"Like in a peasant family: you work - get"

This conversation took place even before it became known that the theater of the new play-the metropolitan branch of the legendary Yekaterinburg Kolyada Theater-lost the site. Last Monday, the Mosimuity demanded to free the premises of the Labor Theater on Petrovka, from which the wards of Nikolai Kolyada planned to rent a scene. Now they are busy searching for a new site in Moscow, and in the current poster of the theater of the new play there is only a three-day marathon-opening-on Friday, October 20, it starts the performance “Old Zaichikha”.

- Kolya, Moscow froze in stressful expectation ...

- I'm even afraid, everything is so successful. Here they officially executed legal documents, this is now called the "non-profit partnership" Kolyada Theater in Moscow "."

- Can I in order?

- How did it all start ... I had an artist Oleg Bilik in my troupe - a very good, who graduated from the Shchepkin school, played the main roles. Then, due to family reasons, he moved to Moscow and began to work as a hospital clown. When we were on tour in Moscow, he came to me with a proposal to make a carlyad a theater in Moscow. They came up with the following: there is a Ural school, a rather large layer in modern Russian drama, and there are a lot of completely unknown young playwrights. After all, the units were lucky: Vaskovskaya, Baturina, Pulinovich. Bogaev and Sigarev have long been known. Our business is this - at the right time to be in the right place. And one of my students was not lucky yet, although they are no less talented, you just need a push, opening in Moscow. If you have not lit up in the capital, no one knows you. I began to write in 1987, two years later my play “Game of Fanta” played in almost a hundred theaters of Russia. But only when Galina Volchek put Murlin Murlo in “Contemporary”, I became truly known. So it has been started in Russia. As a teacher, I should help my students, and this idea seems very beautiful and noble to me - I want to pay attention to the Ural drama.

- The idea is excellent, and most importantly, it goes in contrast to our monstrous centralization. We are used to the fact that all the most important things come to the regions from Moscow, and here - exactly the opposite. What next?

- For six months we were looking for a room, and suddenly there was a theater of labor, he was on Petrovka, in the very center, on the same line with a large theater. Producer Lena Lazko offered us the right of the first night, although many people wanted to play there.

- And in whose ownership the building is?

- Apparently, in private, and we will pay with her a rental fee in half.

- How will the theater repertoire be formed?

-There will be performances, there will be readers of the players of the Eurasia contest, there will be presentations, there will be “Theater Soup” (the business card of the carlyader-theater-before the start of the performances, Nikolai Kolyada treats the audience with his own warmed soup and talks about the news of the theater.- Ed. )-Everything is like in my theater. At the same time, we will not be afraid to put both classical drama and prose; Naturally, it will be staging. A carlyader theater with small performances will come here every month. I myself will come to Moscow for five to ten days a month, and most of the time, of course, lead from Yekaterinburg. It will be called the "Theater of New Players". Lena Lazko rushes me: when will you arrive and start? I looked at their repertoire, there are plays with a production theme. They are supported by some concerns, factories. That is, the concept of this theater is a play about the working class. Therefore, in fact, the "Labor Theater" is called. But I think that labor is a wide concept, people in my plays are also not idle.

- How was the troupe gathered?

- In Moscow, I conducted a casting. Three hundred people came running to him. He spoke with each for three to four minutes, everyone asked very much. Then they told me that in Moscow-forty thousand unemployed artists, and they all run: wedges-crops, hospital clowns, a mass of television and all that. If only in Moscow to sit. I chose thirty -eight artists.

- Will they receive a salary?

- Yes. They will have a very small salary. At first.

- That is, everything is the same as in your theater: what do you earn, then get it?

- Just like that. When we started, the artists had a salary of 500 rubles. A ticket to the theater cost 50 rubles. Now they get 30, 40, 50 thousand a month, and a ticket to the theater costs 1200 rubles.

- Will the team be big? Who except Oleg Bilik?

- Not only artists came to the casting, but also administrators, producers - everyone wants to work with Kolyada. The main thing is to start. In this project, such a great interest is that if we play performances every day, then the artists will receive a very decent salary. Kolyada will always pay. Like in a peasant family: you work - you will receive.

-That is, you already figured everything up?

