Baltic circle

At the end of November, Helsinki showed performances from Finland, Austria, Norway, America, Iceland and Russia for five days in a row. Baltic Circle - the third largest Finnish theater festival. It immediately arose after the collapse of the USSR - in the format of the All -Baltic Show. The Finnish founders of the festival decided that it was time to find out what their closest neighbors are doing in the theater, to restore lost communication. Three years ago, it became clear that the concept has exhausted itself: the borders already became permeable, and there was no more sense in the annual local collection of theaters of the Baltic countries. Then the director of the festival Eva Neklyaev proposed a new principle of the formation of the program, not geographical. Now Baltic Circle is not chasing Baltic identity, but at the world avant -garde and premieres.

The prizes on Baltic Circle were not distributed, however, they did not give out, however, in Finland, unlike Russia, it is not generally customary to arrange contests from theatrical festivals. Competitions are for filmmakers. The authors of the performances do not compete, but share: instead of the stage of the stage weapons - a cultural exchange. For colleagues to change more efficiently, in the Baltic Circle program-a lot of master classes and discussions. There are no less conversations than the finished products.

“This year we tried to attract a new, youth audience,” says Eva Neklyaeva. And he clarifies with a embarrassed smile: hipsters. Not only Russia, which means that he is shy of its hipsters, in Finland it is also a little awkward.

So that Helsinki hipsters have better go to Baltic Circle, the festival style ordered a design content that made them an ice.

Clever or not, but the calculation is true. Baltic Circle-2011 was doomed to please the hipsters: starting with a poster composed of synthetic performances on the verge of the theater and art, and ending with details like the branded style of the festival (fonts-the same, layout-the same) and mini-fairs of used clothing. Things-strictly red or black-beautifully hung out in a row in the lobby of the Q-theater, and vintage comes across. One of the sites - in the building of the cable factory - is beautiful with fashionable hipster beauty, like our Vinzavod or Red October: brick, iron, a lot of “air”. Hurry - club parties with performances and music concerts. In general, wherever you look - an accurate stylistic hit everywhere.

Tickets for Baltic Circle cost from 15 to 20 euros, the halls at all shows are complete, and not only at the expense of hipsters. Stextmatic Theater Finnish public Mil. Eva Neklyaev, as a result of numerous trips to the theaters in the world, compiled a program, deliberately diverse and - unintentional - with a clear accent to a female voice.

“Reloading of the drama: Yerma” (Drama Reloaded: Yerma) - the name should be understood literally. The author of Katarina Numminen really takes the play of Lorca and makes reset with her. That is, it mixes the story of a woman who has distraught on the basis of childlessness, with real stories of modern women who cannot have children. At the table, two female experts are sitting with microphones at the department and, together with the audience, observes how the artists play scenes from the real “Yerma”. They watch the Spanish drama, like a TV, periodically pressing a pause and commenting. "Stop!" - the expert commands, and Yerma obediently freezes. “Look, now she will cry, I tell you” - the pause is squeezing - Yerma is crying. Katarina Numminen specializes at the documentary and collaborates with the Finnish Reality Research Center. She already made non-fiction about the elderly and human age, about the relationship of fathers and children, mixing the deciphering of the interview with Chekhov's text. Finnish theater -goers say that by national standards, what Katarina does is pretty bold, and not everyone tried such a theater here.

The performance based on the play by Lorca "Jerm" played partially in Finnish, partly in Spanish - for color.

Even bolder - Austrian Doris Sulich with the play "more than enough" (More than Enouch). The annotation says that the author wonders: what is beauty, whom to consider beautiful and who is not? We are talking about the beauty of the bodily: within an hour, a rather large dancing woman is presented to the audience in all its glory for an hour. She dances not only with her legs, arms and corps, but also, for example, breasts and fat folds - it turns out such a skin tremolo, a nanobate. At the climax of Nanobalerin, he generously and rhythmically shows himself talcom in a bright control light. And in breaks between plastic sketches - he talks on the phone about the criteria for physical attractiveness with his friends. Her last interlocutor - a blind, exploring the world to the touch - formulates the final thought: beautifully any body, even large and not unprepared. A few days before the show, Doris spent a master class on the work of a choreographer with a naked body in Helsinki, about the nuances of his plasticity and expressive means that cannot be used until a person has ripped off all the covers.

In the production "Build me a mountain!" (Build me a mountain!) Again, post -dramatic theater - without a play at the base. Fantasies on the World War II using Hitler’s growth doll and many more dolls resembling zombies, masks and plastic flora. Before the eyes of the audience, the people of the theater compose a performance, thinking loudly out loud. "We need a hero - a representative of the working class!" - the holder of a crazy chapito yells into the microphone and grabs behind the puppet Hitler. "The hero needs a bride!" - Colds his partner, brightly dressed and painted Pulchinella. "Is she beautiful?" "Very!". Like all creative people, leading performances tend to change the decision three hundred times, so in the end Hitler will marry a man, and rejects a beautiful bride.

The most important performance for Eve Neklyaeva, the participant of the festival is “Two in your house” of the Moscow Theater.doc. Director Mikhail Ugarov set him based on fresh history with the house arrest of Eva’s father, a presidential candidate. From January to May 2011, oppositionist Neklyaev and his wife were forced to share the living space, including the kitchen and bathroom, with gesniki. Theater.doc after six months later responded with the release of a documentary performance. Vladimir Neklyaev is played by the playwright Maxim Kurochkin, his wife Olga and three representatives of the authorities - professional actors. Instead of a backdrop on the stage, there is an exact plan of a two -room Minsk apartment of Neklyaev, he is like a map.

A show in Helsinki at Baltic Circle is a premiere, and after Finland the troupe of theater.doc went to play “Two in your house” in Tallinn and Munich. The Moscow public will see the performance only on December 19. Despite this arrangement of touring priorities, Mikhail Ugarov clarifies that his ironic non-fiction about the Belarusian bloody regime is, first of all, not for Europeans, but for Russians and Min residents. In Europe, the novel about the invasion of the Gabeshniks in a private space look with a sense of relief: thank God, we do not have it like that. In Russia, according to Ugarov, the feeling will be different, correct - a sense of involvement.

The club on the Baltic Circle Festival Lounge - to dance and listen to music: in Finnish intelligently, without obscurantism.

One of the Finnish newspapers on the eve of the show published a lot of material about the play “Two in your house” and the author’s group. The creators of the play - Elena Gremina, Ekaterina Bondarenko and Talgat Batalov - are staged by the brick walls. “Like hipsters,” Gremin laughs, in which the factor of hip constructure strives for the minus of infinity. Despite this, hipsters, not only Finnish, but also domestic, to look at the results of the work of Teatra.doc, it is not celebrated. It is only a matter of an elegant marketing solution that can bring them to the theater, as did the organizers of Baltic Circle. And the hipsters, after the test of the documentary theater, where ethics wins aesthetics, this is probably some kind of new, more conscious audience, which can be said about without a sense of awkwardness.