The year of the theater

Due to various circumstances, I had to observe many events of the last season from afar, but from afar some trends are sometimes even more distinct than close to it.

The first thing that catches the eye is the unhealthy interest of the Russian political establishment in the theater. And the ideological interest, and, so to speak, pragmatic: only in Russia in this very specific form of human activity completely crazy money walk, and only in Russia to this shallow money (festivals, reconstruction, federal theaters with huge budgets), people who are in the history of pipe factories or service in validity organs are so fiercely trying. Is it worth it to be surprised that the theater has been shocked for the whole last season that had nothing to do with creativity, but have a direct relation to property issues. The case of the Seventh Studio is only the peak of the iceberg. In its underwater part there are some strange ideas of theatrical mergers and acquisitions, the even more strange arrest of the director of the BTK Alexander Kalinin, the pogrom in the Mytishchi Theater "Fest", the departure of Evgeny Marcelli from the Volkov Theater, the separation of Theodore Kurentzis with Permu, the next exit to the Kekhman and the beard are.

Budgets are sawn, competitors are finalized, the year of the theater is in full swing. All this evokes longing.

But at the same time we see how a completely different life is being built in parallel to the near -theatal “game of thrones”. The most incredible theatrical laboratories and projects (immersive, inclusive, site, dramatic, gender, transgender, and God knows what else) are growing there and hi, like mushrooms after a plentiful rain. Moreover, all this takes place in a wide variety of geographical latitudes - in St. Petersburg, where, alas, Boris Pavlovich’s “apartment” already closed and her project “Study of horror” became one of my most important impressions of the last season; In Rostov-on-Don, where the “Theater 18+” is held by the “Rostov Frinj”; In Kazan, where he tirelessly creates and invents new theatrical formats laboratory "Corner"; At the Vyksa Metallurgical Plant, where Anna Abalikhina, Alexei Sysoev and Ksenia Peretrukhina create a performance “Passion for Marten” . Under the curtain of the season in Moscow, a mobile art theater opens, which once again proves that performances can exist outside of any walls, institutions, departments of personnel, buffets and columns with pilasters. The fact that the interest of critics (and this is clearly visible according to the program of the last “golden mask”) is now shifting from the capital to the province is only part of the general trend that could be dubbed “away from the official”. In a deaf province by the sea, it is sometimes easier to do its job than under the ubiquitous Ministry of Culture.

Sometimes the life of parallel structures and state institutions intersects: the BDT gives the building of the Kamennoostrovsky Theater to performing projects, and Vera Martynov conducts the experimental program “2 scene to stage ” there; Zim holds a festival with the speaking name Noname , representing the “non -commissioned theater” and exploring the “field between artistic and social practices”. The Boyar Chambers located next to the STD become a landfill of the horizontal theater, where the theater of mutual actions is issuing its projects.

The general degree of innovativeness in the Russian theater is now such that, by golly, I have not met anything like this in any country in the world. And on this optimistic note, one could finish summing up the results. They rather delight me.

But in brackets it would be necessary to notice that the degree of aggressiveness in this innovativeness is offset from time to time. Swift bow of Russian Contemporary Theatre with Contemporary ART leads to the fact that the object of the attacks of a part of the innovators is not only a dense theatrical routine, but also any forms of theater in which there is a director, scene, professional artists. From the human point of view of the world Contemporary ART , there is a big difference between repertoire tombs like the Petersburg Comedy Theater. Akimov and the main players of a modern theater like who returned to us from the house arrest Kirill Serebrennikov (his Baroque is a brilliant example of Contemporary deeply despised by the world ART of the playing theater) or finally found in the theater on Malaya Broston his pier Konstantin Bogomolov (his “Glory” and “Crime and Punishment” - the most discussed performances of the season), as it were, is not. To be completely consistent, it is not between the small theater and, for example, Robert Lepage. All of them represent the repressive world of old art, which should be destroyed to the foundation. What will happen then is the tenth question.

It is interesting that the desire to build a new beautiful world of universal innovativeness, having previously dropped the whole theater elite from the steamer at once, turned out to be strongly not in Germany, not in Holland, not in France (recognized by the trends of modern theater and contemporary art), namely in our country, where the old -regime theater consciousness still reproduces itself in dozens of theater universities and where it is still now The question is seriously debated about whether it is possible to show a naked person on the stage.

This is a little reminiscent of the political situation in the Russian Empire of the beginning of the twentieth century: a huge archaic country, stopped by autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality, a handful of liberal intelligentsia, trying to introduce this country into the civilizational European field, and left -wing radicals that spoke at once and on the rugging crosses of the empire, and on the laws of civilization. The Bolshevik coup, as we know, was crowned with success. Whether the coup of theatrical Bolsheviks will be successful is still unknown. But a simple pattern - the more rigid and low -end the system (no matter, political or theatrical), the more violent the small left opposition - last season forced to learn in full.