Harrison Birtwistle’s instrumental theater
In the second half of the 20th century, reflecting the essence of postmodernism, a number of new genre varieties appear that gravitate toward the synthesis of arts. Among them are happening, performance, other types of actionism. In the field of musical art, the genre of instrumental theater becomes very common, synthesizing the simultaneous execution of instrumental works and the acting of instrumentalists. The synthesis of arts, manifested in theatrical realization of works filling the instrumental theater, turns performers into actors, and the performance itself into a fullscale theatrical action. A bright representative of the instrumental theater as a genre is the British composer Harrison Birtwistle, whose creative arsenal includes a huge number of works combining performance and acting of the same performers. The article examines the plays “Oh, Shame!”, “The Secret Theater”, “The Cry of Anubis”, “Panic” in terms of correlation between the musical and theatrical series.