The article is devoted to the urgent problem of rehabilitation and adaptation of people with disabilities to society. The functions of the theater are considered as the most effective contributing to the socialization of people with mental disabilities, mental disorders, intellectual disabilities. The work experience of various practical inclusions, "special theater", psychotherapeutic one proves that full-fledged creative activity in a theatrical collective, trainings from the arsenal of expressive means of performing arts, an individual teaching method, and integration contribute to a more successful involvement of people with disabilities into society.
theater, socialization, society, inclusion, integration, "Special theater", psychotherapeutic theater
The Constitution of the Russian Federation guarantees every person, regardless of social, national, religious affiliation, physical development, equal rights in the introduction to cultural values.
The state constantly takes care of people with disabilities, elderly people, people with disabilities in physical and intellectual development: it provides pensions, free medical care, and provides various benefits - that is, it provides social support. But this is not enough. It is important that people with developmental disabilities feel like full-fledged members of society, learn to live independently in society. Theater is an effective means of involving people with disabilities into society.
As one of the most ancient forms of art, theater is unique in its nature, in its power of influence not only on the mind, but above all on human emotions.
In modern Russia, theater plays an important role in the formation and development of a person's moral potential, in the realization of everyone's creative abilities, and contributes to an increase in the quality of the social and cultural environment.
One of the most important functions of the theater is the function of socialization. Actors and spectators are organically involved in the proposed circumstances and relationships of the stage characters, they assimilate certain social values much more effectively and efficiently due to emotional perception. "At the same time, the art of theater expands the boundaries of real life experience, gives a person the opportunity to live many different lives in the imagination. Spectators and performers learn models of social or cultural action, which embody the types of consciousness and behavior that society would like to make normative" [ 5, p. 55].
External images of social relations or cultural norms pass into the inner intellectual and spiritual world of a person.
Of great importance for socialization are children's theater groups, designed to "form value attitudes and behavioral models from a very young age" [5, p. 56].
The theater contributes to the socio-cultural self-realization of the individual, the development of individual creative abilities and talents, helps the individual in his spiritual self-determination, the growth of self-awareness, and the assertion of his unique individuality. The most important social function of the theater is cognitive. Plunging into the magical world of the theater, the world of stage images, through the actions of which he learns to distinguish between good and evil, a person learns the world around him, absorbs the spiritual and life experience of generations. Thanks to the educational function, the theater forms the guidelines and goals of everyday behavior in the surrounding reality, its ideological and moral laws. Sign or semiotic function helps to master and understand the system of symbols and stage techniques used in stage performances, especially the expressive means of stage art. The communicative function of the theater contributes to the exchange of feelings and emotions in the process of creating a performance, working on a role, establishing live contact between performers and spectators. A person with disabilities is more in need of positive emotions, and this is helped by the compensatory function of the theater, which contributes to the satisfaction of the need for creativity, in an interesting way of spending leisure time. And, finally, the play function is one of the main features of theatrical art, which is inherent to one degree or another in every person.
As soon as he begins to realize the world around him, the child plays with objects, animating them, improvising, creating his own world with fantasy and imagination, thereby fulfilling a person's need for self-realization and creativity from childhood.
The centuries-old history of the theater proves that theater is a living art, unique, which will always be important and relevant to society. The theater "is responsible for meeting certain social needs, for the socialization of the individual, for the formation of ethical and aesthetic ideas and norms, for the creation of conditions for the development of society and man" [5, p. 50].
Social responsibility is a characteristic feature of modern theater. These are those inclusive theater practices that are today used to "form cohesion in society and exercise the rights of access to cultural values and participation in the cultural life of those social groups that, due to their disabilities, are deprived of these rights" [5, p. 65].
The formation of means, forms that provide access to theatrical art for people with disabilities, poorly adapting to the life around them, is one of the main tasks of modern society.
Theatrical art has a specific feature - people communicate with each other in the process of preparing a performance and showing it to the viewer. Today the theater is already becoming a form of social work, providing new means for the social rehabilitation of people with disabilities.
