"Oedipus Tsar" Andrei Prikotenko

Marina Timasheva: I continue the story about those performances that were included in the Poster of the Golden Mask festival. There will be no particular doubt that the play “Oedipus Tsar” will fall into her the performance “Oedipus Tsar” based on the play of Sophocles of the theater. Firstly, when I watched the performance at the Baltic House festival, I saw a real hunt for it European producers. Everyone wanted to heal Oedipus to himself, and as early as possible. Secondly, the artistic director of the Kaunas youth theater, the very strict director Stanislovas Rubinovas immediately turned to the author of the performance by Andrei Prikotenko with a proposal to put something from him. And why, Stanislovas Rubinovas himself will explain.

Stanislovas Rubinovas: I really liked this performance. Oedipus Tsar, in my opinion, is the best performance of the festival. But I enjoy this performance on another list - on the list of those good performances that I have seen in my whole life. I do not know how many of them, maybe thirty of them are typed. Indeed, this performance is included there for many reasons. Firstly, this is amazing acting. Internal and external technique - absolutely everything is. That is, the technique of words, the technique of voice - they sing, the technique of movement. A wonderful directorial decision. On the one hand, this is an antica, on the other hand, it is a modern, ironic view of this "junk" - and one does not interfere with one. This goes in parallel, one another adds. This is a masterfully made performance. He goes "in one breath." And most importantly - it actually turned out to be a tragedy.

Marina Timasheva: For Muscovites, the name of Andrei Prikotenko is new. The director looks very young, but it turns out that he graduated from the St. Petersburg Academy of Theater Arts back in 1998. The director collected artists for the performance from different theaters. But all of them are Igor Botvin, Taras Bibich and Ksenia Rappoport - students of Efim Filstinsky. Ksenia Rappoport is also known outside St. Petersburg, she works at the Small Drama Theater and played Nina Zarechny in the "Seagull" of Leo Dodina.

Andrey Prikotenko: The company itself came to me with the idea of doing something. I had the idea to deal with this material. The guys who play in the play graduated from the institute about two years ago. We were familiar for a long time, and they came to me with the desire to do something together.

Marina Timasheva: I don’t know if Andrei Prikotenko saw the performance about Edip Rimas Tuminas in Lithuania, but the influence of the Lithuanian school is obvious here. First of all, it affects the masterfully developed plastic and musical scores of the performance. In the second, in the ironic distance between the actor and the character. Rimas Tuminas tried by all means to avoid pathos, pathetics and kuturns. He showed how old myths look funny when trying to shift them into the language of the modern theater. Andrei Prikotenko begins with the same. Three beautiful young people jumps onto the stage, filled with sand, littered with stones and tires. Ermanic and grimacing, they illustrate the story of Oedipus with a cursory pantomime. Especially leaning on the phallic symbols - in other words, on weighty rag hoses. Not the local booth, or the current comics, but based on Sigmund Freud. This is a choir. For the choir are the same artists who play the main roles. Its function in the play is a parody to shade a serious dramatic effect. The choir consists of the townsfolk who translate everything exalted into false walls, or even in the "Sirtaki". Carried away by the form of crying and impressed, people often forget about what really happened. At first, such a radical decision is dumbfounded, but the director and actors do not abuse fashionable irony.

Andrei Prikotenko: Any director, when he takes a certain work, thinks about why it is to show it to people today. And with different means trying to bring this closer to some kind of consonance with today's time. In particular, in our performance, music sounds, which at some point makes this ancient story, very distant from us, is quite today's and modern. There is such a technique. I think that music to people who watch this performance is more understandable and more accessible for perception.

Marina Timasheva: Oedipus is very young. He was young in the play of Rimas Tuminas. But further the paths of the directors diverge. In the Lithuanian performance, the youth of Oedipus defines the development of action. He is a absurd and nervous modern young man. The power granted to him multiplies the features of a violent disposition, gives the right to mock the soothsayer, mock Creon, punish and mercy on subjects. It is clear that he killed the king Lai, not because it was the will of the gods, and the Almighty Moira weaved such a fate, but because of the very character of Edip - a tendency to unpredictable outbreaks of anger. Man himself is responsible for his acts - this was the case in the play of Rimas Tuminas.

