"We are not accustomed to freedom"

September 30 - 100 years since the birth of Yuri Lyubimova. The prickly thoughts of the master from the old interview NT

The outstanding director, the head of the world famous “Taganka Theater”, Yuri Lyubimov turned ninety years old. On the eve of the anniversary, the master gave an interview to the New Times correspondent

Yuri Lyubimov - Alice Nikolskaya

Photo: ITAR-TASS

We are not accustomed to freedom. When we were thrown out of the usual system and threw freedom along with my slop, we were not ready for it. Society is taken by surprise, and now it gets out of this collapse of the Empire of Evil, as many said. Of course, the Russians also have kindness in kind, but the rule of this devilish utopism clouded our heads. And our psyche, I think, is unhealthy ...

Not all viewers understand this.

No, they still see something. The level of the viewer, of course, is different, but thank God, this is not a herd of rams.

But still, people began to find lost faces - after all, the personality in the kingdom of communism was erased. Surprisingly: wandering around the world, I saw that our disease spreads to the entire social camp ... Czechs, Poles, Bulgarians have already come out of this crisis, and our “Great Empire” dangles, weaves in an incomprehensible direction.

Your performances are a little ahead of time.

Thank God that I have not stuck in a swamp over the years. “Taganka” is constantly being buried, but she does not die. Now, however, they began to bury less. But I would not work if I did not feel that this theater was still alive. But there are a lot of dead theaters. They pretend that they are alive, but this is not so.

It’s scary to watch how most people live: many cannot find spiritual support ...

Believers have this support. But when faith turns into fanaticism, this is the worst. Eclipse of the mind, as is the eclipse of the sun. Again it turns out that we, like savages, believe that if the sun has set, then this is the end of the world. And it will appear again until there is a universal cataclysm. But this does not change values. All the same, the world is beautiful - just because it was created by higher powers. And therefore, people are so afraid to die, even in this complex, difficult life everyone delayed death. Only those who are crazy end with themselves. But any religion considers it a sin. They gave you life, and you must live it ...

But for some madness there is a kind of salvation from life. Or is it not salvation?

No, I think this is not salvation, it is just painful happiness. This is the weakness of the soul. People want to quickly get everything, but do not like to work. Look, because the most working nations flourish, and we love to chat, reason and love to demand.

This split is just robbing

Maybe that's why your theater does not die - after all, there is a constant job here?

She goes differently. They did everything to kill her. This split is just robbing. And the hardest thing was that our notorious public did not stand up for the theater, but allowed to do all this. Where are all countless fans?

It has become even more difficult to exist now. Now the actors are creating some theaters for three, on five and think that this is the theater. And this is not a theater. It happens that several talented people are gathering, but, as a rule, they are going to make money, and not in order to do something from the heart, express their skill, their mood and so on. It turns out that all this is hack, like bubbles in the rain. And in a poor country there is an endless feast during the plague. This image has already become banal.

But not for you, if you recall the performance you staged ...

I have staged this performance for a long time. Both here and in Sweden. Artists played very well there, many are even better than mine. There, people are brought up differently. For example, they understand the difference in professions - what an actor is and what a director is. And our actors are very different from the Western ones: the Western actor will do and very rarely ask, but ours find out: is it possible to be a girlfriend? I always say: after all, the director in the head of the score, like the musician, has the laws of the composition, the solution of space, style, genre. No, our artists strive everything to leave the person who does, and they themselves will find the one who will stroke them on the head. Everything falls apart, as a rule, through the fault of artists.

“The most working nations flourish, and we love to talk, reason and love to demand”

Are opera artists more obedient in comparison with dramatic?

In every way. They are obedient, but, oddly enough, very few singers delve into something except their party. This is their common feature with dramatic artists. They are only interested in their own party. Therefore, so many jokes about opera artists. But all jokes fade in comparison with reality. Often they are completely helpless, and when you help them, they are grateful to you. There is much more discipline. In general, in the West there is more discipline. And with us ... You won’t say better Dostoevsky: give the Russian person a map of the starry sky - he will immediately return it to you corrected. My performances are going on for a long time, it’s a sin to complain about it. Here Tartuf has been going on for thirty years. Of course, young people have to reach up, but I found that they should be brought up on high samples: Moliere, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Euripides ... I believe that in the performances, as in life, there must be a number of generations, this is useful for those and for others: the old people reach for young people, and young people are looking at what they lack. If I had not had young ones, then with the split that occurred, the theater would have died at all.

You once said that you would invite young directors to your theater, if there were someone ...

But I always invited. Fomenko, Vasiliev, and Vilkin worked for me. I gave them a roof when they were kicked out. And now I try to help, look all the time of the young.

The main thing is the form

What is a tuning for you, according to which you are setting up a performance?

Form. The form determines whether it is possible to do something or there will be a continuous disharmony. I immediately hear falsehood, because since I took the text for so long, I felt it to myself, lost for everyone.

I remember when one young journalist asked if you put something new, you answered her remarkably: why should the new be better than the old?

In art, it does not happen that it systematically develops upward. This is stupidity.

If a work of art displays the person or group of people who created it, then something interesting comes out.

Why do you think the theater is dying?

People stop hearing what is being done outside the windows. Their time is leaving, and they cannot catch up with time. They cannot look for new, non -custody forms - it is always very difficult. They are afraid to lose their face, and when a person is afraid to lose his face, he will certainly lose him. He enshrines himself. And then - a dead end. The artist must intelligence into himself, and if he closes, he loses his viewer.

Photo: RIA Novosti

From the book of Evgenia Ablyuk "Taganka: the personal file of one theater"

(M., "New Literary Review". 2007)

“After the theater received permission to produce, rehearsals began. Of course, they also remained under control. In the process of work specifically for officials, ranks of performances were arranged. The writer Boris Mozhaev recalls one of the visits to the “tall” theater - it was a rehearsal of the play “Living” according to his story: “Suddenly in the theater a call: a minister is going! Ekaterina Alekseevna entered, a fur dog hangs from her shoulder, a retinue of 34 people. They put everyone out of the hall so that the mouse did not slip. The first act was barely over, Furtseva shouted:

- The author is to me! Listen, my dear, ”she says,“ with this convention, you have to finish! ”

- What is the conditional here?

- Everything, everything, everything, that's it! Heated the devil knows what. Director - here! Director, how dare you put such an anti -Soviet? Where did the directorate look?

- Directorate - for.

- And the party?

- And by the party - for.

- So. The whole theater needs to be dispersed. Is there Soviet power in this theater?

“Yes,” I answered, “only real.” And the one that you mean, we make fun of ... "

Replica Yu. P. Lyubimova: “At first, the inspectors came to me five people, then twenty, and then a hundred. They knew that the performance needed to be removed, so you need to look at it "