Journal articles on the topic 'Russian Puppet theater'

The goal was to understand the current situation and give an overview of Baltic and Nordic countries' puppet theater and puppet theater training traditions and whether and how the puppeteer's profile has changed recently. To get an idea of the trends in this area, the common ground of the different countries, I interviewed theatre makers from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The title of this research is "Tossed on the seas of visual theatre: challenges to puppetry’s survival as an independent discipline."To have a wider look at the puppetry, I also did two additional interviews. One of them with Marek Waszkiel - "Puppetry's challenges in the new visual theatre paradigm" and another one with Russian director Yana Tumina - "The puppeteer in the 21st century".

The article is devoted to the young generation of directors working on the Kazan stage. These are those who have entered the profession over the past ten years. Among them there are already established masters such as Ilgiz Zainiev, Aidar Zabbarov, Timur Kulov, Ilsur Kazakbayev, a director from Bashkiria who is actively working in Tatarstan. There are also those who are at the very beginning of their career, but have already attracted attention with interesting productions and projects – Lilia Akhmetzyanova, Bulat Gataullin, Bulat Minkin and others. These young artists are successfully implemented in the multicultural environment of Tatarstan. Ilgiz Zainiev heads the Tatar Puppet Theater “Ekiyat”, working with both its Tatar and Russian troupes. His portfolio includes numerous productions in the Tatar drama theaters of Kazan and other cities of the republic: Almetyevsk, Atnya, Menzelinsk, Naberezhnye Chelny, performances in the Kazan Russian Youth Theater and the Naberezhnye Chelny Puppet Theater. Aidar Zabbarov is a director in demand by Russian theaters. In his native republic, he works mainly in the Tatar theaters of Kazan, Almetyevsk, Atnya, while simultaneously being the author of productions at several Russian theater venues. Timur Kulov also successfully cooperates with both Tatar and Russian theaters of the republic. Ilsur Kazakbayev works mainly in national theaters – Bashkir and Tatar. Lilia Akhmetzyanova is the director of the Kazan Russian Youth Theater and at the same time the author of productions at the Kazan Tatar Youth Theater named after G.Kariev and at the venues of the Living City Foundation for the Support of Contemporary Art. These and other directors largely determine the appearance of today’s theatrical Kazan. The purpose of this article is to identify the features of the author’s style of young directors who have especially vividly declared themselves on the Kazan stage, and through the individual try to consider something in common – the qualities inherent in the new generation of directing as such.

The article deals with the specifics in representing the work of N.A. Nekrasov on the theatrical stage. The author notes the lack of demand for the poet's dramaturgy and the attention to the poem Who is Happy in Russia? in the modern theatrical space. Focusing on the cultural codes embedded in N.A. Nekrasov's poem, the author turns to analyzing the paradoxes of the poem's stage version directed by K. Serebrennikov and P. Vasilyev. Based on hermeneutic methodology, semiotic and symbolic analysis, the article highlights the peculiarities of the directors' interpretations. The specifics of Serebrennikov's play lie in its evolution from verbatim forms to conventional theater. While respecting the author's text, the director chooses the key chapters of the poem, whose sequence extends the temporal and spatial boundaries of the text. The play features multi-genre parts that involve experiments with different theatrical forms. P. Vasilyev's puppet show focuses on intertextuality and symbolism in N.A. Nekrasov's poem, expressed through associations and allusions, as well as through the symbolism of puppets and scenography. The paradoxes of the poem's existence on the modern stage are determined by the interpretive potential of the text, its embedded cultural codes, internal drama, incompleteness and open ending. Contemporary Russian theater, gravitating toward experiments and intertextuality, offers a paradoxical interpretation of N. A. Nekrasov's poem, referring the audience both to Russian classics and to mass culture.

The Serbian comic hero of folk puppet fair performances "Kuku Todor" has an interesting relationship with the semantics of words and phraseology of the Serbian language. In this work, an attempt is made to deal with the etymology of the name Kuku Todor. Todor is a character whose main characteristics are stupidity and cunning, frivolity and impulsiveness. The author comes to the conclusion that the uniqueness and observance of the tradition of the visual in the performances of this genre also affects the uniqueness of the consequences in the linguistic environment of the people where they appear. "Kuku Todor" is one of the few puppet shows in Serbia, which is interesting, original, uniquely connected with the phraseology of the Serbian language. The name of the protagonist of this performance is based on the holiday “Horse Easter”, and funeral lamentations, and colloquial exclamations, and a parallel with the Russian Fyodor Stratilat. Thus, a peculiar cyclicity arises in the language. The cause becomes the effect, and the effect becomes the cause. The cyclicity in the dramaturgy of this performance, as well as the cyclicity in the mise-en-scene of puppets in a screen-cabin, is also manifested in the language itself. This cyclicality is taken as the principle of constructing the performance. It is taken from the very nature of the relationship between life and death. More precisely, in the course of the ritual sacred rite, among other things, lamentations appeared, which became an integral part of the performance and returned to speech in a new, more common form.

The formation process of the Crimean Tatar theater can be divided into the following periods: medieval – folk theater (the initial round dance and toy puppet theater of shadows “Karagoz”, the theater of one actor “meddah”, the arena theater “orta oyuny”); Khan`s theater in the middle of the XVIII century (penetration into the Crimea of European theater traditions in the era of the Crimean Khan Crym Girey I); the revival of traditions of the Crimean Tatar theater late XIX–XX centuries (the activities of a theater-goers group of the Jadidist Crimean Tatar youth–followers of I. Gasprinsky, under the leadership of J. Meinov – the efforts of the Crimean Tatar noblewoman-myrzachkas under the leadership of A. Taiganskaya; organization of a professional Simferopol Tatar theater troupe under the People’s Commissar of Education of the Crimean ASSR in 1921 and creation and activities of the Crimean Tatar Drama Theater, headed by A. Taigan, and the Crimean Tatar amateur movement in the Crimea, and among the Crimean Tatar foreign diaspora of 1923–1944 (Soviet pre-deportation period); recreation and current activities of the Crimean Tatar theater in the Crimea,1989 (post deportation period). In this article, for the first time in the art history, is revealed the so-called Khan`s period in the formation of the Crimean Tatar theater, discussed the revolutionary activity in the field of Crimean Tatar art, the ascetic activity of the Crimean Khan Crym Girey I to promote the ideas of European theater traditions and create a classical theater in the Crimea. The picture of the actions undertaken by the Crimean ruler in the construction of theater business in the Crimea, as well as his thoughts and statements about the theater, was recreated according to the text published in the XVIII century, memories of personal meetings and conversations with Crym Girey I of European authors: German – von der Goltz, Polish – Pilshtynova, Russian – Nikiforov, Frenchman – de Tott, Austrian – Kleeman. Based on these recollections is built a clear and explicit picture of a role of Crym Girey I as a pioneer in bringing European theater traditions and creation of a classical theater in the culture of the Crimea, the Turkic and Muslim worlds.

