The problem of simplifying leisure, which is revealed by researchers in diverse strata of modern Russian society, is considered from the point of view of blurring the norms of spectator behavior and the destruction of cognitive schemes structuring the collective experience and customs of visiting such cultural and entertainment institutions as the theater and the cinema. The task of reconstructing the frames of a «live visit» to the cinema and theater among young people is important for determining the prospects of consumer behavior and modeling the activities of producers of cultural products in the future. The article suggests a variant of such reconstruction in line with a qualitative strategy based on the results of the incomplete sentences test conducted twice in a formal student group. The set of questions was the same, the object changed (a visit to the cinema in the first case, a visit to the theater in the second one). The degree of the convergence of objects in the minds of young people, the clarity and details of their mental schemes were checked, areas of absolute imperatives and prohibitions, coincidences and differences in the modalities of the due, possible, permissible, approved were identified. The differences are reflected not only in the content, but also in the language of the description. Both paradigmatic sets indicate that the theater continues to be perceived as a more prestigious object of visit compared to the cinema, requiring mandatory switching of the code of behavior, a high degree of its ritualization. But this commitment is often assessed as tedious «pathos» and generates an avoidance strategy. A clear youth demand for complete physical, emotional and mental relaxation means strengthening the trend for further individualization of leisure, and in the future, the danger of absorption of both the theater and the cinema by the chill-out model, where the entertainment component is secondary to the recreational one. It is this model that ideally matches the identified leisure needs.
leisure patterns; prestigious consumption; youth; frame; cinema; theater; cultural dynamics.