- Certainly! Look: August is called the dead season - heat, a period of vacations. And this month we played seventy -five performances in Yekaterinburg with Angels, the halls of Bitcom. Moreover, it was in August that we have a lot of foreigners in our theater - from America, from Israel, from Europe. They come home to stay - come to us.

Well, how are the pigs, alive? Chickens ate? How is it on the mowing? Is everything okay? Well, thank God ...

- So you are the main theatrical attraction of Yekaterinburg ...

- I asked: how did you find out about our theater? Those who live in the hotel answer: they told us at the reception- Ganina Yama and Kolyada Theater. And in these hotels there are not even leaflets with our repertoire. Returning to the Moscow Theater: I am sure that there will also be a full hall. It is small, eighty seats, but you can play performances in the morning, day and evening.

- You are just like Valery Gergiev, who sometimes gives three concerts a day with his orchestra, and even in different regional centers ... When you open?

- At the end of October. Now the repertoire is compiled. How often we will play until I know, because there are three previous performances in the repertoire. Moreover, they give us both Saturday and Sunday. It's very cool.

- Will the discovery be solemn? With red ribbons?

- We will call all sorts of stars - what, Makovetsky will not come? Akhedzhakova may not appear, but all my friends, the famous Moscow artists who played in my plays, I think they will come. I want to call Maksakov.

- Kolya, here you regularly write plays - how many, by the way, has already been written?

- One hundred twenty -five.

- And you also put the performances, play in the performances, you lead the theater, teach at the Theater Institute, spend the festival ... Not tired?

“I'll tell you the truth of what I'm tired of.” I’m sitting and thinking: why no one helps me, Ekran Babai! Maybe I have a really disgusting character? I seem to be kind. They can say: well, here the theater was given. In fact, we earned it. We traveled the whole world. From our wooden hut, we glorified Yekaterinburg. So we deserve this former cinema with a raw basement, where it is impossible to breathe, where the male and female make -ups together, for that matter! You understand, I'm not complaining. I remember, in childhood, my mother will go to work, I will wash the floor, wash all the dishes, stroke everything, clean it up. She comes and says: Son, what a good fellow you are! And I don't need anything else!

- But aren't anyone praising you now? Well, who else should do this?

“I don't know who.” But if it were more often! And then they scold all the time: be you cursed, Kolyada!

- Yes, you read less Facebook! In December you have a serious date. Probably, you can summarize your tremendous efforts - and if you do not calm down, then at least concentrate exclusively on creativity. Instead, you open the theater in Moscow - where does energy, strength come from?

- Listen, what you like, does not take strength, but only gives. Today I had a rehearsal with young artists, worked out every movement with them, every wave of eyelashes, every turn-and I actually soon sixty years old! And nothing, fine. I ran for three hours - and I feel good. I am a joy. They came from the theater institute, but I will teach them something new. I will teach Kolyada-language. I took six people this year to the theater, even one Pole - I promise you: in a year we will not recognize them.

Seventy-five performances a month try to play! Language on the shoulder - and home!

- And what is the story with the Polish artist?

- This is called " " Kolyada- Plays " unites people." Last year, Peter Duda came to the festival. As he later told, he did not even really want to go to Russia, they are so tuned there. And then I look: we are on tour in Moscow - and he is here. They say to me that they have love with Valya Sizonenko . It turns out that then it lasted another six months, Valya went to Warsaw, she did not like there. And now, before the festival, he comes to me: can I talk to you? He is pounding everything: "I love the roller, I get married on it, we will have a wedding, I will make her children." -"Where will I get you, you say badly in Russian!" - "I will learn, I will do everything, take me to the theater!" Well, I take it. I sat down myself, I think: what am I, will I destroy their love? Well, I have some foreigners in plays. He is a prominent guy, two meters tall. So he is already in some performances. He is in love with Valya, in love with the theater, he terribly likes everything that happens here.

- Everyone knows that you love your artists, you rent apartments, sometimes buy. And what is important for you in their attitude to you?

