Masterclass with Ivan Vyrypaev: "What is a stage play?"

A play is a “thing” and therefore there is a common universal principle that underlies the creation of all human-made things on earth. By understanding and following this principle, people learn to express themselves, discover their evolutionary potentials, and enjoy life. In this masterclass, Vyrypaev will discuss the universal principle of creating a certain “thing”: the stage play. By presenting examples from different areas of life, he focuses on how things are created on a general scale, analyzing the process of creativity and its impact on various aspects of our everyday experiences. That is why he firmly believes that his formulations are interesting not only to the professional theater community, but also to anyone who wishes to have a better understanding of the creative process and its application in other life areas.

Today, in contemporary theater, the director tends to be the playwright as well; in other words, directors do not stage plays, but their personal visions of the plays. Therefore, the audience does not have the opportunity to get familiarized with the dramaturgy delivered by the great writers of the past or the modern day. The vast majority of theater workers and spectators have zero knowledge of what a play is and what are its key components. This knowledge has almost ceased to exist. The stage play is a particular art form that has almost lost its power by now. Today, the only places that actually deal with stage plays are Broadway or the West End, i.e., places where commercial theater is at play. Vyrypaev has worked in commercial theater all his life, thus he strongly believes that this the best place for real art to emerge. So his talk is addressed to all those who want to be relevant, modern, in fashion, and, at the same time, to those who wish to have a deeper understanding of life and learn more about themselves!

Main themes of the masterclass:

- What are the main components of a stage play?

- What does it mean to stage a playwright?

- What does it mean to stage a play?

- Introducing the audience to the system of analyzing a play

- Useful tools for working in contemporary theater

- Main trends in contemporary art and modern science.

- Business corporations and art

- The history of world religions

- Modern management and the approach to stage directing

- The question of human spiritual and evolutionary development

“I write for a generation of educated young people who do not go to the theater that often,” the leading spokesman of the New Russian Drama, Ivan Vyrypaev, stated in 2003, now ostracized by the Russian regime and a naturalized Polish citizen. A theatrical manifesto of the 00s generation, “Oxygen” was written as a prose narrated by two characters – a girl and a boy bearing the same name – accompanied by a live DJ-set to allow its staging in theatrical venues and clubs equally. Structured in ten chapters, like a transcription of the Ten Commandments and a novel New Testament, it launched from a reversed “Thou shalt not kill” to culminate into a biblical Revelation, all the while permeated by the agonizing question: “What is oxygen to you?”.