Each of us has a habitual image, a well-established role, formed under the influence of circumstances, the expectations of others. But at some point there is a need to change it, sometimes, to the completely opposite.
In ancient Greece, actors were divided into comedians and tragedians. Under classicism, the classification of roles became more detailed: heroes and lovers, villains and simpletons, tyrants, reasoners, lackeys. The role was determined by external and internal data. For example, an actor of small stature and with a high voice could only count on the role of a comic plan, even if in sweet conceited dreams he saw himself as a lover or a tyrant.
The fight against theatrical roles began in the twentieth century, but in fact they still exist. Where to get away from external and internal data? However, it is characteristic: the longing for a change in role has been preserved. How many actors’ confessions have we heard, when the actress playing the role of Kabanikh regrets that she never played Juliet, and the famous comedian – that the directors did not see Hamlet in him.
It’s exactly the same in life. One of the translations of the word “role” from French means “role”. And every social being, as you know, to one degree or another plays a role in life. So, a person is very often dissatisfied with his role, believing that it was imposed on him first by nature, then by circumstances. In childhood and adolescence, this takes on tragicomic forms.
A brown-eyed girl dreams that her eyes become blue, like those of an adored friend or favorite actress. To get her daughter out of a psychological stupor, the mother says that over the years, many eyes change color, but thanks to this deception, the dream turns into a manic obsession. So it is with brunettes who dream of becoming blondes (with time, however, this dream, however, is easily realized), with short and fat boys who want to grow up tall and slender. And how many misfortunes from a voice that does not break for a long time, which makes it difficult to show masculinity. How much trouble because of the hair, not wanting to take the form of a hairstyle that entered the soul from the barbershop window.
Someone throws glasses into the box to avoid ridicule. And the other, having got into the company of “tadpoles”, on the contrary, puts on eyepieces he does not need, because he looks smarter in them. An inveterate comedian, tired of his role, one fine morning decides to appear serious in front of his peers, which, to his horror, his friends take only for a new comic mask. A person suffering from his lack of resourcefulness prepares jokes at home, the next day he throws them out of place and gets into funny situations. The wit, on the other hand, composes heartbreaking verses at night, tinged with violet twilight. He is lonely, no one understands him.
Both laughter and sin, funny and seriously dramatic. The problem is understandable – there is an adaptation to the role, the development of a stable idea of uXNUMXbuXNUMXboneself. And also parents, and the teacher, and all the media set someone as an example, urge to be brought up on models, instead of teaching the child to value himself, to cultivate and improve his own best qualities. Look how strong he is! Do you want to be like this? Sometimes he rebels, shouts: “But I am! ..” – but the secret desire to conform to the model has already settled in him, like a fungus, and now it will corrode from the inside for a long time.
However, the desire to change roles is not limited to age complexes and mistakes in education. We are complex, and the predetermined plot really does not exhaust the possibilities inherent in us. A tough boxer with the reflection of Hamlet, a tailor with the gift of Parajanov. All this is real.
Sometimes a risky change of role gives amazing results. Illustrative examples again from the acting life. It was a feat on the part of the directors to see in the great clown Yuri Nikulin the hero of the future films Scarecrow, When the Trees Were Big, Twenty Days Without War. They took risks, the authorities protested, and he always knew that under the clown mask he carried a sense of drama. But at the same time, he remained unsurpassed as a clown.
In life, such a change in role is much more difficult to achieve. A person falls into his own type, partly created by himself, as if in a case. Try to get out of it.
But the fact is that in life such a sharp change is not required. It would be both funny and tragic. Here it is necessary to complicate the image, the gradual manifestation of one’s own, until the time hidden from prying eyes, but not borrowed features and habits. This is growth, not breakage. Not a rejection of oneself, but an approximation to one’s true self, a revelation (almost a birth), which breaks the shell of the existing stereotype. No wonder I said that Nikulin, having already played amazing dramatic roles, continued to enter the arena and make the audience laugh. There is no contradiction in this.