Despite significant obstacles, these people dream of participating in the cultural life of the country. And to help them is the task not only of social workers, but also of creative creative directors, teachers, psychologists. This work requires the creation of certain conditions "to achieve equal opportunities for all, regardless of gender, age, social status, education, ethnicity, etc., in order to ensure full and active participation in all spheres of life" [6, p. 74]. And the main thing here, on the one hand, is the adaptation of the social environment to the individual capabilities and needs of a person with disabilities. On the other hand, there is the integration of people with disabilities into society and adaptation to it. People with disabilities actively participate in inclusive practices and create their own "Special Theater", where they gain experience of successful interaction. The objectives of the inclusive theater: "the development of the personality of the participants in the process of creative activity, improving the quality of life of people with disabilities through theatrical art, promoting the formation of a positive image of a person with disabilities in culture" [6, p. 76].
In recent years, integrative teams have appeared, in which not only people with disabilities, but also ordinary people participate. As a result of joint activities, team members acquire a more successful experience of inclusive interaction. "Each meeting of the "Special Theater" is an opportunity for all participants (including the director himself) to make a discovery in themselves and in the other (how to "feel" and live the possibilities and limitations of the other as their own collision), as well as to find and agree on the means expressing their experience in the conditions of developing interaction" [6, p. 79]. The "Special Theater" opens up wide opportunities for preparing society for social inclusion. On the one hand, theatrical activity is able to provide conditions for the creative self-realization of people with different abilities and needs through the disclosure of their abilities in the field of theatrical art. On the other hand, theatrical activity creates conditions for the formation of reverse inclusion, that is, it helps to form not only the participants, but also the audience a special social position"[6]. The popularity of the Special Theater is growing every year. The state supports the initiative of those non-profit organizations that are trying to solve the problem of social adaptation and rehabilitation of people with disabilities, using the potential of the theater. So in 1988, a GITIS graduate, director and teacher Boris Yukhananov created the Individual Directing Workshop (MIR). The main theatrical project of the Workshop for 11 years was "The Garden" - a unique project, an experiment to create a theatrical production self-developing in time [8]. According to the director, the participants in "Garden" "tried to get into the situation of composing a myth and at the same time become its participants. The purpose of the experiment was to see how this created myth will be reflected in the personal evolution of the participants in the performance and at the same time in the art that is on the path of the created myth"[7]. The basis was the staging of the play by A.P. Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard". The myth of the garden began to emerge during the reading of the play. The theme of the performance is about happiness and its acquisition and the impossibility of losing it. In total, seven variations of The Garden were created, and in each case it was a new birth of the play and the myth of the garden. In the 90s, Boris Yukhananov carried out a socio-cultural project in collaboration with people with Down syndrome. The project was called Downs Commenting on the World. In the process of implementing this project, Downs became garden creatures in one of the productions of The Garden, heroes or co-authors of the videos "Uncontrollable for Nobody," "Yes, Downs, or Walking after the Golden Birds". The project was aimed at social adaptation of people with congenital developmental disorders and education of tolerance to them. Boris Yukhananov's experiment was a laboratory work and did not lead to the creation of the "Special Theater".
In 1999, the "Simple-hearted" theater was created as a charitable project and a community of parents of children with Down syndrome. The most famous performance of the theater "Captain Kopeikin" based on Gogol, directed by Igor Neupokoev, a graduate of VGIK. The leader taught his actors with a special structure of the larynx and other physiological characteristics to speak expressively, clearly and competently on stage. The performance was very simple in form, but it created a special theatrical aesthetics imbued with the Gogol spirit.
Theater "Simple-minded" became a laureate of many European and All-Russian festivals of "special theaters". He was awarded the Crystal Sprout Theater Prize and the Support to Russian Theater Initiatives Prize of the Council of the President of Russia for Culture and Arts. Some former theater actors act in films, participate in performances of the Gogol Center, in the studio of Dmitry Brusnikin.
Inclusive practices that have been successfully developing in recent years in Russia have also demanded a scientific approach to the problem of rehabilitation and socialization of people with disabilities.
In Moscow, the Center for Social and Creative Rehabilitation "Circle" has been established at the Strogino Central Children's House. Artistic director of the theater studio, clinical psychologist N.T. Popova considers the main task "to create psychological stability for everyone. An obligatory toolkit is work with the deep subconsciousness"[3]. The main pedagogical principle is an individual approach to each team member. And taking into account its peculiarities, the search for specific means of theatrical expression - gesture, rhythm, sound, smell, touch - in order to develop the actor's own technique. In each performance, it was important to convey your pain, your problem and get rid of it with the help of plastic expressiveness, body language. In the process of work, one realizes that nothing can be expressed with the body without internal motivation.