В настоящей статье рассматривается вопрос о роли зрительских предпочтений в формировании жанрового состава, тематики, образного мира и стиля русского театра Нового времени. Применительно к сфере фольклорного театра XVIII-XIX вв. трудно переоценить роль мемуарных свидетельств в реконструкции социальной среды, пространственно-временного контекста и самого содержания театральных представлений. Вместе с тем личные свидетельства зрителей профессиональных, любительских и собственно народных театральных постановок позволяют выявить и соотнести их идейные, эмоциональные и эстетические предпочтения, влиявшие, в свою очередь, на репертуар, художественную структуру и драматургическую технику активно развивавшегося отечественного театра. На материале «Журнала путешествия Никиты Акинфиевича Демидова 1771-1773 гг.» проводится исследование эстетических вкусов образованного русского путешественника второй половины XVIII в., наблюдавшего широкий спектр немецких, французских, итальянских и английских зрелищных и театральных форм: оперу, драму, театр марионеток, карнавал, цирк, конные бега, военные маневры, религиозные церемонии и др. Несмотря на очевидную склонность к итальянскому оперному и французскому драматическому искусству, Н. А. Демидов с интересом и благожелательно воспринимал повседневные формы английского городского досуга (от концертов на открытом воздухе до цирковых представлений). Зафиксированные в «Журнале путешествия…» театральные интересы и эстетические предпочтения Н. А. Демидова разделяли (в полной мере или отчасти) его спутники по странствиям, его секретарь и редактор травелога Н. И. Крымов, а также многочисленные читатели издания 1786 г., в том числе сын Николай Демидов, внесший существенный вклад в развитие отечественной театральной традиции. This article discusses the role of audience tastes, expectations and preferences in shaping the genre, themes, characters, and style of modern Russian theater. It is difficult to overestimate the role of memoirs in the reconstruction of the social environment, space-time context and the content of performances of folk theater of the 18th - 19th centuries. At the same time, the personal testimony of spectators of professional, amateur and folk theater allows us to identify and compare their ideological, emotional and aesthetic preferences, which in turn had an influence on the repertoire, poetic structure and dramatic technique of the actively evolving national theater. Based on the travel journal of N. A. Demidov (1771-1773) the article analyzes the preferences of this educated Russian traveler that covered a wide range of German, French, Italian and English entertainments and theatrical forms: opera, drama, puppet theater, carnival, circus, horse racing, military maneuvers, religious ceremonies, etc. Apart from his obvious preference for Italian opera and French drama, Demidov also observed everyday forms of urban leisure pursuits (from outdoor concerts to circus performances) with interest and sympathy. Demidov’s theatrical interests and aesthetic preferences were shared (fully or partially) by his traveling companions, his secretary and editor of the travelogue, N. I. Krymov, as well as with numerous readers of the 1786 edition of the travel memoir, including the author’s son Nikolay Demidov, a person of influence in the history of Russian theater.

The article is devoted to demonstrating the genesis of the archetype of the trickster in Russian literature. The antihero, the sources of whose anti-behavior are traced in harlequinade and skmorokh buffoonery, is examined on the material of folklore and literary works from the 18th to the early 20th century. Anti-behavior in Russian culture symbolizes a rebellion unrefl exed in the folk environment against the norms of behavior and orderliness of life imposed by those in power. The archetype of the trickster, which has longtime traditions in world culture, was personifi ed in Russia as the skomorokh, then the jester Farnos, who in many ways adopted the skomorokh traditions. Among the populace Petrukha Fornos became one of the favorite comic jester heroes, having acquired special popularity as the result of crude color woodcuts from the 18th century. In the 19th century the image of Farnos was transformed into Petrushka, a puppet character of the theatricalized genre. With his assistance the simplistic satirical subjects lay at the foundation of the so-called Petrushka theater which, despite the unaltered plot, bore an improvisational-play character, pertaining to a number of “baculine” comedies, in the 19th century the image of Petrushka was so popular, that it surpassed the oral folk tradition and found its place in literary compositions. In the early 20th century the image of Petrushka the trickster became the source for numerous interpretations in modernist literature.

The 2022 field season (January 23 – February 23) turned out to be very productive: we managed to clarify the history of Dogon migrations from the Mande Country to the Bandiagara Highlands. We received quite complete information on the prophet Abirɛ, who predicted the return of Dogon to their historical homeland and completely new information about Bozo and Bambara puppets. Finally, we acquired many interesting artifacts for the State Museum of Oriental Arts. Due to the inability to arrive to the Dogon Country, it was decided to focus on the area of the city of Bougouni (Sikasso region) in southern Mali and on the Mande Country (regions of Koulikoro and Kayes, from the city of Kangaba in the west to Bamako in the east). Two magnificent, beautifully attributed works of traditional Bambara art were acquired in Bougouni for the collection of the State Museum of Oriental Arts: “Monkey” (Warabilen) and “Wild buffalo” (Sigi; Sigifin) masks. During the expedition, new and very significant data were obtained on the migrations of the Dogon from the Mande Country to the Bandiagara Highlands. A lot of information has now been accumulated regarding how the Dogon came to their new homeland. They were published, including in Russian. But the Manding oral traditions about the exodus of Dogon are still little known. We have partially succeeded in making up for this shortcoming. Oral historical traditions about the exodus of the Dogon from the Mande Country are changeable, internally contradictory and extremely unstable narratives with confused chronology, filled with omissions and vague allusions. However, some conclusions can still be drawn: there is almost no doubt that the root cause of the Dogon leaving for the lifeless rocks of Bandiagara was some kind of difficult and bloody conflict, accompanied by numerous victims. It is also clear that there were several waves of resettlement, and the last Dogon left for the highlands in the middle of the second half of the 19th century. It was also possible to find out that the Bambara and Bozo puppets are not at all a secularized popular theater. The puppet society is associated with the Koré secret society, and is perhaps one of the most powerful Bambara societies, which in this case refers to three ethnic groups: the Bambara proper, the Bozo (Dogon partners in a marriage-prohibitive joking relations) and the Marka (Soninké). Ceremonies involving puppets are completely sacred (only members of the Society take part in them), semi-sacred (only men take part in them), and, finally, publicly available — everyone, including women and children, takes part in them.

This key historical and theoretical document connecting Czech and Russian puppet and folk theatres is translated into English for the first time. Bogatyrev opened a whole new area of semiotic studies.

The present research raises a question on functioning of magazines in the digital era. The author of the paper addresses the KukArt magazine (1992–2006) which used to be a hallmark in the Russian intellectual life at the turn of the century and has not lost its relevance at present. The research proposes a discursive analysis to identify features of the KukArt magazine strategy. According to the author of the paper, the KukArt longevity phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the magazine became a testing ground to try some mutually exclusive ideas, and the place where different discourse practices coexisted. The article formulates the idea that the purpose of the magazine was to form a new cultural space which synthesizes various fi elds of art. The author gives a detailed description of all issues of the magazine in the synchronous and diachronic aspects. The main feature of KukArt is absence of a unifi ed framework (making features which were based on objectives set and problems solved: the puppet and the avant-garde, the puppet and literature, the puppet and folklore, the puppet and the masquerade mask, the puppet and home theatre, the puppet and the mannequin, etc.) Originally targeted at the puppet, the magazine shifted gradually towards an anthropological pole trying to answer the question: ‘What is a human?’ Due to such an editorial strategy KukArt drew a wide reading audience attention and went beyond theatre environment bounds. Limited edition and absence of a digital format led to the rise of the magazine ‘aura value’, for the unique and non-reproducible things only have had the greatest value in human culture system.