In the St. Petersburg performance, Oedipus is different. Igor Botvin is a young, athletically built handsome man with long wavy hair to the shoulders, plays the stands, politics, the father of the people. The age gives out only the desire to consistrate even at the most inappropriate time for this.
And I only once, come to the city of Kadma,
Freed you from cruel tribute,
What did you carry horror to the singer.
Which of you then did not explain the riddles.
I comprehended her by God's suggestion
And saved the country from disasters.
So says, so the people believe.
And now you are all with a diligent prayer
They came to ask:
"Find protection for us.
From God, having heard a prophetic voice,
From the mortal, learning the secret of salvation. "

Marina Timasheva: In the Lithuanian production, Oedipus, who lived his term in pagan culture, repented and humble, entered the new Christian era. Andrei Prikotenko is talking about paganism or neopaganism, and only about him. I asked the religious scholar Boris Falikov to explain the interest that the current theater in Archaic.

Boris Falikov: An appeal to the archaic is generally characteristic of modernism. The appeal to the archaic is associated with the search for new energy, because now this energy is not here, and there is a far-far circulation. From the word "feel" you can return to the present situation, because, apparently, we already feel a little wrong. And we want to feel. And now, please, there are a lot of curious moves where we think that we can feel and sympathize with what is happening. Archaic is the bottom. World religions are an ascetic attempt to displace this bottom. And the fact that he is not supplanted, but jumps now, naturally, in my opinion. In general, Freud's repression always gives rise to aggression. And it works. It seems to me that the splash of pagan energy outside is now in many ways that: on the one hand, an attempt to supplant all this has not led to anything; And on the other hand - with the fact that instead of the fact that world religions wanted and could apparently give. That is, an attempt to such a metaphysical understanding of this ascet is no longer working.

Marina Timasheva: Andrei Prikotenko’s play is powerful and very sensual. And he should put the tragedy of rock, would come out, at best - a drama. In tragedy, people find out relations with the gods, and not with each other. This is not provided for by the Stanislavsky system, and the type of public consciousness itself. Which of the modern viewers will believe in the birth curse, who will understand, what is the horror of a person’s clash with rock, if there is no sacred faith in the soul of a person.
-Let me go with a prayer, I will go to the greatest temple of the Earth,
Neither in Phoeba Delphic, nor to Olympia hills,
Until the miracle of God will prove His power over people.
For people do not believe in the divination of the gods. Phoebe is not honored on Earth.
And in the soul, a person no longer has a sacred faith.
Gods, show us power, or - the end

Marina Timasheva: I saw genuine tragedies in the theater only performed by Emuntas Necroshushus. Only his poetic genius is subject to the vertical: man-nobo. But Andrei Prikotenko also turned out to be a different, simple human nature. The fact is that Creon, the soothsayer of Tiresia and the shepherd plays the same actor - Taras Bibich. Here he is in the most inconvenient way rolled out onto the stage in a wicker large jug. A good half of the text is a groove from there, invisible to anyone, and only then his thin neck stretches out of the vessel. Something like an oracle of a magic bottle or Pinocchio in the tavern "at three sandcars".
"You will find out that the parent together both the son and husband.
His father is hostage and killer " -,
Here is my answer. Now go and weigh
And if you find at least a drop of lies in it,
In broadcasts, consider me an ignoramus forever.
Now if you want, the Creon and my speech,
But soon in the whole world there will be no fraction of your woeful one.

Marina Timasheva: There is a version that Tiresia turned into a woman or a man, was a famous hetero or, according to Aphrodite’s magic, an old woman. This is an asexual, outside, non -aged, sliding, the wife -like is played by Taras Bibich. A puny, swivel, flimsy tiresia looks anecdotal next to a huge courageous Oedipus. But water, as you know, the stone sharpens. Afterwards, Tiresia is the shepherd - old, compassionate, miserable - he echoes Tirezia: Oedipus - the killer of Father Lai and the husband of Mother IoKasta. In this version of the play of Sophocles, not least due to the fact that one -artist plays Tiresia, Shepherd and Creon, and it really turns out that Oedipus is innocent, and fell a victim of a plug -in, capricious, manner brother of the wife - Creon. By the way, some sources say that it was Creon that expelled Oedipus from Thebes.
“Go home, Edip and you, Creon.”
Evil is small, and it will not become great.

- My sister, spouse your king Oedipus
The terrible blame me for the guilt, the exile threatens me or the execution.

- Yes, that is so. In an insidious attempt on my life, I convicted him.

-Let it be lost. May I be cursed forever
If at least something is guilty before you.

- Forgive him, I conjure the gods. Sorry, Oedipus.
And do not despise the oaths, and my words, and the voices of the people.

- Do you know what you want?

- Oedipus, he was honest with the clan, and now he gave an oath. Forgive him.

