Return of Medea

To engage in the metaphysics of a verbal language means to force the language to express what he usually does not express; This means using it in a new, special and unusual way, to return all the possibilities of physical shock to him, to actively share and distribute it in space, to choose intonation absolutely specifically, returning the sounds to the former ability to really blow and show something - means to rebel against the language and its purely utilitarian, I would even say, concerned about the food of the driven beast; Finally, this means to consider this language as a form of a magic spell.

Antonen Arto. "Direct and metaphysics"

In fact, karst caves, where to this day the goddess Echo wanders, they are not at all in Greece, but somewhere on the edge of the world, in South Africa ... There, in the layers of a rock, since the time of the archaic, empty spaces turned out, hollowed out, expanded with only an effort of voice, they create and keep that noise, rustling and so wonderful, which is so wonderful, which Rhymes with the spells of the sorceress Medea. And here we are wearing in our Strasbourg, in its flickering glimpses-from the uncertain rainy spring-to the red-haired sun in the openwork holes of the generic cathedral ... The National Theater of Strasbourg, not without the help of the Russian team, re-pronounced the legendary "Medeya Material" Anatoly Vasiliev with our Russian Frenchwoman Valerie Dreville.

First of all, about the issue that will certainly get up by itself: what's the difference? How and what are the excellent these two productions of Medei, separated by fifteen years? The screen suspended in the middle of the scene - the white canvas - like a sail of Argonauts in the binding of iron - like a canvas stretched inside masts, bramsel, bends of ship ropes ... The same wooden throne on the platform - like the last place of the power of the Colchis Princess, which suddenly became an exile even in a foreign land. items and toys - each will find their own terrible application. All the same enameled pelvis at the feet: a reference to the dentist’s office, to medical procedures, to the anatomical theater - this is an object that is too closely related to miserable human bodily, where the bandages and gauze will fly, all these covers, films, the remnants and husks of the former life. And the stand for two dolls, for the children, for the children of Medea, who is also destined to take part in a terrible rite. And it seems, just like before, the screen will first accept the full text, the pieces of which will catch alternately on the white canvas so that the audience will read the whole dramatic poem of Heiner Müller so that they have no perplexity or illusions about its end ... so - yes not so. When closer to the end of this projection of the literary text to us, Medea will come out from behind the scenes, go to his throne, calmly sits down, pull the plowman out of the pussy and slowly smoke, the same sea that fugitives with a golden rune will suddenly flare up and swing behind her. And behind him, behind him is another ocean in the entire theater wall, over her reddish bricks. There, in its rhythm, a different, cosmic, space will extend from all sides, which lifts him up - in his rhythm and with his inexorable power.

During the last tour of the past, “Medei”, even during the last tour, even at the presentation in the delfa in 2006, already decided for himself: if such an opportunity arises again if the gift of fate and Valerie breaks off - he will build the whole performance in the amphitheater. Not in a small chamber box for two hundred people, not like an elite performance for fans-tonzes-censors, but as an open, almost platform action for everyone, for the general public, which involuntarily formed over the years. Involuntarily - because all these burdensome, painful problems of the current wave of refugees, this endless stream of running lemmings - all this arose and manifested only now. This is Vasiliev with his fine tuning of a true artist, with all his hassles of dark dreams could predict, to pre-feel something similar even before politicians doomed us to this trouble. He guessed it in advance. Or let’s say this: Hiner Müller, with his postbrecht tendency to the “Epic Theater”, glued misfortune, which left the limits of aesthetic preferences, and so it went easily forged boots along the fate of dozens, hundreds of thousand - just like the Jason warriors came up, courageous, along a ruined colchis. The artist hears from afar. So Vasiliev already knew that there would be an amphitheater, a huge hall in the manner of a Greek theatrical linse cup-a space, a monumentally enlarging effect. And he knew for sure that we needed a second screen from behind, behind the first, in order to tell the whole action a mythological scope. But when we just came to Strasbourg to watch this wonderful platform - a large hall named after my favorite Koltsa - when we just started to try on their video projectors, mastering the space of the scene - we all immediately became clear that it was not necessary to fence anything, that the image can simply be laid on the brick wall, where the waves and seagulls were sprayed with mosa fragments, they began to glow. Red from the inside, but most importantly - they provided the viewer with this strange dizziness, that “marine illness” and “pitching”, about which Barbara sings, complaining of his insidious, deceptive love.