One of the early performances of "Circle", "Do Flies Have Individuality", helped a 19-year-old autistic guy to free himself to some extent from an inferiority complex. The question "What am I doing wrong?" Constantly repeated by him, played up by each participant in the performance in his own way, led the guy to understand what was preventing him from freeing himself from his own "cap" in order to release the caught "fly" from under it [3].
In the theater "Circle II" under the direction of Andrei Afonin, the emphasis is on the development and disclosure of human individuality in the process of creative activity aimed at creating a performance. Theater A.B. Afonina helps to develop social interaction skills. This is a social theater that uses the possibilities of art therapy [2]. The play "Distant Proximity", created in collaboration with German colleague Gerd Hartmann, received the national "Golden Mask" award in 2012 and 2015. The theater is constantly working with artists to master the basics of acting, with parents, spectators, using the method of acting. In one of his interviews A. Afonin emphasized that he does not use the word "disabled". He treats people with disabilities as equal to himself. The purpose of inclusion is to include a person in society, to teach people to live independently. In the process of creating a performance, people with mental disabilities are transformed, acquire their "I", their attitude. Through creativity, special actors can declare deeper meanings. "We do not sympathize with a person with Down syndrome, but we build partnerships with him, he gives us something important to understand both in medicine and in pedagogy," said the famous director. "We are trying to create a new model of society, where there is a place for people with special needs." Today in Russia there are about a hundred collectives using the theater as a means of socialization and rehabilitation of people with disabilities. In the context of an ever-increasing humanization of society, the "Special Theater" is of interest. It is attended not only by people with disabilities, but also by employees, professional actors. An example of a successful solution to the problem of socialization of people with disabilities can be the experience of the psychotherapeutic "special theater" "We" in Tambov, which uses the brigade method of work [1]. The theater was opened on the basis of the psychosocial rehabilitation department of the Tambov Regional Psychiatric Hospital in 1998, becoming a member of the Russian-Canadian project "Public Rehabilitation in Psychiatry" along with five regions of Russia. Colleagues from Canada highly appreciated the experience of Tambov specialists, who were the first in the region to open the "Special Theater". In the first play, "The Island in Half", the actors were the staff of the department and four patients who played the roles of stones. Then the performance of moral and aesthetic orientation "Be good, be good" was born, where employees and patients also took part. This work experience has shown good results: some patients who were inpatient treatment in a closed ward for a long time were able to return to normal life. "This healing creative inspiration pulls out, rescues even from severe, persistent anxious depressions, from the feelings of meaninglessness of existence with pain for no one needlessness" [4].
The psychotherapeutic theater "We" received a new stage of development thanks to the support of the Tambov regional branch of the All-Russian public organization of disabled people "New Opportunities" in the implementation of the "Theater Teaches" project with the support of the Presidential Grants Fund. The aim is the rehabilitation of disabled people with mental disabilities. Today, the theater's repertoire already includes several performances: "Fly-Tsokotukha", "Kaleidoscope of Desires", "Time of Faith, Hope and Love", "ABC Fairy", "Wind Rose", "Crystal Heart" and others, as well as participation in festivals, numerous concerts, creative meetings. Now the theater has more than 30 participants, most of whom are teenagers. These are difficult, special artists suffering from various mental illnesses. It is very difficult to combine artistic results and rehabilitation, but it is possible thanks to consistent systematic practical work: trainings, special exercises, individual lessons. All attention is directed to the person, everything is built around him and for him. The director's vision and plot must develop and support the psychological, emotional and cultural needs of all participants in the performance. The scenario basis for such a performance is unique. Each lesson in the theater "We" begins with a traditional circle, which gives a sense of unity. After a short introductory speech by the leader, each participant expresses his opinion about the upcoming production, talks about his desires, what role he would like to play, what idea to convey, what to tell the viewer about. The director, taking into account all these wishes, makes adjustments to the script and finalizes it. This is how the play "The Rose of the Winds" was born quite recently, based on the texts of V. Shakespeare and G.Kh. Andersen. Such a technique of joint creativity makes all the participants in the performance aware that their opinion also matters, because it is very important for these teenagers to be heard. As a rule, here the actors do not play a learned role, but themselves and about themselves, about their feelings. They live on stage what they experience in real life, or what they wanted to experience. Thus, in the aforementioned play "Roses of the Winds", almost all the girls play the role of princesses. The director left them their own names, which allows them to identify with beautiful fairy-tale characters. This gives them the opportunity to experience, and not play minutes of happiness from the realization of their attractiveness and experience those feelings and emotions that they are deprived of in everyday life. It is believed that people with mental disabilities are not very expressive, and this is largely true. Therefore, much attention is paid here to practical exercises that stimulate speech and thinking activity and the removal of clamps. The expediency of exercises based on movement methods, breathing exercises, exercises for the tongue and muscles of the jaw, theatrical studies and games, exercises aimed at developing sensory coordination are very high. Such exercises help special adolescents not only get stronger physically, overcome their fears, but also learn to manage their emotions. Numerous studies suggest that emotions and mood even affect the immune system, reducing or increasing resistance to disease. In practical classes in the theater, students work with their body and psyche, learn open communication and expressive behavior. A whole team of professionals works in this project. Two social psychologists conduct social and domestic trainings aimed at developing everyday skills and mastering financial literacy. Stage speech and acting classes are taught by a professional drama theater actress, who is also a teacher of special disciplines at the university. The director, who also has an education in the field of clinical psychology, in addition to rehearsals of performances, conducts communication trainings in order to provide a new universal way of conveying information and organizing leisure.
