The day was without number...

Alexey Devotchenko and I walked along Bolshoy Prospekt on the Petrograd side. We pass by a fence, a thin one, made of chain-link mesh. Around the park with a bust of Lenin, on which pigeons always shit. There is a poster on the fence. I say, look what nonsense is written! We stopped, laughed, took pictures. Citizens walk past - zero attention to the fence and the poster. In the evening I go on Facebook, and there is this very photo and Alexey’s angry comment: “Have you contacted me, you bastards? Here!!!) New feature of St. Petersburg “EdRa”. EVERYWHERE":

And what do you think - people woke up, noticed and rushed to discuss. I agree, it’s distorted, most likely the person who wrote the poster was simply bad with Russian. But an insignificant fact turned into a wonderful piece of anti-agitation.
I admit, I’m not a witness myself, but colleagues told me that when Alexei reads Pushkin at rallies, goosebumps run down the skin - Alexander Sergeevich sounds so topical in his performance. And the police chiefs, who are called upon to listen to what they are saying, look around suspiciously: is this sedition?
— Are poems at a rally and poems in the theater the same genre?
- Well, what are you... Speaking at a rally is, of course, creativity, but of a completely different kind. There the physiology is different, crazy adrenaline is produced. People come to the rally not because they have a good life; they are not even concerned about how you read, but how much your reading can inspire them to action. Here is Pushkin's journalism.
Theater is a completely different kind of thing. You can't get by here with just a civilian position. Theater is feelings, associations, understanding difficult things, when the audience works with you.
Today in the theater we need to call a spade a spade. The times of audiences accustomed to Aesopian language are over. A generation has grown up that has no idea what it is. And today it is shameless to play with a fig in your pocket - they say, we will show you Ostrovsky’s play, and you yourself can figure out what vices we wanted to expose here.
But directness does not mean a lack of intimacy. And when I read Brodsky, I understand that everyone in the audience will hear their own.
— At the premiere of “Farewell Waltz,” there was a feeling: the audience from the rally simply moved into the hall. Yes, the faces are beautiful, intelligent, spiritual, but these are the same people who go to protest against the destruction of the city, who can raise their voices in defense of Khodorkovsky, who listen to Ekho Moskvy and read Novaya Gazeta. They already know everything and understand everything. But there are so few of these people! And the chamber hall of the Maly Drama Theater can accommodate only a handful of people. But what about others, those who are in the majority?
(A few days ago in his blog, Alexey wrote: “Hmm... When you sit in St. Petersburg on a hot and stuffy evening and listen to the screams and squeals of passers-by coming from the street, you understand that the optimal weather for the majority of residents of St. Petersburg is zero, minus two, snow with rain, strong gusty wind. Northern.” We’re talking about them.)
— In the theater I don’t call anyone to change the world, I don’t call anyone to the barricades. But in my one-man performances I try to talk about what hurts the most today. I very rarely play in large venues. The overwhelming majority of those who sit in the chamber hall of the MDT do not go to the Baltic House. They have their own audience - I have mine. It’s more interesting for me to talk with people who don’t need to explain who Brodsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin or Sasha Cherny are.
And others... No, you are wrong, it seems to me. You just judge by the premiere audience. There, of course, everyone is “their own”, everyone greets each other. But I travel a lot, perform in different cities and towns, where there is not even a cinema, and people have never seen a movie, even a bad one, on the big screen. And the faces there are completely different: not protestors, as you call them. And sometimes they listen more intensely—maybe they don’t understand, but the interest is enormous.
What about completely different ones? I don’t know how to make those who don’t want to think think. Sorry...