AbstractThe leaked email accounts of Putin’s aide on Ukraine, Vladislav Surkov, are vast primary source collections that shed light on the backstage happenings of the Kremlin’s politics in the Donbas war. Surkov is an excellent dramaturg; he writes scripts, casts actors, analyzes their performance and narratives, runs promotions, and puts the repertoire into motion to achieve intended reactions of the target audience. Methods and resources employed against Ukraine have much in common with political technology that helps the Kremlin to manipulate public opinion as well as election systems using pseudo-experts, technical parties, fake civic organizations and youth movement such as Nashi, and covert media techniques. Moscow tactically promoted the myth of “Novorossiya”—later the circumstances forced Surkov to replace it with “Donbas.” These tactics gave false credibility to “separatists” who would voice Moscow’s objections to any attempts of Ukraine to drift westward, creating an illusion in the domestic and international audience: the separatists are not puppets of Moscow but desperately fight against Kyiv junta for their localized identity, and Russia is just there to offer them a helping hand. The Russian policy toward Ukraine after the 2013 fall is an extension of its “virtual” domestic politics, but not traditional diplomacy at all.

The Golden Mask and National Theatre Award and Festival, founded in Moscow in 1994, has showcased some of the most exciting theatre to be found across Russia’s vast territories: ‘theatre’ including opera, ballet, contemporary dance, puppetry, and newer forms that have taken root with changing artistic practices. Maria Shevtsova’s brief overview of the 2015 Russian Case, a selection for foreign producers and critics, prominently features ‘new drama’, not least because of the difficulties recently imposed on Teatr.doc, a founding player within this powerful movement. Major young directors appear here, with crossover to their work as represented in past editions of the Russian Case, and with reference to current socio-political factors. Reviews of earlier festivals appeared in NTQ 85, 95, and 103. Maria Shevtsova, Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly. Her most recent book is the co-authored Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Directing (2013). Her seminal Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (2004) has been translated into Romanian, Korean, and Mandarin and, in 2014, Russian.

The 2017 Golden Mask and National Theatre Award and Festival in Moscow offered, as it usually does, a wide range of large- and small-scale theatre, musical theatre, opera, ballet, contemporary dance, and puppetry – a month and more of intensive activity that keeps its annually changing jury on its toes. Maria Shevtsova provides an overview of the Russian Case: a concentration of productions for foreign producers and critics that reflects quite accurately the Golden Mask's complete spoken theatre selection (as distinct from other forms of theatre such as dance). She observes that a cluster of productions refers to rebellions and revolutions that preceded the 1917 October Revolution, though none deals directly with that event. Remaining works allude in various ways to more recent Russian and global history, showing how its makers are sensitive to a past that filters through the more than troubling present. Maria Shevtsova, Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, is co-editor of New Theatre Quarterly.

In Soviet Russia, the 1920s are known as a period of an unprecedented growth of the autonomy of children in various aspects of social life. One example is the decision of the Narkompros to introduce student self-government in the UnifiedLaborSchool in 1918. When raised to a national scale, the initial radical idea rapidly degraded over the following decade into a much more moderate pedagogical position that was implemented in a set of unimpressive everyday practices, predominantly meetings and duty rosters. By analyzing published and archival sources that contain evidence and opinions presented by pedagogues, teachers and students, this article traces the evolution of the idea and practices of student self-government in early Soviet Russia. The analysis of arguments in favour of expanding or limiting the agency of children in the context of self-government shows that teachers perceived the introduction of the self-government as an attack on their authority; a broad consensus existed among teachers on the necessity to control children’s agency, primarily in terms of their decision-making. A contradiction between the declared independence of children and the requisite teacher’s control was resolved by an appeal to pedagogical mastery that made it possible to render invisible the teacher’s manipulative behaviors.

The music of Jean Sibelius’ younger contemporary and his private student Leevi Madetoja is little known in Russia. He is traditionally reckoned among the late romanticists, and his music was developed during Sibelus’ life and under his “shadow.” Nonetheless, Madetoja’s heritage is in need of a critical reevaluation in order to understand the composer’s involvement in the relevant tendencies and paradigms of 20th century music. The article brings biographical facts which formed the composer’s character and aural experience, and characterization is given to the artistic context of early 20th century Paris in the spheres of the theater and the ballet. As the object of study in the aspect of relevant paradigms, the suite from the ballet Okon Fuoko, created by the composer in 1930. The reason the ballet was forgotten after its premiere and its two genre-related versions are examined. The variant readings in determining the genre by Finnish researchers in defining the genre of the work, and the definition which was preserved in the composer’s archive is established. Paul Knudsen’s scenario appealing to the tradition of the Japanese puppet theater and the makeup of the suite are indicative for the period of the Europeans’ fascination with exoticism and search for a new plastic language. The analysis of the Grotesque Dance reveals features of gesture paradigm and the peculiarity of the composition’s musical dramaturgy, which provides grounds for calling Okon Fuoko a ballet for orchestra.

The research subject of the offered article is Shevchenko’s scope of reading in the aspect of his awareness of Japan. The main problem is to clarify the content of Shevchenko’s diary entries, in which the Japanese, “something Japanese”, and “Japanese comedy” are mentioned. Thus the goal was set to find out the range of printed sources of the poet’s knowledge about Japan. In the course of the research, traditional means and methods of literary source studies as well as the method of philological reading were used. The works of his predecessors, in particular of Leonid Bolshakov and Mykola Sulyma, are taken into account, and several corrections are proposed to their reasoning. The author of the article considers a thorough review of proven poetic lectures, in particular periodicals, as a promising way of searching. The novelty of the article lies in the fact that as a result of such an approach, for the first time it is justified that Shevchenko’s scope of reading included Yevgeniy Korsh’s article from the series Japan and the Japanese (1852), which undoubtedly became one of the principal sources of information about this Far East country, its political system and culture, for the exile. A large passage in Korsh’s article is devoted to the description of theatre and, in particular, the loud declamation of the actors, which was probably remembered by Shevchenko. The results of the research are as follows. The article confirms Mykola Sulyma’s reasoning, that the Ukrainian poet was familiar with Russians in Japan at the end of 1853 and at the beginning of 1854, and the series of articles by Ivan Goncharov published in Morskoi Sbornik (1855), which were later included in the book of essays Frigate ‘Pallada’. At the same time, the stylistic influence of the Russian writer should be interpreted more carefully. Shevchenko, like Goncharov and many of their contemporaries, used the word “comedy” in the mentioned contexts in a purely everyday sense, and not in a terminological one. It is clear that Shevchenko did not mean Japanese puppet comedy: he lexically combined a puppet show with a comedy, occasionally noticing “something Japanese” in the bishop’s service in Nizhny Novgorod. Meanwhile, the expression “Japanese comedy” seems to have really been inspired by descriptions of the Japanese theatre with its noisy actors, which, according to the poet, apparently lacked harmony and grace, which became the basis for the comparison with the religious procession in the Kremlin in Moscow. In the use of words in his diary, particularly in the comparisons, Shevchenko remained quite original, and sometimes, as is the case with the mentions of “Japanese”, he was subjective, which prevents one from interpreting these entries unambiguously.

Between 1926 and 1934 the Moscow Kamerny Theatre staged a cycle of six American plays: Eugene O’Neill's The Hairy Ape, Desire under the Elms, and All God's Chillun Got Wings; Sophie Treadwell's Machinal; Rosita, a stage adaptation of a Hollywood film; and John Dos Passos's Fortune Heights. In this article Dassia N. Posner analyzes and contextualizes two of these productions: The Hairy Ape (1926) and Machinal (1933). By the mid-1920s, Kamerny Theatre director Alexander Tairov was under intense pressure to stage work that aligned with the Soviet Union's political goals. A significant portion of the Kamerny's repertoire had long consisted of foreign plays that celebrated the individual's struggle against oppression. The Hairy Ape and Machinal provided Tairov with a unique opportunity to combine artistic, political, and human relevance in a way he had not achieved before, using the artistic language of the theatre's earlier stylistic and acting innovations. Drawing on rich archival sources, Posner illuminates ways in which stylistic juxtaposition allowed these productions to address a specific political context while also reflecting on oppression more broadly as it relates to class, gender, national origin, artistic freedom, and individual thought. Dassia N. Posner is Associate Professor of Theatre and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. Her books include The Director's Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance.

