Without Danchenko

In the proposed study, the sources of which were author’s immediate observations and contempo­raries’ evidence, an attempt to reveal the creative principles and features of Sergei Danchenko (1937–2001) director’s handwriting was made. Sergei Danchenko was Ukrainian theater director, teacher, academician of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, People’s Artist of Ukraine, People’s Artist of the USSR (1988), Professor, Laureate of the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian National Prize (1978), laureate of the USSR State Prize (1980), Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater artistic director. The author points out the following features: Danchenko’s dependence on his generation — the generation of the sixties, his illusions, prejudic­es and ideals; European drama orientation and the model of the theater as a whole; internal independence and creative intuition; from a formal point of view, the attraction to the destruction of the «fourth wall» («Maklena Grasa», «Pathetic Sonata», «Tevye», «White Crow», where the lyrical element sometimes al­ most brought him to journalism); the peculiarities of constructing the conflict (instead of exacerbating and ex­posing up to a physical, straightforward, simplified, schematic conflict, as it was characteristic of time, he kept it in subtext, in the background); violation of traditional structures and cause-effect relations in the presentation of history; lyrical or lyric-epic nature of the genre; a conscious polysemy that unfolds extensively in the pro­cess of exposition of scenic history; active search for dialogue with the stage designer and other co-authors of the play; the manner of organization of rehearsals provides for a patient search and improvisation; orienta­tion on cooperation instead of dictate; the idea of the integrity of the national culture (all segments of the na­tional culture are equal), etc.