- The question is completely off topic. It's not so much about you, but about the entire acting fraternity. How do you even survive? I mean physically. There are many actors, few theaters, you can’t get enough TV series for everyone, but you have to eat. Play two performances a month in St. Petersburg, several in Moscow, go somewhere to Klin on tour - is it really possible to live on this?
— I’m unlikely to answer for everyone, but I think it’s no secret that actors, with rare exceptions, are one of the lowest paid professions in our country. But this does not mean that you can whine that they don’t give you roles, curse everything and do nothing.
“At the same time, the latest story with Taganka was probably the only case where artists spoke out loud about money. Why aren’t the actors indignant and demanding nothing? How strong is your love for your profession?
— In order for people to speak loudly about something, leaders are needed. Actors are a very fragmented community. They don’t have a normal trade union, and the Union of Theater Workers has long turned into a vertical bureaucratic organization that doesn’t care about the rights of actors... So everyone is rushing into TV series: five minutes of shame - but then temporary well-being.
I don’t like this talk about “being forced to film.” Reminds me of prostitutes who always go to work only to feed small children. I know that many will not agree with me, but let's call a spade a spade: b...l...st is b...l...t. No reservations.
— It is now a very popular claim that the state does not help theaters, does not support young people, etc. You also spoke more than once about how the St. Petersburg authorities sneezed at independent theaters. Would you take money from the state?
- I don’t. So who would offer them to me? A couple of years ago, I even publicly spoke out on the topic that one should not cooperate with this government. The media later called it a manifesto. The manifesto is not a manifesto, but I think that the authorities and I have clearly dotted the i’s.
(After talking with Alexey, I had to communicate with his colleague, who apparently had previously acted in the same theater. Hearing Devotchenko’s last name, he stopped smiling and spoke sharply and offensively. The bottom line of the speech was this: he deliberately interferes with the opposition and makes all sorts of loud statements just to stay afloat. And he assured me that this is the general opinion.)
- You really make statements without regard to individuals. Recently, speaking on Channel Five, they called Putin all sorts of names, and they threw stones at Valentina Ivanovna, who was leaving us.
- Well, it’s unlikely that they’ll invite me to Channel 5 anymore. As for my statements, go to Facebook, go to LiveJournal, look at the comments on this matter. I haven’t said enough yet, I haven’t had time to do everything.
- That's what's alarming. St. Petersburg sees off Matvienko, to put it mildly, with dislike. When they got rid of Yakovlev, they were angry like hell. Sobchak lost - there was no limit to the jubilation, at least in certain circles. We are not satisfied with either the democrats, or the business executives, or... I don’t even know how best to put it. Maybe it’s us, St. Petersburg residents, who are so picky and don’t understand our own happiness?
— You don’t have to like your bosses at all. Even if they are decent people, they will immediately become proud and start slacking. And about Yakovlev... Who doesn’t remember how the “marginal proletarian” electorate rejoiced when Sobchak lost, for whom I, like Yeltsin, Chubais and Gaidar, have great respect. For the city, Yakovlev never became one of his own - he was called both a “ball player” and a “business executive” in quotation marks. He was really able to do little, but then the money flowing into the city was completely different. But what he definitely didn’t do was destroy the city center as barbarically as has happened in recent years. And in parting he said something like: “You will still remember what democracy was like under me.” I admit, I didn’t think he would be so right.
(Alexey was ahead of me. We were just preparing the interview for publication, and he had already posted on his Facebook: “Today, in a conversation with Novaya, he repeated: St. Petersburg is the most un-Russian city in Russia. Just as it was the most un-Soviet under the Soviet Union. It should have unlimited rights... Up to its own Constitution, government, police. Remaining part of the Russian Federation. You can blame me for small-town patriotism.)
A lot of people responded to this statement:
Alim Gelyastanov: Under the Soviet Union, Leningrad was a very Soviet city in spirit. Only the architecture of the center was non-Soviet, and the people were very Soviet.
Nikolay Asekritov: I love your (our) city very much, but discussions on the topic “Big Vasyuki” hardly do it any credit... What kind of mega-Skolkovo, what kind of Rio de Janeiro? Wake up, gentlemen! Manilov also built a bridge across the pond so that peasants would pay money to travel...
Sergey Bolshakov: You are in vain mixing the village of Vasyuki (this is exactly Medvedev’s Skolkovo) and Manilov (also a village) with the capital city, which has not yet lost the atmosphere of stones and people.
Evgeny Jerebenkov: St. Petersburg will be truly non-Soviet if it gives a ride to its governor in municipal elections)
— By the way, about the “Open Studio” on Fifth. This program made a lot of noise. You managed to call Putin a feudal lord on live television. They called for lustration so that KGB officers would be banned from holding public office. They didn't give you a smack for that?
- What will they do to me? The worst thing that happened was that the program was never posted on the channel’s website. They say that the authorities there were terribly scared and banned it. Oh well. Let's say there is no seventh day in July. There is a day, but there are no numbers. Like Gogol: “The day was without number”...
From the editor: sources on Channel Five confirmed to us that this is not the sick imagination of Alexei Devotchenko - the authorities really tensed up and forbade it. It looks quite strange, because the video is circulating on YouTube and tens of thousands of people have already watched it.

Diana KACHALOVA