Mark Veniaminovich Karminskyi (1930–1995) is a composer who, already during his lifetime, was appreciated by his contemporaries as the brightest figure in musical art, in particular, musical theater. Well-known in the country and his native Kharkiv, he was also the constant reader of the Kharkiv ‘K. Stanislavskyi’ Music and Theater Library for many years, taking part in many events that took place within its walls. An excellent lecturer and interlocutor, benevolent and affable person, he found an attentive audience and ardent admirers of his musical talent among the library’s readers and stuff. Perhaps, this is why M. Karminskyi chose the Library as the main curator of his archive. What is better than studying the artist’s personal archive to give an idea of his personality, creative methods and worldview? Even a cursory glance at the collection of documents classified on the shelves of the archive, illustrating particular biographical episodes, helps the researcher to form a holistic impression of the artist’s creative personality, as well as to orient, if necessary, for further more depth studying of his heritage. The purpose of this article is a brief review of the general content of the archival fund of M. V. Karminskyi, with the materials of which the author had the honor to conduct research and bibliographic work, as of a documentary sources base for future research of the composer’s work and the history of the musical culture of Kharkiv in 1950–2000 years. Statement of the main positions of the publication. The composer began to transfer his archive to the library during his lifetime: he arranged folders with manuscripts, gave explanations about the time of writing and purpose of individual works. It was this archive that was the first to get into the library as a full-fledged array of documents about the life of a creative person. The condition for its transfer was the possibility of unimpeded viewing of the archive and its copying for the purpose of training and concert performance of the composer’s works. The full description of M. Karminskyi’s archive was completed in 1996, but the fund was supplemented several times thanks to new materials that came to the archival collection after its formation. It contains a variety of documents, including musical manuscripts, newspaper clippings, photographic documents, sound recordings on various media, posters, booklets, programs, manuscripts by other authors related to the activities of the composer. Thus, for the theater – opera, drama – the composer has been actively working since a young age. He wrote music for performances of Kharkiv theaters – Puppet Theater, Young Audience Theater, Ukrainian Drama Theater named after Taras Shevchenko, Jewish Theater, even for student amateur theaters. Four operas by M. Karminskyi, among them – “Ten days that shook the world”, “Irkutsk story” – were successfully staged in many theaters in Ukraine, Russia, the Czech Republic and Germany. Particular attention was drawn to the opera “Ten Days That Shook the World” based on John Reed’s book about the events in Petrograd in 1917, which was published as the separate piano reduction and received a large number of reviews in periodicals. The typewritten copies of reviews by famous Ukrainian musicologists K. Heivandova and I. Zolotovytska have been preserved in the archive. The collection of the archive also includes the published piano score of the opera “Irkutsk story”, the known “Waltz” from which served as a call sign of the Kharkiv Regional Radio for many years. One of the most interesting manuscripts of the archive is the music for the unfinished ballet “Rembrandt” on the libretto by V. Dubrovskyi. The musical “Robin Hood”, which was performed not only in Kharkiv, but also in Moscow, brought the composer national fame. The sound recording of the Moscow play was distributed thanks to the release of gramophone records created with the participation of stars of Soviet stage – the singers Joseph Kobzon, Lev Leshchenko, Valentina Tolkunova and the famous actor Eugene Leonov. The popularity of this musical was phenomenal; excerpts from it were performed even in children’s music schools, as evidenced by the archival documents. During the composer’s life and after his death, his vocal and choral works, works for various instruments were mostly published. The array of these musical editions and manuscripts of M. Karminskyi is arranged in the archive by musical genres. These are piano pieces and other instrumental works, among them is one of the most popular opuses of the composer – “Jewish Prayer” for solo violin (the first performer – Honored Artist of Ukraine Hryhoriy Kuperman). Number a large of publications about the life and career of M. Karminskyi published in books and periodicals are collected, among them are K. Heivandova’s book (1981) “Mark Karminskyi”, the brief collection of memoirs about the composer (compiler – H. Hansburg, 2000) and the congregation of booklets of various festivals and competitions, for example, the booklets of the International Music Festival “Kharkiv Assemblies”, in which the composer has participated since the day of their founding. The booklet of the M. Karminskyi Choral Music Festival testifies to a unique phenomenon in the musical life of the city: never before or since has such a large-scale event dedicated to the work of a single person taken place attracting so many choirs from all Ukraine. A separate array of documents is the photo archive, which includes 136 portraits, photos from various events; 41 of them were donated by a famous Kharkiv photographer Yu. L. Shcherbinin. The audio-video archive of M. V. Karminskyi consists of records of his works, released by the company “Melody”: staging of performances “Robin Hood”, “There are musketeers!” (based on the play by M. Svetlov “20 years later”), various songs, video and tape cassettes with recordings of concerts. Other interesting documents have been preserved, for example, a typewritten script for the Kharkiv TV program about M. Karminskyi with his own participation or the library form, which can be used to trace his preferences as a reader. M. Karminskyi also compiled reviews of publications on the performance of his works and short bibliographic descriptions of their print editions. Conclusions. M. Karminskyi’s personal archive founded by him own in Kharkiv ‘K. S. Stanislavskyi’ Music and Theater Library has been functioning as an independent library fund since 1996 and today it is an unique comprehensive ordered collection, which is freely available and stores documents of various types: music publications and manuscripts, newspaper and magazine fragments, announces, photos, sound and video documents. M. Karminskyi’s archival fund is used as a documentary source for scientific researches (the Candidate’s dissertations of art critics Yu. Ivanova (2001) and E. Kushchova (2004) were defended using the materials of the archive) and as a basic congregation of works by the composer for their performance. The use of digital technologies is part of the necessary modern perspective of the fund’s development, the value of which as a primary source of historical and cultural information only grows over time.

The article analyzes different types of metaphors used in the media to describe the war. The purpose of the article is to identify the most frequent types of war metaphors, isolating one of the most ancient ways of actualizing the war concept ‒ a generic metaphor. The relevance of the undertaken research is determined by the appeal to various types of erased metaphors that are actively used in the media to refer to both the wars themselves and to describe the strategies and tactics of warfare, naming people who are in certain relationships during the war, as well as those events that are metaphorically presented as a war. The scientific novelty consists in the introduction into scientific circulation of the terms generic code of linguoculture and social code of linguoculture, actively involved in the descriptions of both war and civilian life, not only in the media, but also in any type of discourse. Objectives of the article: 1. To identify the specifics of the implementation of the generic code of Russian linguoculture on the example of media discourse about the war; 2. To present a classification of different types of war metaphors in the newspapers “Parliamentary Bulletin” and “Vedomosti”; 3. To correlate metaphors with symbols of Russian linguoculture. The article analyzes several types of erased metaphors, a special place among which is occupied by generic, social and theomorphic, which retain their productivity in modern media. The topic raised has not been previously addressed in the scientific literature; this is the novelty of the study. Main methods: analytical, descriptive and interpretive. The study noted ten main metaphors that actualize the war concept in the media discourse: generic, social, theomorphic, thread and theater metaphors (in which the metaphor of puppets is hidden), ritual, traditional, game. The war concept in Russian linguoculture is actualized by erased metaphors. The perspective of the study is the description of different types of metaphors in other types of discourses, individual genres, author’s language pictures of the world.

