such rare cases. Also, while turning to folkloric acting, Sturua does not succumb to the temptation to resort to stylization or imitation. He is attracted just by the phenomenon of people enjoying themselves in a public square, and by the nature of this irrepressible and rejuvenating merry-making.
Bertolt Brecht played a considerable role in Sturua's 'artistic self-determination'. Sturua perceives Brechfs theory of the epic theatre as a spiritual and aesthetic liberation of human consciousness from the thrall of phoney symbols and false values.
Sturua strives to combine theatrical festivity with oratorical and civic spirit In his art, much is determined by the impetuous, dynamic interaction of these heterogeneous principles. The object of his art is the struggle between man and the social machine. The correlation between them keeps on changing. Man may also manage somehow to get the better of the machine. Sturua tries to look at this struggle as an outsider, through the eyes of the ironic—occasionally sympathetic—crowd. His productions abound in evaluative and moralizing scenes. However, Sturua deprives them of a specific meaning. The most important things for him are the morals and aesthetics of a festivity, which enable one to perceive life in its fluidity, change and openness, and help man to feel ten feet tall. It is even possible to say that festivity has become the genre of all his best productions. The tragic and the lampoon, the lyrical and the farcical, the pastoral and the grotesque, the pathetic and the buffoonish—all these rhythms and contrastive nuances of stage action keep the festivity from becoming monotonous and tedious.