The task of the theater is to teach special teenagers to be open, to help them not only self-actualize in creativity, which is undoubtedly important, but also to understand that they can also give something to this world. Feeling useful to society is an opportunity to live a conscious life.
Classes in the psychotherapeutic theater "We" helped many special adolescents successfully go through the process of socialization: to enroll in the technical school of industrial technologies and the Diversified College. I.T. Karasev, as well as find a job.
Special people are also worried about eternal questions: about the meaning of life, about good and evil, and about their place in this world. Psychotherapeutic theater has a positive emotional impact, activates cognitive processes, and helps the psychological adaptation of adolescents with disabilities in society.
For the interdisciplinary study of the rehabilitation and adaptation of people with mental disabilities or mental disabilities, intellectual disabilities to society, the festival "Protheatr", which has existed for twenty years under the leadership of Natalia Popova, is of particular importance.
Every three years, "Special Theaters" bring their performances to Moscow
Russian and foreign guests. The festival not only contributes to the expansion of the social and cultural space of the "Special Theater", but is a base for seminars, scientific conferences, exchange of experience. The festival is attended by psychologists, art historians, theater experts, philosophers, directors. The international focus of the festival contributes to the discussion of many issues of inclusive practices and a scientific approach to their solution.
A positive development in recent years is the participation of professional theaters and professional actors in such projects. For example, in 2014, Yevgeny Mironov, artistic director of the Theater of Nations, together with the Sovremennik theater, created a play for deaf-blind people "Touched" with the involvement of famous actors: Chulpan Khamatova, Evgeny Tsyganov, Anatoly Bely, Yegor Beroev and others. At each show of the performance, two artists sat on both sides of the stage. They spoke for the heroes, communicated with them, became, as it were, eyes, ears, and voices of the participants. "The Touched" is a play about human closeness, about attention to special people, about the opportunity to find common ground with them, to make friends.
It is gratifying that foreign partners also take part in many projects for the rehabilitation of people with disabilities.
Thus, the study showed the versatility of the use of performing arts, theater in socialization, rehabilitation and adaptation to the society of people with disabilities. Study, popularization, support of all initiatives in this direction from the state, society, caring people will help to effectively and successfully solve this problem.
Socialization of people with disabilities is a two-way process. The society shows a genuine interest in the problems of people with disabilities, and they try to become full-fledged members of the human community. As you can see, the "Special Theater" does not set the ultimate goal of achieving a high artistic result. Here the main goal is to reveal the individual characteristics of people, to teach them to communicate, interact, believe in themselves, in their capabilities, using the entire arsenal of expressive means of performing arts accumulated over many years: trainings by Jerzy Grotowski, M. Chekhov, oriental practices in rhythmic education, energy, release from muscle clamps, relying on the game essence of the theater, its emotional impact on a person.
But this requires personnel appropriate to the task, with specific professional knowledge in the field of directing, acting, theatrical pedagogy and good psychologists with flexible creative thinking, enthusiasts. Working with people with disabilities is difficult, it requires patience, endurance, kindness and love to solve an important mission - to return people with disabilities to a full life so that they can enjoy all the rights defined by the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
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