The relevance of the research lies in the search for a solution to the problem of the plasticchoreographic image of the work, the peculiarities of the interpretation of dance in the process of the formation of the Ukrainian national opera school, taking into account the author's intention, its rethinking in the realities of our time. Scientific novelty lies in the definition of conceptual approaches to the genre-style interpretation of dance scenes in Ukrainian opera in accordance with the theatrical aesthetics of a particular time. The purpose of the publication is to determine the evolutionary modifications of the solution of plastic-choreographic scenes of musical and theatrical works in accordance with the aesthe-tic concepts of different stages of the formation of the Ukrainian national opera school. Research methods. In the context of an integrated intersectoral approach at the junction of philosophy, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, musicology and theatre studies, comparative and art history research methods are chosen as determinants. Their use makes it possible to determine the similarity and difference between genre-style interpretations of dance scenes in accordance with the theatrical aesthetics of a particular time. The main results and conclusions of the study. The article examines the process of formation of dance scenes in the historical context of the development of the Ukrainian opera school. The features of the use of dance at different stages of the formation of the national repertoire in various configurations of the Ukrainian musical theatre from its origins to the present day are outlined. The fundamental principles of the interpretation of dance in Ukrainian opera, laid down in the predecessors of the national musical theatre – old games, a puppet nativity scene, baroque school drama, palace theatres of Ukrainian, Polish, Russian magnates of the era of classicism, are character-rized. The evolutionary modifications of the plastic-choreographic solution of opera performances against the background of the genesis of the Ukrainian musical theatre are analyzed. The well-established key approaches to the interpretation of dance scenes in the Ukrainian opera are determined, mainly the positive role of choreography in solving the musical drama of the performance. The author highlights the differences between Ukrainian opera content and Western European and Russian traditions, where vocals as the personification of a person's soul or the image of a friend, and dance as the embodiment of temptations or the image of an enemy are quite often in opposition to each other. The specificity of the interpretation of dance in the Ukrainian opera through the prism of its historical formation is clarified: from the use of divertissement samples of the times of classicism through illustrative and pictorial eras of romanticism, efficiently expressive epochs of realism and Soviet reality to conventionally symbolic, conventionally abstract in the culture of modernity and postmodernism. Different approaches to the solution of dance in opera performances in evacuation and in the occupied territories with distinction in the East and West of Ukraine have been established. The conceptual approaches of the genre-style interpretation of dance scenes in the Ukrainian opera are revealed in accordance with the theatrical aesthetics of a particular time. Attention is focused on the prospects for the emergence of new genre-stylistic forms with the gravitation of their plastic-choreographic solution to neosyncretism.

Отмечается, что данное произведение не становилось ранее предметом специального исследования, чем обусловливается новизна и актуальность настоящей работы. Автор статьи, с одной стороны, преследует цель изучения поэтики фольклорного театра в стихотворении; с другой стороны, объясняет причину обращения А. Черного к форме народной кукольной комедии. В исследовании освещаются обстоятельства создания стихотворения-пьесы. Показывается, что данное произведение было написано в наиболее сложный период эмигрантской жизни А. Черного, когда он с трудом мог добывать средства к существованию. Сложными в это время были отношения и в эмигрантских кругах. В статье демонстрируется, как эти автобиографические моменты отразились в тексте стихотворения-пьесы. По мнению автора исследования, основное внимание А. Черного направлено не на воссоздание эмигрантского быта, для чего форма кукольного представления и образ Петрушки малопригодны, а на раскрытие самоощущения человека, оказавшегося в эмиграции. В статье показывается, как для реализации этой цели А. Черный использует поэтику фольклорного комического представления; каким образом переосмысляет ее в трагикомическом плане. В заключительной части делается вывод о том, что выбор образа Петрушки для рассказа об эмигрантской жизни продиктован не только характерным для А. Черного стремлением соединять в своих произведениях «смех и слезы», но и глубоким пониманием сущности фольклорного персонажа: Петрушка не конкретизирован социально, его невозможно полностью идентифицировать с человеком; это кукла, только «притворяющаяся» живой. Использование поэтом данного персонажа для раскрытия душевного состояния эмигранта — человека, вырванного из родной почвы, чувствующего себя неорганично в чужой действительности, утратившего ощущение полноты жизни, — представляется вполне закономерным. A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature, Russian Academy of Science, Abstract. The article regards the poem-play by A. Cherny «Petrushka in Paris». It is noted that the work has not been previously studied, which determines the novelty and relevance of the research conducted. The author, on the one hand, aims to review the ways of mastering the poetics of folklore theater by A. Cherny; on the other hand, there is an objective to understand why the poet was attracted by the form of folk puppet comedy and its principal character — Petrushka. The study highlights the circumstances of the poem-play creation. It claims that it was actually the most difficult period of A. Cherny’s emigrant life, when he could hardly earn a living that saw the poem appear. The relations in emigrant circles were also complicated at that time. The article demonstrates how these autobiographical moments were reflected in the text of the poem-play. Nevertheless, A. Cherny’s primary focus is on revealing the self-perception of a person finding himself in emigration rather than on recreating emigrant life, for which the form of a puppet show along with the image of Petrushka are not suitable. The article shows how A. Cherny uses the poetics of folklore comic representation to achieve this goal; the way he rethinks it in tragicomic terms. Finally, it is concluded that the image of Petrushka selected for the story of emigrant life is prompted not only by A. Cherny willing to combine «laughter and tears» in his works, but also by a deep understanding of the folklore character’s nature: Petrushka is not portrayed socially, it is impossible to fully identify him with a person; it is a doll, only «pretending to be» alive. The poet turning to this character seeks to reveal the inner state of an emigrant — a person parted from his native land, feeling disoriented in someone else’s reality, who has lost the feeling of fullness of life, which appears quite natural.

The article highlights the diversity of Alexei Prokopovich Chugyu`s talent as a teacher, literary critic, playwright. It reveales his pedagogical skill secrets, which are primarily shown in expressive, emotional teaching methods, stage temperament, creative energy, sincere taste of humor, high professionalism, boundless devotion to the chosen case and special love for the students. The article focuses attention on his interesting in theater art, in particular he was actively involved in concerts of rural amateur groups, performing his reading of artistic works and also declared about himself as an unrivaled actor of amateur groups, in particular, student groups that performed theatrical productions by classics of Russian and Ukrainian literature and their plays. Speaking about the Alexei Chugyu`s pedagogical talent, the article stated that Chugyu performed a lot of public tasks, in particular he was dean`s deputy director of the philological faculty, when he was a teacher and subsequently was assistant professor of faculty of Ukrainian literature history . It was found that while being on the position as a teacher, and later as a professor of history in the Ukrainian literature department, he performed a number of public tasks, in particular, he was Deputy Dean and Acting Dean of the Philological Faculty of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. There was defined range of scientific interests focused on iconic figures in the history of Ukrainian literature like I. Karpenko-Karyi, T. Shevchenko, G. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko and O. Gonchar, writers whose works he admired through his life and who contributed the formation of his aesthetic tastes, love for art in general, words in particular and the choice of a philologist's profession. It was noted that Alexei Chugyu successfully combines teaching and scientific work with artistic creativity, in particular he declared about himself as an unrivaled playwright in the literary field. There were emphasized main directions in dramatic discourse, in particular political, biographical and experimental ones. Also there were emphasized that Chugyu-playwright is focus on child characters psychology. Admiring the puppet theater as a kind of comedy development of reality, Alexei Prokopovich carried out his own artistic experiment, which gave plays for young readers and spectators as a result.