Marina Timasheva: “Invaluation of Oedipus” is overwhelmed by doubts. If everyone begins to repeat the same to a person, he will believe sooner or later. Modern conformism tests are known when the group offers to distinguish black from white. And if 10 people whose answers hear the subject will be called white black, then he (with a high degree of probability) will agree with the majority’s opinion. In this sense, Oedipus is more than others, because the reed in the wind bends, and the oak breaks. He is comforted and supported by only the beautiful Iokasta - it is harder to knock a woman from the sense.
But before we see a shepherd, we should not, Oedipus, lose hope.
After all, he said that the tsar was killed by the robbers.
So if it is confirmed that there were many of them, it was not you who killed.
One cannot equal to many.

- And if they say that one, then I am a killer.

- No. He cannot change his words. I am not alone, all the people heard them.
But even if he renounces the then speech, then things will not justify this.
Feub judged his father from my son to die. What? The poor baby killed him? No.
And therefore, my son unhappy could not kill his father that he himself had died before.
My soul is pure. And no prophecies will be afraid of me.

Marina Timasheva: The intrigue is too tight, and now IoKasta cannot resist the testimonies of eyewitnesses. At this moment, pop music, on which all the outputs of the choir in the play are laid, is replaced by folk and quite Russian crying, and the audience stretches to the handkerchiefs.

- Woe, woe!
Oh unfortunate! My last hello to you.
(Sings)
Who is your mother, baby, ah Bay-by, Bay-Bu ...

Marina Timasheva: Oedipus Tsar turned out to be a real tragedy. Not a tragedy of rock - a human tragedy. For the first time, the audience was given the right to sympathize with Edip, to identify himself with a young, healthy and simple person who lost everything he loved and what he served: his family and foster parents, his wife and children, power and throne, trust and love of their people. The people are a choir.

And its function in the play is very curious. At first, he complains about the hardships of life, then swears fidelity to Edip, easily betrays the one who was the king and saved the city from the Sphinx, mourns the woeful IoKasta, passes from the mouth to the mouth of the death of Edip. This people revel in his own suffering and a stranger, they are ignorant and trusting, they willingly accepts the rules of the game imposed on him from outside.

The great Queen of IoKasta died
Do you remember how in the frenzy grief she rushed off?
She rushed to the bed of marriage and tore her hair with both hands
And, the door slammed, she began to call a long -dead barking,
His clock: "You remember that old night a secret.
In it, you gave birth to a killer for yourself, and my wife, my wife
At the service of the vile childbearing of his own flesh of the damned condemn. "
She cursed her Odr: "You are from my husband and children from my son
He judged to give birth. "
And after that the end. There was a cry. Oedipus burst into the Hall
He prevented us from seeing her death. We followed him
He rushed everywhere: “Sword, give me a sword” - so he appealed to us.
Then again: "Where is my wife, tell me? No wife, but mother,
I wore me in the womb and from me my children. "
God himself, not, of course, in the tower the desecrated directed him sent him.
He cried out terribly and, as if by the power of an unearthly drawn,
The closed door came. The loops of the nests pulled out
And he broke into peace. We are behind him.
And here we see: the queen hangs on the hook, still swinging in a fateful loop,
He stands, looks. And from the hinge loop takes her carefully
Here on the ground lies the unfortunate. Then the terrible happened
Oedipus breaks the buckle of gold, that she held her clothes on her shoulder,
And, raising a sharp needle up, it sticks it into the eye cavities.

Marina Timasheva: Like vultures, people flies to stare at someone else's trouble. A strict tone is knocked down on a boorish, cheeky, familiar. Andrei Prikotenko, however, nods not at people in general, but at journalists.

Andrei Prikotenko: There is such a place in the final in the play when the choir begins to tell the denouement of events. This moment was born on an absolutely specific day. It was in the month of the year that planes crashed into skyscrapers. I remember: we watched the continuous news releases, and suddenly it began to arise that journalists who convey materials about human tragedy, like some kind of kite, feed on trouble in order to realize some of their tasks. And this combination was so terrible. And so we wanted this sensation in the play: when the human tragedy in the retelling begins to sound like some kind of cold and terrible farce.

Marina Timasheva: I believe that the problem is not in journalists alone, she is in the features of human psychology in general. Be that as it may, the voice of the choir is becoming quieter, as if the wave was knocked down in the radio, and the shafts of new information roll up to this place, and no one cares about the blind, raving to his death by Oedipus. The tragedy turns into a farce not by itself, but by our grace.