Most of the articles in the collection are devoted to the theater of frontier, crisis eras. The author reveals the significance of the largest artistic trends that opposed official doctrine and mass art. Antiquity in the perception of theatrical innovators of the late XIX - early XX centuries, Rococo in the XVIII century, symbolism at the end of XIX, modern at the beginning of XX, surrealism in the 1920? s. It was in them that phenomena were born and ripened, which were in many ways ahead of their time and determined the culture of today. Over the centuries, Russian and world art developed in close relationship.