Kovács Tivadar szerk.: Theatrum — Színháztudományi értesítő 1965

Idegen nyelvű ismertetések

tent concerns the audience. Miklós Almás! tried to examine the problems of modernity from the different point of views of the creative artist, the new theatrical trends and of the audience. István Hermann

, academic laurate in literature

,dealt with the problems of social consciousness. He discussed the three manifest forms of realism. In his opinion the most striking difference between naive realism and critical realism is, that the latter depicts the inherency of reality with a higher degree of consciousness, trying to rid the audience of its social illusions. Contemporary Western stages, from Ionesco to Beckett even more intensively help to ruin these illusions. One of the characteristics of socialist realism is its conscious way of looking at things and the main task of the socialist stage is to terminate disillusionment on a higher level, and to replace illusions by the actual social needs. Socialist realism is aiming at a synthesis, and this can only be achieved if in the system of new relations it is making use of the results of the bourgeois stages too. Dr. György Székely, the Vice-Director of the Institute for Theatrical Sciences gave his lecture on the Social Function of the Socialist Theatr

e. The lecture was based on statistic figures and concrete data. Dr. Székely pointed out that in our times when the function of the theatre has been undergoing a change, -as many times before in the course of history - the art of the theatre enjoys official cultural direction and support. Since 1949 considerable efforts have been made to bring the widest possible audiences into the theatre. /E. g. favourable price policy, the tickets are not expected to offset production costs; purposeful programme policy that is consciously aiming at the enrichment of the audience's emotional and intellectual life./ These aims were thought to be best served by realistic productions, - 65 -