Spatial-technical Support of the Ukrainian Theater in the Middle Ages

The purpose of the research is to find out the peculiarities of the stage design of the Ukrainian theatre and its spatial and technical support in the Middle Ages. The author concentrates the main attention in the history of the medieval theatre on the activities of wandering medieval artists and on the artistic and production features of the church theatre organization. To achieve this goal, the following methods were used: critical analysis – the development of scientific literature on the history of the theatrical art, architecture and stage design in order to highlight information on the research topic “Theatrical scene design: genesis, historical evolution, current trends”; art history analysis – to determine the dependence of the stage production artistic form on its spatial and technical support; synthesis – to combine various characteristics of the spatial and technical support of the Ukrainian theatre of the Middle Ages as a component in the evolution of stage design; induction – to study, though fragmentary, but typical examples of the spatial-technical support of the buffoon and liturgical drama performances; hypothetical, systemic and generalizing approaches – on the scientific hypothesis basis putting forward the significance of a traveling way of activities organisation of medieval professional actors and the architecture of religious buildings holding the medieval liturgical drama for a scene design evolution. The scientific novelty of this publication is for the first time there was carried out a systematic art history analysis of the spatial and technical support development of the Ukrainian medieval theater performances in the context of the common European processes. In particular, the article looks into the activity of medieval wandering artists and the church theater performances from the corresponding artistic and staging point of view. Findings. As a result of the conducted scientific research, the author states: the wandering way of life of the medieval artists caused their wide use of mobile ways of arranging public space for showing performances; the particular the church architecture, where the performances of medieval liturgical drama were shown, influenced on the modern conditional threefold division of the stage space into the lower, main and upper scenes; Church theatre influence on the development of stage design by means of artistic decoration, lighting and other staging techniques, as well as costumes.