Введение. Дается краткая история итальянской литературной сказки, выделены основные черты ее поэтики, охарактеризованы важнейшие особенности ее рецепции в русской литературе XIX–XX вв. Цель – представить сравнительный анализ перевода сказки К. Коллоди «Приключения Пиноккио», выполненного Э. Казакевичем, и ее перевода-переделки, осуществленного А. Толстым под названием «Золотой ключик, или Приключения Буратино». Материал и методы. Материалом исследования послужили переводы сказки К. Коллоди «Приключения Пиноккио» на русский язык, выполненные частично А. Толстым (первые четыре главы) и полностью Э. Казакевичем. При написании статьи использовались историко-культурный и сравнительно-исторический методы, позволяющие рассмотреть оригинальный и переводной текст в рамках межкультурного диалога. Важное место уделяется переводческим рецептивным подходам и имагологическому методу. Результаты и обсуждение. Раскрывается история создания сказки К. Коллоди «Приключения Пиноккио» и ее переводов на русский язык на рубеже XIX–XX вв. Особое внимание уделяется берлинскому переводу «Приключений Пиноккио» (1924) на русский язык, выполненному Н. Петровской и отредактированному А. Толстым. Данный перевод воспринимается как текст-посредник между сказкой К. Коллоди и «Золотым ключиком» А. Толстого. Доказывается, что действие в произведении К. Коллоди строится по законам комедии дель арте, у А. Толстого – в соответствии с традициями русского кукольного театра и авантюрной повести. Анализируются инициальный сюжет и структурные элементы волшебной сказки, на которую ориентируется русский автор. Эквивалентный перевод Э. Казакевича сказки К. Коллоди сравнивается с переводом-переделкой А. Толстого, для которого характерны сюжетная и композиционная сжатость по сравнению с оригиналом, повествовательная динамика и стилистический лаконизм. Сравнение сказки К. Коллоди с ее переводом у Э. Казакевича и переводом-переделкой у А. Толстого позволяет утверждать, что между оригиналом, переводом Э. Казакевича и сказкой «Золотой ключик» устанавливается сложная семантико-эстетическая связь, т. е. текст, пришедший из одной культуры в другую, прямым образом влияет на эту последнюю, обогащая ее новыми смыслами, побуждая к созданию самостоятельных произведений на основе заимствования образов, отдельных сюжетных схем и мотивов. Заключение. Таким образом, одной из характерных особенностей русско-итальянских литературных связей в области детской литературы XIX–XX вв. явилась активация процесса перевода. Можно утверждать, что «включение» итальянской литературы в развитие собственной литературы и в духовную жизнь нации в эти годы в России происходило более интенсивно, чем в других странах. Русская литература, воспринимая итальянские сюжеты и образы, придавала им свою интерпретацию. Произведения итальянских писателей открывали новый мир и новые представления об Италии. История «Приключений Пиноккио» неповторима, многочисленные переводы стали поворотом в ее судьбе, они даровали сказке новую жизнь в другой языковой среде. Переводы, существующие наравне с оригиналом в различных культурных контекстах, независимо от пространства и времени, давали литературной сказке возможность прожить бесконечное множество жизней. В XIX–XX вв. переведенная на русский язык сказка К. Коллоди разными переводчиками вошла в сокровищницу детской литературы и навеки заняла в ней свое место, и каждый последующий перевод «Приключений Пиноккио» лишь подтверждал неизменную актуальность и востребованность сказки для юных читателей. Творчество К. Коллоди является нитью, связывающей и сближающей культуру Италии с культурой России. Итальянская сказка благодаря стараниям прежде всего А. Толстого и Э. Казакевича стала «общей» книгой для двух стран.Introduction. A brief history of the Italian literary tale is given, the main features of its poetics are highlighted, the most important features of its reception in Russian literature of the 19th-20th centuries are characterized. The goal - is to present a comparative analysis of the translation of the fairy tale by C. Collodi “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, made by E. Kazakevich, and its translation-alteration, carried out by A. Tolstoy under the title “The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratio”. Material and methods. The material of the study was the translation of C. Collodi’s fairy tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio” into Russian, made partially by A. Tolstoy (the first four chapters) and completely by E. Kazakevich. When writing the article, historical-cultural and comparative-historical methods were used, allowing to consider the original and translated text within the framework of intercultural dialogue. An important place is given to translational receptive approaches and the imagological method. Results and discussion. The story of the creation of C. Collody’s fairy tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio” and its translations into Russian at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries is revealed. Particular attention is paid to the Berlin translation of “The Adventures of Pinocchio” (1924) into Russian, made by N. Petrovskaya and edited by A. Tolstoy. This translation is perceived as an intermediary text between the C. Collody fairy tale and A. Tolstoy’s “Golden Key”. It is proved that the action in the work of C. Collodi is built according to the laws of commedia dell’arte, and by A. Tolstoy - in accordance with the traditions of the Russian puppet theater and an adventure story. The author analyzes the initial plot underlying the Italian fairy tale and the structural elements of the fairy tale, which the Russian author focuses on. The equivalent translation by E. Kazakevich of the fairy tale by K. Collodi is compared with the translation-remake of A. Tolstoy, which is characterized by plot and compositional contraction compared to the original, narrative dynamics and stylistic laconicism. Comparison of the C. Collody fairy tale with its translation by E. Kazakevich and the remake translation by A. Tolstoy suggests that a complex semantic and aesthetic connection is established between the original, E. Kazakevich’s translation and the fairy tale “Golden Key”, a text that has come from one culture to another directly affects this latter, enriching it with new meanings, encouraging the creation of independent works based on the borrowing of images, individual plot schemes and motifs. Conclusion. Thus, one of the characteristic features of Russian-Italian literary relations in the field of children’s literature of the 19th-20th centuries was the activation of the translation process. It can be argued that the “inclusion” of Italian literature in the development of their own literature and in the spiritual life of the nation during these years in Russia was more intense than in other countries. Russian literature, perceiving Italian plots and images, gave them their own interpretation. The works of Italian writers opened up a new world and new ideas about Italy. The story of “The Adventures of Pinocchio” is unique, numerous translations became a twist in its fate, they gave the fairy tale a new life in a different language environment. Translations that exist along with the original in various cultural contexts, regardless of space and time, gave the literary fairy tale the opportunity to live an infinite number of lives. In the XIX-XX centuries the fairy-tale by K. Collodi translated into Russian by various translators entered the treasury of children’s literature and took forever its place in it, and each subsequent translation of “The Adventures of Pinocchio” only confirmed the invariable relevance and relevance of the tale to young readers. The work of C. Collodi is a thread connecting and bringing together the culture of Italy with the culture of Russia. The Italian fairy tale, thanks to the efforts of, first of all, A. Tolstoy and E. Kazakevich, became a “common” book for the two countries.

AbstractThree texts about comic duos are compared. Foma and Yerema (F&Y), characters of a 17th-century Russian folk poem, are twins. Being harmless idiots, they suffer endless failures, are regularly beaten and eventually drowned. Two other brothers, Max and Moritz (M&M), heroes of a quasi-didactic German poem for children written and illustrated by Wilhelm Busch (1865), play ruthless tricks on their neighbors. Eventually they are caught and ground in a mill. Beavis and Butt-head (B&B) are heroes of American animated cartoons by Mike Judge (1993). These juvenile imbeciles are intermediate between F&Y and M&M in terms of mischief and are centered on sex, never realizable. Despite understandable differences between the texts, numerous similarities are evident. All the three duos resemble twin clowns, fools, jesters, and mythical tricksters. F&Y are “dupes”, M&M are “knaves”, and B&B are ambiguous. Archaic parallels include interchangeability of characters, consonant names, grotesque appearance, violence, obscenities, connection with birds, etc. Whether these parallels are “archetypical” or derive from some common source, is not clear. In all cases, the potential moral response evoked by the description of quasi-dramatic events is cancelled by comic devices aimed at dehumanizing the characters and making them similar to puppet-like characters of folk theatre.

