58 Spartans

Two weeks ago, theatrical Minsk blew up the news: after public indignation, the director of the Yankee Kupala National Academic Theater Pavel Latushko was fired in the country's results of the presidential election and the followed by this wave of violence. The theater team stated that he was quit with him if this decision was not revised, and also made an appeal in which he demanded that the use of power in relation to civilians: “We, Kupalovtsy, with pain, look at what is happening in our country. We respect the law and human rights, but every night we live like at the front. We are against terror and violence. We are against blood in our country. ”

Further events developed rapidly and already resembled reports from the battlefield: after a short meeting of the collective with the Minister of Culture, Yuri Bondar was appointed acting General Director is a native of the Ministry of Culture Valery Gromada. The theater building was blocked "in connection with the conduct of sanitary and epidemiological processing of all premises", the entrance to it by the ministers of Melpomen was prohibited. Further - more: the dressing rooms and office premises, the communication of the actors and the newly appointed acting It should have passed only face to face, and all the movements of the theater could only be carried out, accompanied by the police. All these facts have no analogues in the history of the world theater.

The team refused to communicate TET-A-TET. “I wrote a statement addressed to the director of Pavel Latuka. Later I learned that the order of his dismissal has already been signed. I wrote the second statement - now in the name of the acting deputy. Later I found out that at that time a new director was already appointed. I wrote the third statement, but now I can’t physically get to the theater! In this country, my voice, security, human rights, and even two statements about dismissal were stolen, ”actress Christina Drobysh wrote on her Facebook.

The eternal conflict "Artist and Power" acquired visible embodiment. Even before the start of protests, at the height of the election campaign, in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon Alexander Lukashenko complained at the creative people who were moving to another camp, whom he (quoted) "nourished with his left tits." The reaction to the situation with the Kupalovsky Theater sounded as a threat. “Now they are trying to write some statements,” the press service of the President of Belarus quoted. - And I think they wanted freedom, they had a slogan: “Freedom. Market”. I will give them complete freedom now. ”

58 people left the theater, including 36 actors, artistic director Nikolai Pinigin, all full -time directors, artist, many leading specialists. In parting, the actors left their awards and diplomas at the entrance to Kupalovsky. Many were left not only without livelihood, but also without housing - the reserved employees of the theater had to free state rental housing. But every day spectators come to the theater. People sing folk songs near Kupalovsky, hoping that someone will come to them and say that all this is a fake, flash mob ... So far, only riot police honored them.

The theater is destroyed. The price that Kupalovsky paid is very high. Today in Belarus, not everyone perceives the situation unequivocally - many believe that Kupalovsky had to be maintained at all costs: after all, artists could maintain a protest, say, going on stage with statements after each performance. But the Kupalovtsy went to the end - together with everyone who is now shelm, they are fired, intimidated, beaten, abducted, put in autozaki, who is being brought to criminal cases at this dramatic time for the country. And there is no need to say that all this is not about art. Perhaps this plot is from the most important in a conversation about the theater today.

There is something deeply symbolic in the fact that all this happens in the year of the centenary of Kupalovsky: the Belarusian State Theater, the first professional theater in the BSSR, opened in September 1920. It was to him that later it was destined to become the main stage team of Belarus. At the very beginning of the way - because the function of the theater was nominally marked: you are the best, you are a national treasure. Building in the flows of time, forced to play according to the rules and breaking theatrical stereotypes, BDT believed in his purpose and accurately outlined a special creative trajectory in which the word “national” became key. Of course, playing in the Belarusian language, of course, without impurity of nationalism, as in all the main theaters of the republics of the USSR. Of course, the state, and therefore imprisoned ideologically, was simply not given otherwise. Of course, fashioned according to the Stanislavsky system, “in the image and likeness”: any attempts to think was differently subjected to obstruction. Perhaps that is why the history of the Kupalovsky Theater is the history of overcoming contradictions and artistic dissent in the main ones that determine the moments of the path.

The Kupalovtsy went to the end - together with everyone who is now sheltrated, fired, intimidated, beaten, abducted, put in autozaki, whom criminal cases are being brought into this dramatic time for the country.