“I don't care how they treat me.” They are artists. And artists are always traitors. Just stumble, dug under the ass - and fly. But we performed in Alexandrinka, I stood behind the scenes, watched all the performances. I looked - and my hair moved. Yagodin in Masquerade is something unearthly, it is some kind of alien, it is impossible! Moreover, he still goes behind the scenes, wipes sweat and asks: well, is it okay? And I can’t even say anything, I think: it is you, with ***, so you are fooling around, or what? When we put the Masquerade, I recalled our Yekaterinburg history with the famous photographer who strangled his wife. I explain to them - it was not two hundred years ago, it all is happening now! From jealousy, a person goes crazy, his brain boils, and he can do anything. We rehearse the “fake coupon”, and Kostya Itunin says a monologue - but he came to us at all. And then he says so that my throat intercepts. You see, they embody my dream of the theater. When I myself came to the theater, I was fifteen years old. Only now I’m starting to understand with whom I then worked nearby: with Umpeleva, Gitsev, Marchenko! There was a great performance “Tram“ Desire ”with Umpeleva, I watched him dozens of times, he turned my life over. And sometimes you come to another theater and you see: people put on dresses, glue the beards, pronounce the text ... But the dead! And my artists give me hope. The hope that the great, real theater exists and you do not in vain engage in it all your life! Sometimes there are such glimpses on rehearsals or performances that you are ready to forgive them everything: they are late, drink, do not know the text ...

- You have a special atmosphere in the theater - it is not only about professionalism, not only about work. Where does she come from?

- Don't even know. Here everyone says - family, family ... Yes, what a family! And they sometimes bite. Although they especially have no time. Seventy-five performances a month try to play! Language on the shoulder - and home! Sleep, and in the morning again for a rehearsal or for the performance. But everyone who comes is somehow immediately infected with this atmosphere, with this sincerity.

- But if the theater plays many performances, there is a feeling of a conveyor, and a sense of sincerity is just lost. Where to get mental resources for seventy -five performances per month?

“I really don’t know where they get strength.” Then I recently went to Claustrophobia - how they played! I think: can they fall asleep after that? So when I play King Lira, I can’t sleep until four hours, and then I still get sick for a couple of days. And Yagodin can *** Achit twenty main roles per month. Maybe they have something from me ... I am always honest when I put it, leading a rehearsal. I never put in the spirit of “Go to the left, go to the right”, I always make pictures from my life, from my childhood. When Ilya Belov is in the “Fake Cupone”, I always recall my grandfather, who played at weddings. I never portray myself as a great director.

- And what is most happy about you today in this life? There is fame, there is your own theater ... Is there any dream, what has not yet been done?

-Yesterday I sat in my Loginov and thought about death for real. Although all my performances are about love and death, I didn’t think so ... I realized why a person dies. Here you live, do something, run somewhere-and suddenly you realize that you will not be soon! Neither you, nor your theater, nor your business. In childhood, it always seems that everything is ahead, everyone will die and I will stay. And now, by the age of sixty, I wake up in the mornings and I think like that fir: life has passed, but you seemed to have not lived. It seems that something is done in this life, but it seems nothing. He did not put the best performances, did not write his main play, did not do something of the most important. I did not have time ... and it seems it is time to set sail? And how so, why so fast? Why is it so unfair?

- It's like my grandmother said: tea, we are coming from the fair ... Do you have such a feeling?

-I once met our great actor Vladimir Ivanovich Marchenko and remembered something. We drove with him from the outbound performance from Pervouralsk. And the performance is famous, "Groundy nest." Marchenko has the main role, he didn’t play anyone at all, Hamlet is the same. And I played a black man - for one second there were two blacks on stage. And then a dark bus, a bottle of vodka goes hands, winter, cold ... And he says to me: “You know, Kolka, life is such *****. And after the performance, you’ll drink a little like that, you look out the window, there is snow, and you think: how good! ” I remembered for a lifetime: the snow is coming, and something so inexpressibly beautiful ... although yes, you are right-we are coming from the fair ...

- Come on! There were creators, who at this age began all the most importantly. Next year, the anniversary of Marius Ivanovich Petip will be celebrated-by the way, his granddaughter Nadezhda Petipa Chizhov was the famous actress of the very theater of the drama where you started! - So here he put all his best ballets after seventy years. Still ahead. I understand correctly that the reaction of spectators for you is more important than all words written by critics and spoken by professionals?