Introduction Automated or semi-automated software agents, better known as bots, have become an integral part of social media platforms. Reportedly, bots now generate twenty-four per cent of all posts on Twitter (Orlean “Man”), yet we know very little about who these bots are, what they do, or how to attend to these bots. This article examines one particular prominent exemplar: @Horse_ebooks, a much beloved Twitter bot that turned out not to be a “proper” bot after all. By examining how people responded to the revelations that the @Horse_ebooks account was in fact a human and not an automated software program, the intention here is not only to nuance some of the more common discourses around Twitter bots as spam, but more directly and significantly, to use the concept of persona as a useful analytical framework for understanding the relationships people forge with bots. Twitter bots tend to be portrayed as annoying parasites that generate “fake traffic” and “steal identities” (Hill; Love; Perlroth; Slotkin). According to such news media presentations, bots are part of an “ethically-questionable industry,” where they operate to provide an (false) impression of popularity (Hill). In a similar vein, much of the existing academic research on bots, especially from a computer science standpoint, tends to focus on the destructive nature of bots in an attempt to design better spam detection systems (Laboreiro et.al; Weiss and Tscheligi; Zangerle and Specht). While some notable exceptions exist (Gehl; Hwang et al; Mowbray), there is still an obvious lack of research on Twitter bots within Media Studies. By examining a case of “bot fakeness”—albeit in a somewhat different manner—this article contributes an understanding of Twitter bots as medium-specific personas. The case of @Horse_ebooks does show how people treat it as having a distinct personality. More importantly, this case study shows how the relationship people forge with an alleged bot differs from how they would relate to a human. To understand the ambiguity of the concept of persona as it applies to bots, this article relies on para-social interaction theory as developed by Horton and Wohl. In their seminal article first published in 1956, Horton and Wohl understood para-social interaction as a “simulacrum of conversational give and take” that takes place particularly between mass media users and performers (215). The relationship was termed para-social because, despite of the nonreciprocal exposure situation, the viewer would feel as if the relationship was real and intimate. Like theater, an illusory relationship would be created between what they called the persona—an “indigenous figure” presented and created by the mass media—and the viewer (Horton and Wohl 216). Like the “new types of performers” created by the mass media—”the quizmasters, announcers or ‘interviewers’” —bots too, seem to represent a “special category of ‘personalities’ whose existence is a function of the media themselves” (Horton and Wohl 216). In what follows, I revisit the concept of para-social interaction using the case of @Horse_ebooks, to show that there is potential to expand an understanding of persona to include non-human actors as well. Everything Happens So Much: The Case of @Horse_ebooks The case of the now debunked Twitter account @Horse_ebooks is interesting for a number of reasons, not least because it highlights the presence of what we might call botness, the belief that bots possess distinct personalities or personas that are specific to algorithms. In the context of Twitter, bots are pieces of software or scripts that are designed to automatically or semi-automatically publish tweets or make and accept friend requests (Mowbray). Typically, bots are programmed and designed to be as humanlike as possible, a goal that has been pursued ever since Alan Turing proposed what has now become known as the Turing test (Gehl; Weiss and Tschengeli). The Turing test provides the classic challenge for artificial intelligence, namely, whether a machine can impersonate a human so convincingly that it becomes indistinguishable from an actual human. This challenge is particularly pertinent to spambots as they need to dodge the radar of increasingly complex spam filters and detection algorithms. To avoid detection, bots masquerade as “real” accounts, trying to seem as human as possible (Orlean “Man”). Not all bots, however, pretend to be humans. Bots are created for all kinds of purposes. As Mowbray points out, “many bots are designed to be informative or otherwise useful” (184). For example, bots are designed to tweet news headlines, stock market quotes, traffic information, weather forecasts, or even the hourly bell chimes from Big Ben. Others are made for more artistic purposes or simply for fun by hackers and other Internet pundits. These bots tell jokes, automatically respond to certain keywords typed by other users, or write poems (i.e. @pentametron, @ProfJocular). Amidst the growing bot population on Twitter, @Horse_ebooks is perhaps one of the best known and most prominent. The account was originally created by Russian web developer Alexey Kouznetsov and launched on 5 August 2010. In the beginning, @Horse_ebooks periodically tweeted links to an online store selling e-books, some of which were themed around horses. What most people did not know, until it was revealed to the public on 24 September 2013 (Orlean “Horse”), was that the @Horse_ebooks account had been taken over by artist and Buzzfeed employee Jacob Bakkila in September 2011. Only a year after its inception, @Horse_ebooks went from being a bot to being a human impersonating a bot impersonating a human. After making a deal with Kouznetsov, Bakkila disabled the spambot and started generating tweets on behalf of @Horse_ebooks, using found material and text strings from various obscure Internet sites. The first tweet in Bakkila’s disguise was published on 14 September 2011, saying: “You will undoubtedly look on this moment with shock and”. For the next two years, streams of similar, “strangely poetic” (Chen) tweets were published, slowly giving rise to a devoted and growing fan base. Over the years, @Horse_ebooks became somewhat of a cultural phenomenon—an Internet celebrity of sorts. By 2012, @Horse_ebooks had risen to Internet fame; becoming one of the most mentioned “spambots” in news reports and blogs (Chen). Responses to the @Horse_ebooks “Revelation” On 24 September 2013, journalist Susan Orlean published a piece in The New Yorker revealing that @Horse_ebooks was in fact “human after all” (Orlean “@Horse_ebooks”). The revelation rapidly spurred a plethora of different reactions by its followers and fans, ranging from indifference, admiration and disappointment. Some of the sadness and disappointment felt can be seen clearly in the many of media reports, blog posts and tweets that emerged after the New Yorker story was published. Meyer of The Atlantic expressed his disbelief as follows: @Horse_ebooks, reporters told us, was powered by an algorithm. [...] We loved the horse because it was the network talking to itself about us, while trying to speak to us. Our inventions, speaking—somehow sublimely—of ourselves. Our joy was even a little voyeuristic. An algorithm does not need an audience. To me, though, that disappointment is only a mark of the horse’s success. We loved @Horse_ebooks because it was seerlike, childlike. But no: There were people behind it all along. We thought we were obliging a program, a thing which needs no obliging, whereas in fact we were falling for a plan. (Original italics) People felt betrayed, indeed fooled by @Horse_ebooks. As Watson sees it, “The internet got up in arms about the revelation, mostly because it disrupted our desire to believe that there was beauty in algorithms and randomness.” Several prominent Internet pundits, developers and otherwise computationally skilled people, quickly shared their disappointment and even anger on Twitter. As Jacob Harris, a self-proclaimed @Horse_ebooks fan and news hacker at the New York Times expressed it: Harris’ comparisons to the winning chess-playing computer Deep Blue speaks to the kind of disappointment felt. It speaks to the deep fascination that people feel towards the mysteries of the machine. It speaks to the fundamental belief in the potentials of machine intelligence and to the kind of techno-optimism felt amongst many hackers and “webbies.” As technologist and academic Dan Sinker said, “If I can’t rely on a Twitter bot to actually be a bot, what can I rely on?” (Sinker “If”). Perhaps most poignantly, Sinker noted his obvious disbelief in a blog post tellingly titled “Eulogy for a horse”: It’s been said that, given enough time, a million monkeys at typewriters would eventually, randomly, type the works of Shakespeare. It’s just a way of saying that mathematically, given infinite possibilities, eventually everything will happen. But I’ve always wanted it literally to be true. I’ve wanted those little monkeys to produce something beautiful, something meaningful, and yet something wholly unexpected.