On the power of speech and its inclusion in the creative practice of the Golden Key Theatrical School for children and young adults

Abstract

At the end of 2007, Sia Papazova took over the management of the Golden Key Theatrical School. In her teaching, she puts her emphasis on the artistic word, on its specific culture. The reason for this decision is that "the verbal is retreating from its dominant position in the field of theater and public life”. It has been displaced by the image culture, pictorial language, comics, the semantics in digital spaces. Children and adolescents are captivated, obsessed, zombified by the rapidly changing pictures and animated episodes. This comfortable and easy language requires no effort, no intellectual strain. It becomes an expression of a new primitivism and violated cause-effect relations. Teaching in the school is directed towards the preservation and revival of the “verbal”, towards insight into its inherent beauty, meaning, dignity, necessity, indispensability. Towards its highest manifestation and its transformation into theatrical speech. Because theater gives another, new life to the “verbal”.