The artist hears from afar.

This second sea unexpectedly opened the exit not only into the epic, into the mythological space, but also to a certain metaphysical depth, which was not previously read in action so clearly. Everything is still leading his monologue Valerie Dreville, pale to the mother-of-pearl shine, deceptively red in his blue-green dress, still complains about the cheator of Jason. But in measured cadence, bursts and echoes of the famous Vasilievskaya “affirmative intonation”, not just the rage and pain of a deceived woman are heard. It feels like the vector of this powerful speech itself leads to that salty eternal ocean, where at a depth the last meanings swallowed with jellyfish, roots of unit myths, primary archetypes ... If there are enough courageousness, we will be stitched with a handful of those original images that concern us all. By building stage speech, Vasiliev deliberately relies on the eastern tradition. Now, a Tai-chi master, who conducted physical and energy training for Valerie, also worked on the project with him as the basis for the verbal training. I, through all the Buddhist mediation, clearly I hear the echoes of Indian metaphysics, which Grotovsky’s hedgehog quite successfully used. The space itself here is extended and lined up through the axes thanks to the echoing sound of vowels, the Universe itself gradually unfolds (and the Kashmir shivaites would directly say - it is projected onto an imaginary screen) thanks to the sonor, phonial matter. The rumble of the first sound, the first syllable already carries an electric charge, which will ultimately ensure the emergence of peace and the plexus of the desires and actions of living creatures that inhabit it - and the final liberation that occurs in the latest paroxysm, in the cramps of cleansing passion.

This girl-an aging woman-abandoned Medea-carries out some strange manipulations with all sorts of improvised means-the lids from cream jars are jammed, some rubbing, compresses, medicines, copper mirrors come out ... The last force of the fading beauty to regain the lost youth? A reminder of that still magical cream on the basis of an interpreted nameless flower that absorbed the blood of the tortured Prometheus in the Caucasus’s mountains that he herself once gave a warrior to Jason? .. But not really ... medical procedures? Wrap -up mummies, funeral rites? .. An attempt to glue the spreading seams of the usual reality? No, rather - a reference to the old skin hanging with rags, from which you need to crawl out, the last effort of the snake body. Medea, the queen of groundwater, the witch and the sorceress who must certainly change the skin! And then, and then - another image remaining in the shade, but vaguely translucent, flickering. Indian goddess of speech Vach, girlfriend and another shadow of the goddess Echo; The snake energy of an articulated word is the phonetic impulse that gives rise to the universe and stubbornly reaches out again and again: the golden snake of Kundalini. She can absorb everything: the muddy energy of desire, a shameless sexy impulse, a furious, the dignified passion of jealousy - to wrap all this several times with rings, drag through the body tunnel - and bring out in the form of a light, transmuting a splash. In the form of a poetic word. In the guise of that passion that is always right. Or - as in the tradition of the French West, another Vasilyevsky brother in blood said, the magician and Charovnik Antonen Arto: “... to resolve or even destroy all the conflicts generated by the contradiction of matter and the spirit, ideas and forms, specific and abstract, removing all visibility into one special expression, which should be similar to spiritualized gold” (art, the “alchemical theater”).

Media Princess continues its witchcraft, sorcerer Kunshtuki. Here she lowers the unbuttoned dress, shifts it down, and we see a powerful ghostly phallus on a pale stomach (she will say at the end, admits: “I am not a man, not a woman! I am Medea!”), This point of application of force that she will immediately grab a razor-shaped crab. Finally, she with an enchanting innocence offers this very dress as a gift: that wedding outfit that passes in the royal gender from generation to generation ... Take, Jason, right, it’s not a pity for your new bitch! “She will turn your body with her, she will cry / on your shoulder, sometimes moaning intoxicated ...” Barvarka’s dress, sewn with gold of the colchis, wet from sweat and blood of brides-and tortured sacrifices, over which the warriors of Jason, brave-argonauts were once abused ... On it, the blood of a salted sea wave, once chopped into the pieces of the pieces. Medeea to get away from the chase. Measured refrain: "You owe my brother, Jason!" But you see - I don’t remember evil, you see - I humbly propose a wedding to your new bride. And the thrown out dress is spinning in his hands, dancing, jumping into the palm of his hand, caresses to the skin - so that in the end the humble dog gets at the feet of naked Medea. The phallus with this clicking teeth also falls there, all this is lovingly wrapped - what is not a gift than not a dowry for a young beauty? And the last effort - like a convulsion of an orgasm that brings his hands in a farewell hug - from a dry dress, from an elegant gift doll, fiery water, a seed of passion and a seed of death are squeezed. In the hands of Medea, a revolver, which with a dry click knocks out a flame from a flint fire - and now the fire is falling and burning everything in its path! He burns everything in the same enameled pelvis, but the magical action responds with a shudder in the entire lungeal, sub-sun world. And somewhere far away-or very close-the Palace of Creon is on, the young beauty head is writhes in burns and ulcers, and with them the entire former structure of the universe is set on fire together and burned to the ground.