@Horse_ebooks was my monkey Shakespeare. I think it was a lot of people’s…[I]t really feels hard, like a punch through everything I thought I knew. (Sinker “Eulogy”) It is one thing is to be fooled by a human and quite another to be fooled by a “Buzzfeed employee.” More than anything perhaps, the question of authenticity and trustworthiness seems to be at stake. In this sense, “It wasn’t the identities of the feed’s writers that shocked everyone (though one of the two writers works for BuzzFeed, which really pissed people off). Rather, it was the fact that they were human in the first place” (Farago). As Sinker put it at the end of the “Eulogy”: I want to believe this wasn’t just yet another internet buzz-marketing prank.I want to believe that @Horse was as beautiful and wonderful today as it was yesterday.I want to believe that beauty can be assembled from the randomness of life all around us.I want to believe that a million monkeys can make something amazingGod.I really, really do want to believe.But I don’t think I do.And that feels even worse. Bots as Personae: Revisiting Horton and Wohl’s Concept of Para-Social Relations How then are we to understand and interpret @Horse_ebooks and peoples’ responses to the revelations? Existing research on human-robot relations suggest that machines are routinely treated as having personalities (Turkle “Life”). There is even evidence to suggest that people often imagine relationships with (sufficiently responsive) robots as being better than relationships with humans. As Turkle explains, this is because relationships with machines, unlike humans, do not demand any ethical commitments (Turkle “Alone”). In other words, bots are oftentimes read and perceived as personas, with which people forge affective relationships. The term “persona” can be understood as a performance of personhood. In a Goffmanian sense, this performance describes how human beings enact roles and present themselves in public (Goffman). As Moore puts it, “the persona is a projection, a puppet show, usually constructed by an author and enlivened by the performance, interpretation, or adaptation”. From Marcel Mauss’ classic analysis of gifts as objects thoroughly personified (Scott), through to the study of drag queens (Stru¨bel-Scheiner), the concept of persona signifies a masquerade, a performance. As a useful concept to theorise the performance and doing of personhood, persona has been used to study everything from celebrity culture (Marshall), fiction, and social networking sites (Zhao et al.). The concept also figures prominently in Human Computer Interaction and Usability Studies where the creation of personas constitutes an important design methodology (Dong et al.). Furthermore, as Marshall points out, persona figures prominently in Jungian psychoanalysis where it exemplifies the idea of “what a man should appear to be” (166). While all of these perspectives allow for interesting analysis of personas, here I want to draw on an understanding of persona as a medium specific condition. Specifically, I want to revisit Horton and Wohl’s classic text about para-social interaction. Despite the fact that it was written almost 60 years ago and in the context of the then emerging mass media – radio, television and movies – their observations are still relevant and useful to theorise the kinds of relations people forge with bots today. According to Horton and Wohl, the “persona offers, above all, a continuing relationship. His appearance is a regular and dependable event, to be counted on, planned for, and integrated into the routines of daily life” (216). The para-social relations between audiences and TV personas are developed over time and become more meaningful to the audience as it acquires a history. Not only are devoted TV audiences characterized by a strong belief in the character of the persona, they are also expected to “assume a sense of personal obligation to the performer” (Horton and Wohl 220). As Horton and Wohl note, “the “fan” - comes to believe that he “knows” the persona more intimately and profoundly than others do; that he “understands” his character and appreciates his values and motives (216). In a similar vein, fans of @Horse_ebooks expressed their emotional attachments in blog posts and tweets. For Sinker, @Horse_ebooks seemed to represent the kind of dependable and regular event that Horton and Wohl described: “Even today, I love @Horse_ebooks. A lot. Every day it was a gift. There were some days—thankfully not all that many—where it was the only thing I looked forward to. I know that that was true for others as well” (Sinker “Eulogy”). Judging from searching Twitter retroactively for @Horse_ebooks, the bot meant something, if not much, to other people as well. Still, almost a year after the revelations, people regularly tweet that they miss @Horse_ebooks. For example, Harris tweets messages saying things like: “I’m still bitter about @Horse_ebooks” (12 November 2013) or “Many of us are still angry and hurt about @Horse_ebooks” (27 December 2013). Twitter user @third_dystopia says he feels something is missing from his life, realizing “horse eBooks hasn’t tweeted since September.” Another of the many messages posted in retrospect similarly says: “I want @Horse_ebooks back. Ever since he went silent, Twitter hasn’t been the same for me” (Lockwood). Indeed, Marshall suggests that affect is at “the heart of a wider persona culture” (162). In a Deleuzian understanding of the term, affect refers to the “capacity to affect and be affected” (Steward 2). Borrowing from Marshall, what the @Horse_ebooks case shows is “that there are connections in our culture that are not necessarily coordinated with purposive and rational alignments. They are organised around clusters of sentiment that help situate people on various spectra of activity and engagement” (162). The concept of persona helps to understand how the performance of @Horse_ebooks depends on the audience to “contribute to the illusion by believing in it” (Horton and Wohl 220). “@Horse_ebooks was my monkey” as Sinker says, suggests a fundamental loss. In this case the para-social relation could no longer be sustained, as the illusion of being engaged in a relation with a machine was taken away. The concept of para-social relations helps not only to illuminate the similarities between how people reacted to @Horse_ebooks and the way in which Horton and Wohl described peoples’ reactions to TV personas. It also allows us to see some crucial differences between the ways in which people relate to bots compared to how they relate to a human. For example, rather than an expression of grief at the loss of a social relationship, it could be argued that the responses triggered by the @Horse_ebooks revelations was of a more general loss of belief in the promises of artificial intelligence. To a certain extent, the appeal of @Horse_ebooks was precisely the fact that it was widely believed not to be a person. Whereas TV personas demand an ethical and social commitment on the part of the audience to keep the masquerade of the performer alive, a bot “needs no obliging” (Meyer). Unlike TV personas that depend on an illusory sense of intimacy, bots do “not need an audience” (Meyer). Whether or not people treat bots in the same way as they treat TV personas, Horton and Wohl’s concept of para-social relations ultimately points towards an understanding of the bot persona as “a function of the media themselves” (Horton and Wohl 216). If quizmasters were seen as the “typical and indigenous figures” of mass media in 1956 (Horton and Wohl 216), the bot, I would suggest, constitutes such an “indigenous figure” today. The bot, if not exactly a “new type of performer” (Horton and Wohl 216), is certainly a pervasive “performer”—indeed a persona—on Twitter today. While @Horse_ebooks was somewhat paradoxically revealed as a “performance art” piece (Orlean “Man”), the concept of persona allows us to see the “real” performance of @Horse_ebooks as constituted in the doing of botness. As the responses to @Horse_ebooks show, the concept of persona is not merely tied to beliefs about “what man should appear to be” (Jung 158), but also to ideas about what a bot should appear to be. Moreover, what the curious case of @Horse_ebooks shows, is how bots are not necessarily interpreted and judged by the standards of the original Turing test, that is, how humanlike they are, but according to how well they perform as bots. 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