It is important to note that to this day the history of the theater in Belarus has not been rethought - it is still being studied by ancient Soviet textbooks with all the tendentious calculations and assessments. But the artistic selection in the Kupalovsky Theater nevertheless took place in each individual period of time, consistent with both new trends and with the inevitable ideological pressure. The force of a unique troupe was opposed to the stagnation and timelessness. And during professional formation, and during periods of persecution and repression, the fight against formalism, and during the approval of the directorial and then the Actors of Kupalovsky came to the forefront. Now this is easily associated with the national mentality, the famous Belarusian Khuranassu - patience and special, rested by sincerity. But we can say differently: the multiplicity and ambiguity of actual meanings determined the depth of the created images. Kupalovsky Theater is outstanding actors, what is opposed to oblivion in time and forever entered into the consciousness of the audience.

As a holistic modern artistic system, Kupalovsky has existed for half a century, since the late 1960s . The most important and long period of its history is 42 years! - Related to the work of Valery Raevsky. A graduate of the Belarusian theater and art institute was trained by Yuri Lyubimov and in Kupalovsky got directly from the epicenter of theatrical free-thinking, from the Taganka Theater. The scenic foundations that existed in Belarus staggered under the pressure of the author’s directing: ideological arrows often fell into Raevsky, but the reputation of the theater dissident accompanied the director throughout his life. It is no coincidence that his first famous performance was staged based on the play by Bertolt Brecht “that the soldier that this”: Raevsky’s production looked like a piercing anthem of human individuality, where the dissimilarity, the uniqueness of an ordinary person in each manifestation - physical, spiritual, moral. In the future, the main point of attraction for Raevsky was always a man with the unprotected physical body and an irrepressible flight of thought. Surprisingly, the director was reproached for a very long time for indifference to the actor, in the destruction of the Belarusian acting school, which, meanwhile, gained strength in all its performances. The “directorial theater”, which ruthlessly baked, paradoxically broadcast many meanings that were revealed through the actor. Falsh for Raevsky was unacceptable in any of its manifestations, poetry was higher than everyday life, and the lack of poetry was perceived as a lack of truth. It was easy to breathe next to Raevsky in art. He not only combined the modern stage language with a living acting, but also instilled in the taste for an acute, actual conversation. At the same time, the innermost human awareness was preserved and transmitted from Kupalovts to Kupalovts. This is not a pathos that has been rejected today in any manifestation, and not wiped stamps: in different years I recorded dozens of interviews in which their special human ligament was realized and formulated by the actors of Kupalovsky. Therefore, it is pointless to argue that the theater should be outside of politics - the truth, which Kupalovsky’s artists swore on the stage, above politics. In August 2020, they remained faithful to her-until the very end.

For the past ten years, the theater was headed by Nikolai Pinigin. It was a difficult, not always indisputable, but completely targeted and conscious path: the total theater as the main direction with all the ensuing consequences, a large form and acutely formulated thought with focused searches for national identity is a “Pinsk gentry”, “Syimon-musical” , “Pan Tadush”, “two souls”. These performances were released in an era when in the theater world everything began to change rapidly. The search for a new aesthetic correspondence seemed inevitable - and sometimes it seemed that Kupalovsky was too slowed down at a crossroads, but still wanted to stare at his already changed features. Quarantine put the theater in a pause. Yankee Kupala was waiting for the “Tyesh”, the prime minister was supposed to take place in September, during the celebration of the anniversary ... But Kupalovsky’s curtain sank.

Nikolai Pinigin entered the history of the Belarusian theater back in the early 90s , setting two performances that became iconic for the National Theater-Yankee Kupala and the "idyll" by V.I. Dunina-Marsinkevich. “Tyansy” is just about Belarus “in the drafts of history”, about the country between the West and the East, between Poland and Russia. I don’t know what Pinigin’s new performance would be about, but at a time when the artist's voice poured freely, he sounded prophetically. It was necessary to see how obsessively and desperately flaunted from his inconspicuous state Nikita Znosak in the brilliant performance of one of the best Kupalov’s actors Viktor Manaev. With what instinctive need - to become a person contrary to circumstances, fate, his own capabilities - he raced towards his own death. Meaningless, comic, funny - and deeply tragic. In the early 90s , like a week ago, the Belarusian national flag fluttered over the theater-until they were banned. But it was this performance that became for the Kupalovites a voltaa arc between the past and the present. What is happening today is the revolution of their dignity. I can’t imagine a person who, under the circumstances, will bring his work book to the theater, and then go on stage to pronounce memorized words ...

What is happening in Belarus today speaks of the ability of each viewer to resist the stream of lies, curvature, and violence. And it is on the street that you need to look for answers to questions, what the theater can be and what it should not be.