-About the criticism of theatrical: yes, I somehow did not work out with them. They do not love me very much, and I do not complain about them. And about the public-I, probably, are cynical-not by applause, not according to the Aham-Szdokhas, I evaluate the performance. Only at the checkout. How tickets are sold. At the same time, I understand, of course, that we are not showing bare asses and earn not striptease. We do not have ticket distributors - here there is a cash desk and sales on the Internet, no posters and stretch marks around the city. But the full hall to the people. And for me this is an indicator. I need to earn a month and a half million rubles on tickets. In order to issue a salary: in the troupe of forty -nine artists, and together with the service staff - one hundred and twenty people. I am responsible for them. They need to eat, they need to live, they have children, schools, gardens, hospitals. Buy a beautiful rag, go somewhere to go-all this is necessary. Every evening at eight hours the cash register closes. I come and see how much it is sold. And I begin to put in a heap, because I know: the first and fifteen days I have to pay money to people.

- And this does not prevent your head from composing a play, come up with performances?

- Not really! This is some kind of peasant feeling: how are the pigs, alive? Chickens ate? How is it on the mowing? Is everything okay? Well, thank God ...

- Does the Hamburg account exist for you? How do you understand - did you manage or not?

- So I rehearsed twenty days “Woe from Wit”. But when I entered the peak, I said - Stop! The costumes are ready, the scenery, music are ready. Everything is ready. And I just realized that this is not that I need to stop. Actors like everything, but I hung an order: rehearsals are frozen. I don't want to disgrace. And then, I have such a quality: I look through the eyes of the public all the time. Here in this place they will laugh, but they will pay in this. And here, perhaps, they will begin to cough, drop numbers ... So, you need to squeeze something, put in order. Of course, my performances are not unequal, it is worse, it is better. But at the same time, for every taste - for grandparents, for hipsters, for students, for young children for whom you want. My cashiers know who, where and what to sell tickets for. I always say to all of mine: think about people to come more than once, but return to the second, third and tenth.

-Are there any people who really helped you-and now, from the height of the years lived, do you understand that without them your theater, perhaps, would not take place?

- One day, our businessman Anatoly Pavlov gave half a million for a trip to Paris, but there was no money at all. Or another time, after I ached on Facebook for a long time, that “there was no money, there was no money,” came a completely stranger with a cellophane bag and pushed a bunch of money on the table. And I ask him: what is it? And he says: a million. You need it. I am sitting at the table, I started to sob ... And then I began to run around the theater: go here, look - and on the table in packs of five hundred rubles there are money. Все прибежали, прикладывают купюры к себе (ну, чтобы деньги водились), а наш кассир Инна Иосифовна, царство ей небесное, говорит: не то удивительно, что он эти деньги дал, удивительно то, что такие люди сохранились. А так нам наше министерство культуры грант дает, губернатор помогает… И вот уже три года Министерство культуры РФ не дает ни копейки.

— Коля, вопрос непростой: у тебя авторский театр. Это самые лучшие театры, которые только бывают, они всегда уникальны — но рано или поздно приходится задумываться: а что потом? Готовишь ли ты себе преемника?

— Нет, я не собираюсь никаких преемников заводить, что будет после — мне глубоко наплевать… Я всегда в этом случае вспоминаю Товстоногова: какой был прекрасный театр! Умер Товстоногов — театра не стало. Но он остался в памяти, в истории, сделал свое дело. So here. А сделать это специально невозможно. Каждый вечер после спектакля я выхожу на улицу курить, смотрю на фронтон здания, на котором написано «Коляда-театр». И вспоминаю, как в 1973 году я приехал в Свердловск пятнадцатилетним мальчишкой, у меня были залатанные рукава, жуткие дерматиновые ботинки. Меня взяли в театральное училище. Прошло много лет — и теперь моя фамилия светится большими красными буквами на фронтоне на центральной улице полуторамиллионного города. Что мне еще надо?

— Любви народной много не бывает!

- Yes! Сегодня встретил около театра мужчину и женщину, она мне говорит: спасибо! I ask: for what? Да за все! Я засмеялся, вошел в театр, у меня настроение хорошее, и мне больше ничего не надо — доброе слово и кошке приятно!