alternative existences beyond the generally settled role patterns; theatre ideally represents patterning which is what all human activities are permeated with [3]. Clifford Geertz, on the other hand, says that semiotic openness of the theatre makes it one of the most promising spheres to study the interaction between arts and culture. And in terms of methodology of cultural theory, it is precisely where different social activities (including arts and social activities as such) interact that cultural theory operates, according to one of its founders, Raymond Williams, and its methods of analysis and teaching "can find concrete embodiments which are more ... viewable and communicable beyond a narrow academic milieu" [4] .
Theatre canbe such an embodiment, both as a model in theory and as a method in educational practice.Thus, for instance, communication theory and semiotics which have contributed a lot to the development of cultural theory, often use theatre as a model of information transmission and exchange. Roland Barthes, e.g., calls theatre a kind of cybernetic machine to simultaneously send many different messages, which makes up informational polyphony, those elements ranging from stage decorations and lighting to actors' costumes and gestures [5] , and it is this polyphony that makes theatre a semiotically privileged object. Theatre semiology studies the codes of message sender and those of the receivers (spectators). Patris Pavis describes theatrical event as communication with consecutive, in the course of a play, stimulating the formation of spectators' codes. Likewise, Erika Fisher analyses the theatre codes as a system (of all possible signs), norm (sign systems of a particular genre), speech (sign system of a performance). Marco de Marinis, who published his work on theatre semiotics at the same time that Fisher, states that it is time to develop a "pragmatics of theatrical communication", based on historical and sociological contexts of productions and the spectators' reception.
In general, such an appeal marked a new stage in the interdisciplinary studies of theatre, with their focus on spectators' reception, the relationship between the stage and the audience, and the latter's interpretation of theatre message.Characteristically, in the social theory at the sametime a new paradigm began to develop, called the human action approach, which emphasizes, in particular, human interpretation of any message, and searches for qualitative, rather than quantitative methodsof analysis [6]. Likewise, in theatre studies it was suggested to analyse the audience's reception through the qualitative analysis of typical members of social "collectives". There also appeared an idea that "society's mind" can periodically "reorganize" itself - through the theatre, in particular, as one of the so-called"threshold" spheres of culture [7].
As for reorganization of individual mind, through learning, the so-called applied theatre has been developing across the last decades, in which spectators are expected to take an active part, equal to that of the actors; moreover, it is often the case in the applied theatre that spectators (who are rather readers, or learners) themselves are the actors who have been analysing a social controversy, or dilemma, and "trying it on" [8] . The underlying assumption is that there are always such nuances in any knowledge or skill, particularly in social theory and activities, which can only be mastered through interaction, or interactive play performed like role acting on the stage (with relevant rehearsals, mutual adjustment in the course of ensemble playing, etc.). Theatre in education (TiE), a form of the applied theatre, is the technique which was first used in children's education, by Americans Jane Adams and Neva Boyd who introduced artistic training in teaching socially disadvantaged children. Later the method, mainly in the form of improvisation, was used to re-educate adults in the years of the Great Depression in the States, to develop the capacity of creativity.
In Germany, famous playwright Bertolt Brecht specially wrote several "learning plays", as he called them himself, to train young people (mainly workers), by reading and discussing the plays and then enacting the roles (and discussing this experience afterwards), to make decisions (including the moral choice, and taking responsibility in socially ambiguous situations), and to be more conscious of what is going on in the world, and of what individual can change and achieve.
Whereas Brecht suggested the learning plays as a method in raising social and political consciousness, they are often used in special educational programs as well, such as the AIDS education program in Africa. Analogous "forum theatre" (thematizing a social problem by playing a model scene before spectators who are expected then to suggest their own solution, and, finally, act their own alternative performance) was developed by a famous Brazilian artistic director Augusto Boal. Characteristically of the globalizing world, such techniques which started as part of special programs have eventually become part of many countries' academic classroom practice.
To sum up, theatre provides teaching in general and teaching cultural theory in particular with models of social realities, such as communication, as well as with methods of training and learning, including the formation of social consciousness and mastering the skills of decisionmaking and problem solving, which is promising in terms of raising the efficiency of education.
REFERENCES
1. СадыховаЛ.Г. Concerning Methodology of Cultural Studies: Theatre as a Model
Object//Надежностьикачество: ТрудыМеждународногонаучно-практическогосимпозиума. -Пенза, 2008. -
С . 174-176.
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2. СадыховаЛ.Г.Театркакспособпознания//Философия и социальная теория. Сб. научныхтрудов. -М.,
2008. - С.380-399.
3. Burns, E. Theatricality. L., 1972. P.231-232.
4. Williams, R.Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists. L., 2007.P.179.
5. Barthes, R. Critical Essays. Evanston, 1992.P.261-262.
6. Infante, D.A., Rancer, A.S.., Womack, D.F. Building Communication Theory. Prospect Heights, 1997. P. 76-89.
7. Turner, V. From Ritual to Theatre. NY., 1982. P. 52.
8. Balme, Chr. The Cambridge Introduction to the Theatre. Cambridge, 2008. P. 179-194.
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