And inside all this is a thin, bird body Valerie Dreville. These horizontal stripes across the chest under the collarbone: its own body as a tool of magic, like a magic toy, like a mandala, the layers of which need to be correctly passed so that something will turn in the universe and unfolds in a new way. The body, which is used as a gun, as a hollow channel for the impersonal voice and as a tool for gaining immortality. (It's good that Valerie does not know our Zabolotsky with his “temptation”: “Virgin waved her hand, / did not believe her ears, / the board knocked out, jumped up, / clap! And burst at the seams. / And the poor thing flows / in the form of small guts. / Where was her shirt, / there was a powder. The transmuting entities will sit at the end of the representation inside the dazzling light, in the very center of the white and then the green cross, itself, as pulled ashore, still breathing fish - a living reminder of suffered suffering.

The whole meaning of the performance is recorded on the tape of vocal vibrations.

But for now, Medea-Chanel, Medea-Vedim, stirring the glowing coals with a good poker, wraps his smiling face to children who dutifully sitting on a tiny puppet stool. They are associated with her umbilical cord, rope - her flesh from the flesh and bone from the bone. Medea - a mother and a nanny - plays with them in horses, pulls the dolls to her, hugs, swinging in the air, finally twists over her head in a terrible carousel ... And now her nails are plunged into their flesh ... What is there! This is just cereal, which is sprinkled with whitish streams of extended burlap! See-and read, read, no ... into the fire, into the fire! In the languages ​​of flame that will melt the previous love, and previous illusions, and the previous reflections ... On the screen, on the back wall, where the living sea with seagulls and fish was ragged and springed in different ways, we see the frozen sunset, which again moves under the gaze of the turning honey. The yellowish red light of the blood and passions wraps up with a gloomy twilight horizon, and then scatters at all with white ash, ice foam of the burned passion ... Here it is, the snowbone of the iceberg, which becomes the grave of the previous story, the previous plot. So, the end of the whole narrative, firmly tied to human psychology, to our emotions, reactions, to all human nature. Lonely Medea remains in the white world of burned passion. The last dialogue remains when her, in a honey, voice, Jason calls her by name for the last time. And she sits in front of us, quiet, glowing from the inside, and continues to repeat endlessly: "Mesh, do you know this person?" It remains with this lasting remark on the stage, naked, up to the departure of the last viewer. And it is clear, and clear-with some last clarity: this is not a woman who was distraught after the commission of a monstrous crime. This is the sorceress who re -gained peace, and cleanliness and innocence, fearlessly passing through the all -imminent, through the fire of passions, which is now wrapped on itself ... And this passion, passed to the end, in the last intoxication of transgression itself, leaving only the pure light of consciousness and the willingness to re -participate in the construction of countless assigned. Further - to the true father, Helios, further - to the new history and new life. Further - to a pure page, even without text - not to the one filled with rhymes and remarks, which the former Medea put it in her vagina - oh no, to the dazzling pure page of the new fate ...

And now, while the last spectators reluctantly follow from the audience, let's look again: what happened. And what we were “witnesses” (in the terminology of Grotovsky). We see how the narrative is dusted somewhere in the corner, a story, even if it is the story of the myth of Mede, the history of the centuries of the centuries. In the same place, with crumpled peppy papers, abandoned hairpins and sad lamentations, the usual psychological keys are swept into a heap. Well, how: an insulted woman! Saughty lover! The suffering soul! Past, by ... all this ruthlessly thrown aside. Yes, a great myth is speaking. But it is said so that the way of this speaking is much more important than the plot of betrayal or detublines that grabs the soul.

