Translated material
Enough!
Tadashi Suzuki brought a very unusual “Ivanov” to Moscow
“If even now they don’t understand my “Ivanov,” then I’ll throw it into the oven and write the story “Enough!” - Chekhov wrote to his friend and publisher A.S. Suvorin in early October 1888. To him, three months later: “I cherished the daring dream of summing up everything that had hitherto been written about aching and yearning people, and with my “Ivanov” to put an end to these writings.” The second of the quoted phrases is one that the great Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki would hardly want to take into account; I suppose I would not fail to cling to the first one. The death of Chekhov's hero in his play is not a twist of a neurasthenic, but a calm, completely conscious gesture of a man who has decided that there is no need to live further. Ivanov came up with a test for himself, he failed it. He doesn’t need any “second attempts”: that’s enough!Suzuki could have offered Ivanov seppuku (aka hara-kiri), the death of a samurai - he did not. However, Chekhov’s hero somehow forgets to put the gun to his temple with sufficient conviction; he dies of his own accord, from everything at once. Which does not change the original premise: this death is voluntary and necessary.
I have never been able to understand what and how Tadashi Suzuki teaches his students at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (however, the same goes for the Grotowski Center in Pontedera and the Anatoly Vasiliev School of Dramatic Art). Perhaps the critic doesn’t need to know this; It is enough for him to see how the training of more or less advanced students (not to mention permanent employees) of Suzuki differs from the practice of imitation. The art of imitating us, for example, is demonstrated by domestic artists playing “King Lear” staged by Suzuki on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater: everything is the same, but not the same. “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the last Chekhov Festival and the current “Ivanov”, the Shizuoka center’s own production, are radically different theater. The clarity of gesture, the speed of meaningful movement, the ability to freeze and come to life in the stage existence that Suzuki developed: here it is not enough to say “mastery”, here we need to talk about mastery that goes beyond its own limits. Art needs to wring its neck so that it becomes something else, incomparably more important: if we talk about poetry, then in Europe Verlaine knew how to do this (“Everything else is literature”); here in Russia - Mandelstam. If we talk about the theater, then this always remains the secret of the master and is passed on only from hand to hand, without strangers. I don’t think that the education of an actor according to the Suzuki system differs from the pedagogical systems of Grotovsky and Vasiliev in greater rationality; it differs only in greater ease of understanding for conscientious imitators.
All this, however, does not prevent us from talking about the meaning of the spectacles that Tadashi Suzuki offers the viewer. In Ivanov, as in Cyrano, the director first of all looks for the main nerve center of the play. He reduces all the emotional torments and torments of the title character (Akihito Okuno) to one, simplest thing: Ivanov is tormented by the fact that he married a Jewish woman.
It’s easy to be indignant: is that all? Yes, that’s all, if we don’t remember how Chekhov’s hero is tormented by his proximity to the surrounding “Zulus”, how important it is for him to prove to himself the difference between himself and them. If we don’t remember how in the early 80s of the 19th century a wave of Jewish pogroms swept through the south of Russia, and in May 1887, Emperor Alexander III adopted the so-called. “Temporary rules” that secured the rights of second-class people for Jews. Chekhovsky Ivanov, having married the unfortunate Sarah, and married Anna Petrovna, does this not only out of love, but also out of the duty of a decent person. And then Ivanov finds out something terrible for himself: he himself is the same “Zulu”, the same stupid anti-Semite, like everyone else. Chekhov doesn’t emphasize it in any way, but he doesn’t force us to forget: they don’t have children. Ivanov does not love his wife and cannot love him. No way.
Anna Petrovna, aka Sarah (Yukiko Saito), always sits to one side in something blue, silently knitting. Ivanov talks mainly to himself. It’s remarkable how the Japanese actor sounds like Chekhov’s phrases: “While a man is healthy, strong and cheerful, you don’t pay any attention to him, but as soon as he rolls down the inclined plane and begins to sing Lazarus, you hang on his neck. Is being the wife of a strong and brave man worse than being the nurse of some tear-jerking loser?” - there is no weakness in any word, not a single phrase ends with a drop in intonation, the words cut the air harshly and shamelessly. It is very difficult to get used to this speech style; there is no way to distance yourself from it during the action, unless you switch off completely. You can only feel sorry for those who have disconnected - and forget about them, for their own good.
Most of the characters in Ivanov move around the stage on their haunches; their bodies, from chins to toes, are covered with wicker baskets. The “Zulus” include both Shurochka and Lebedev, which would be disgusting for a playwright (however, “Ivanov” is not such a brilliant play), but it is important for us to understand the very presence of these baskets. The first, most natural association: “Box Man” by Kobo Abe: everyone has read this, and everyone knows how a person (even if he is a complete “Zulu”) needs his own, single shelter. The second association is the article by Jerzy Grotowski “Theater as a means of transportation”, or, in another translation, “Theater as a conductor”. It explains that ordinary theater is a director's machine that helps raise viewers to new heights. At the same time, a theater is needed that raises theater workers somewhere. Let's imagine a basket, a rope and a block tied to it. Sitting inside, we pulled a little; the basket has risen a little - and we can rise to the top, i.e. to block level.
When the actor Akihito Okuno utters Chekhov's line: “I’m tempted to say something terrible, offensive to you... (Screams.) Shut up, Jew!..” - he rises above the block. Then free flight begins, but few people know what it is.