Buddhist motives in the creativity of Tsyrendorzho Balzhanov (problems of directing and training actors in the Buryat theatre in the 1990s and 2000s)

The article examines the creativity of the Buryat director Tsyrendorzho Balzhanov, formed in connection with theatrical phenomena and events that determined the future of the Buryat drama theater at the turn of cultural epochs. Having chosen the Buddhist theme as the main motive of his work, Tsyrendorzho Balzhanov faced a number of issues that raised the problem of staging solutions and the problem of training an actor while creating Buddhist images and characters, as well as the possibility of achieving a special state of «satori» in terms of theatrical action. The lack of experience in the religious productions in the Buryat drama theater, the theatrical and directorial legacy that remained from the theater of the Soviet years did not allow the Buryat director to consolidate the state of «satori», which he managed to achieve in the play «Damdin Lama». Based on this experience, which is more intuitive in nature, Tsyrendorzho Balzhanov devoted the main part of his creative career to the search for directorial approaches and tools, the development of acting training. The result of the search for the solutions that the Buryat director faced after the play «Damdin Lama» in 1990 was his scientific research «The Mystery of Tsam as a Buddhist philosophical text and ritual action» and the creation of the acting training based on the methods of Oriental theater and Buddhist religious practices. The author concludes that the modern theater, which has experience of performative theater and postmodern philosophy, has the potential to create such productions, however, only in the director’s interpretation, without participation of the «actor-personality», who, according to Tsyrendorzho Balzhanov, remains the center of the director’s idea in the play imbued with the Buddhist motifs.