I do not want to disassemble the Vasilyevsky theory of “game structures”, which are invariably built from the “main event”, from the foreboding of the last meeting, the personal meeting of the performer, the performer, with fate and meaning. Another thing is even more important here: Vasiliev’s consistent work with intonation. Not a plot, not transmitted picture - the whole meaning of the performance is recorded on the tape of vocal vibrations. Not exclaiming (oh, this “draying”, exaggerated, “theatrical” intonation!), Not the narrative, transmitted by the intonation of the “narrative” ... It is precisely the gloomy, “lower”, the intonation, which he called “affirmative”, “affirmative”: this is the intonation of the most in -electrified “matter” of sound, that din. Mantras (Bija-Mantra), which in a low rumble, in the quail of the syllable, "OM" creates and destroys worlds, creates the sun and universes-and allows a person with his kutsi, small feelings, and little experiments to try to integrate into this resonance. In general, the eastern tradition (in the broadest sense of the word) - from Eastern Christianity Isikhanov and Imiaslavtsy to the Krishna and Buddhist practices of theology and aesthetics - is not entirely tied to the “analogy of the essence”, but on the “analogy of doing”. Иначе говоря, дело не в том, чтобы понять нечто — понимание тебе ничем не поможет ни в жизни, ни в креативности: главное тут — встроиться в эту попытку реального участия, будь то отраженное эхо самого звучания божественной Вселенной или же постепенно выстраиваемое, тщательно культивированное умение пройти в параллель с миротворящим теургическим процессом. Ну да: все та же идея Арто, Гротовского и Васильева применительно к театру — важен процесс, а не результат. Поэтапное прохождение каких-то ступеней, тщательная шлифовка профессиональных умений — только для того, чтобы построить ловушку, чтобы в эти силки добровольно полезла та самая блестящая змейка Кундалини, та самая предельная страсть, которая — коли надо — умеет быть и такой разрушительной. Фонетические упражнения — не ради самой этой техники, но чтобы поймать вот этой петелькой богиню речи, которая расскажет тебе свои сказки и построит свои миры… «А кто охотник, кто добыча…» — ты ли, гордясь мастерством, правильно сколачиваешь свой скворечник, чтобы заманить туда птицу, или это она, охотница, волшебница, умелица, завлекает тебя в свои тенета, чтобы, опьяненный страстью, ты уж никогда не ушел от нее прочь…

Это Антонен Арто, обожженный все тем же безжалостным голосом, твердил: «В восточном театре… сам этот язык, развертывающий все физические и поэтические следствия во всех планах сознания и во всех смыслах, необходимо вынуждает мышление выбирать те глубинные отношения, которые и можно назвать метафизикой в действии» (Арто, «Режиссура и метафизика»). Именно Арто требовал от театра той «алхимической сублимации», той трансмутации элементов, когда сама человеческая природа (со всеми ее физическими и психическими элементами, со всеми привычками, навыками и умениями) оказывается брошенной в огонь темной страсти, того первичного языка, «языка активного и анархического, где были бы преодолены обычные ограничения чувств и слов». Даст бог, летом выйдет и толстый том моих переводов французского эстетика, теоретика и практика театра, где — среди множества текстов — можно будет отыскать еще немало удивительных схождений и параллелей для этой работы Васильева с архаикой… Не знаю еще, как назовется, пока ищу для него верное слово, верное название, которое должен подсказать сам Арто…

«Медея-материал». Постановка Анатолия Васильева. Исполняет Валери Древиль. Декорации и свет — Анатолий Васильев и Владимир Ковальчук. Творческое сотрудничество — Наталья Исаева. Костюмы, реквизит, макияж — Вадим Андреев и Элен Бенсуссан. Видео — Александр Шапошников и Гийом Сефельман. Работа с телом (практика тай-чи) — Илья Козин. Звуковое оформление — Андрей Зачесов.

Национальный театр Страсбурга — с 29 апреля по 14 мая; театр Bouffes du Nord (Париж) — с 24 мая по 3 июня.