Street theatre in the context of foreign concepts of carnival culture

Background. The relevance of the study is due to the growing popularity of research into political and protest potential of carnival culture in foreign studies. Objective. The aim is to test the hypothesis that foreign concepts of carnival culture indirectly influenced the fact that street theatre is interpreted not as art but rather as an attribute of carnivalized protest. Methods. The study uses a theoretical method of analysis, which makes it possible to compare the current data of interdisciplinary studies of the nature of laughter and the comic with the interpretations of the carnival in the author's theories and concepts as well as to identify the inaccuracies in the definitions of humor and serious-laughter phenomena. Sample. The results of the analysis of a sample of studies published from 2006 to 2022 in foreign periodicals and non-periodicals devoted to the protest, political potential of carnival culture is presented. Results. On the example of several cases, it is shown that when in the process of analyzing carnival phenomena, irony and satire are considered by researchers within the category of humor, carnival culture is equated to a carnivalized protest. Street theatre is one of the forms of a carnivalized protest. Conclusion. Non-use of the latest data in the field of the nature of laughter phenomena in the study of carnival phenomena by foreign researchers leads to the growth of scientific works in which protest, carnival and street theatre are equelled without evidence. The categorical delimitation of humor and such serious-laughter phenomena as irony and satire reveals the groundlessness of the definitions in which carnival phenomena and street theatre refer to forms of non-violent protest practice.