Ksenia Zorina. Theater-studio "Man". Twenty five years later

Theater-studio "Man". Twenty five years later
Ksenia Zorina

Date of publication: October 16, 2000

The theater-studio "Man" under the direction of Lyudmila Roshkovan turned 25 years old. Studio theaters rarely last that long. On this occasion, the theater organized a festival, where, in addition to the performances currently taking place on its stage, it showed several old, famous, but long gone ones. Not all - no. For example, “Pannochki” by Zhenovach and much more. They showed Mrozhek's "Emigrants", staged by Mokeev in 1983, and "Italian Vermouth without Intermission" based on Petrushevskaya's play "Cinzano", staged by Kozak in 1986. For the general public, this event went unnoticed, but the tiny studio basement was literally torn apart. Those who once saw it all came, and young people who could not see anything. I don’t know how many people were like me - who in the late 80s, when all this came out of the underground, managed to find out that there was such an amazing play “Emigrants”, with Feklistov (!), but did not have time to watch it. “Emigrants” was last played in 1990, the fifth studio of the Moscow Art Theater, where Feklistov played Arbenin, died, Mokeev left, Mokeev returned - and that Mokeev and those “Emigrants” turned into a legend. (Mokeev has now staged the play “Call Pechorin” at the Pushkin Theater, to which school teachers, faithful to the “program” principle, force twelve-year-olds to attend. One of the critics managed to call it the worst performance of the season. He obviously watched it at the time "that" Mokeev - perhaps he knows better. But taking into account the huge amount of carrion going on on the Moscow stage, such an assessment of the attempt to make an unconditionally live, non-opportunistic, albeit too or, on the contrary, insufficiently formal performance for some, is at least astonishing. Even if this is no longer “that” Mokeev.)

Everyone who plays in these old performances - Kozak, Feklistov, Zemtsov, Zolotovitsky - has aged 15 years and turned into teachers at the Moscow Art Theater School. They were probably in their 30s back then - now they're in their 40s. A whisper sweeps through the hall from mouth to mouth of friends: “So-and-so said - how can you play this now, they won’t understand it.” “They” are the youth. Those with whom the teachers of the Studio School meet every day. They will laugh. They will not understand our tears, our pain, our powerlessness. Our then powerlessness. The irony is that as the actors have aged, they seem to have grown even closer to their characters. They were probably supposed to be like that: seasoned men, for whom life didn’t even pass like a tractor. No, just like a washing machine - wash it and throw it away. But the soul remained after washing.

The fears were not in vain. Both performances are absolutely lively, the actors play superbly: the Moscow Art Theater school is triumphant, the directors worked conscientiously, but the audience laughs. Sometimes you can even hear which part of the hall is laughing - friends or “students”. The audience laughs where they probably haven’t laughed before. Where they clenched their fists and swallowed their tears. What used to be “about us” has turned into an excellent reprise. Maybe there was laughter then, but it was different. Too well written, staged, acted - it would have been worse, it would have died; and so it turned 180 degrees. This is especially felt in “Italian Vermouth”. When the laughter of the audience flies behind you, you think: how do they have the strength to face this? Saved Soviet money is pouring onto the stage - now you can’t stage a play like that anymore, you won’t find the money anywhere. In the men who went to work that no one wanted, who gave all the money to their wife (who then gives 1 ruble for lunch, 10 kopecks for travel and 40 for a pack of Java), who remembered the useless French language, who drank out of boredom, one can still recognize parents , uncles, acquaintances of acquaintances. With every step that is learned, less and less will remain. Even Mrozhek's "Emigrants" is fading - although the emigrant theme does not seem to become outdated.

In “The Emigrants,” where a classic couple was squeezed into a cramped, dirty basement: an intellectual-philosopher for whom there is “no return,” and a semi-literate peasant who came to earn money, the most bitter gap is not so much between the hall and the stage, but between then and now the condition of the actors themselves. Feklistov in the role of a ditch digger, a stupid brute, in the role of a man whom an enlightened neighbor is about to classify with the sacramental word “cattle”, is fantastically good. You look at him and think - this is the same ordinary wizard who can easily change his flesh, his nature, and then crawl out of his new shell and tear your soul apart with one movement. The last thing I want is to offend Feklistov, but is it possible to compare what he does here with what happens in the performances of Stein and Donnellan, even with all his brilliant acting technique? I haven’t seen such happiness on the face of Feklistov as he bowed for a long time - this is not how actors come out for bows after those “Western” commercial performances, even if they are happy with the role. Is it the basement, the director, the timing? But why the hell doesn’t Feklistov have such roles now? After all, it’s not just him, we are poorer because he doesn’t play. We feel bad. (Of course, an actor has the right to be different, playing different things and in different ways, but it’s a shame, say, for the same Zolotovitsky - after all, if you see him only in “Entreprise” Kozakov or even at the Kalyagin Theater , you are unlikely to be imbued with warm feelings for him. And here it is, alive, human. Although "Italian Vermouth" is not the best performance of all time. Maybe Mark Zakharov is really right , and these are just two different phenomena, mistakenly called by the general word “theater”? Maybe this feeling of empathy is just some kind of studio perversion?)

Igor Zolotovitsky must inevitably be mentioned again. 3 years ago at the Moscow Art Theater School, on the Leontiev Avangard course , he staged the play “Smirnova’s Birthday,” based on the play by the same Petrushevskaya, with the same inevitable Italian vermouth as the main engine of the plot. Only if men drink at Cinzano, women drink at Birthday. And at that performance the audience, 90% of whom were young people who did not know Soviet times, did not laugh. Zolotovitsky’s girls played amazingly. (Irina Kareva, Yana Kolesnichenko, Olesya Sudzilovskaya - one is better than the other. Where are they now? Who will give them the opportunity to play like that? The only one who somehow floated to the surface is Alexander Khovansky, who plays Robert in “Three Comrades” in “Sovremennik” In that performance, he appeared 10 minutes before the end and, finding only rubble, shouted: “Have fun, girls, your boy has come to you!”) There was not a single unnecessary, deceitful gesture, everything was real, not naturalistic, but genuine - until it hurts in the eyes. But that’s probably not the point, it’s not that the students outplayed the teachers. The man's world is changing - the women's world remains unchanged. No matter how clear and close it is what is happening in Petrushevskaya and Mrozhek in the souls of men, small shifts in realities, possibilities, aspirations make it all a little different, alien, covered with some kind of film. The fact that time has changed cannot be hidden. For women, there is no time, no realities - the main thing remains the same. “Well, for children, 60 kopecks an hour!”