Marina Timasheva. A miracle has happened

A miracle has happened
Main events of the Theater Olympics

Maryna Timasheva

Publication date: May 29, 2001

is taking place in Moscow The World Theater Olympics , the scale and scope of which defies description. If I set out to even briefly list all the most interesting of the planned events, I would end up with an author’s note. Not less. That's why I won't even try. I will only report that by the time of the Olympic start, two brand new buildings appeared in the capital. , created by Valery Fokin , with tinted windows, gray brickwork and black floors Near the Novoslobodskaya metro station is the gloomy Meyerhold Center . On Sretenka Street - snow-white, with a transparent dome and partitions, with light wooden floors, the School of Dramatic Art is the brainchild of Anatoly Vasilyev. In both buildings there are countless rehearsal rooms and auditoriums, equipped with the latest and very expensive technology. It is difficult to imagine a European capital in which a couple of such architectural projects would be completed at the same time. And no one can reach the vastness of our plans, although the Olympics are taking place for the third time.

This story was started in 1995 by directors who knew each other well - in particular, from the Chekhov International Theater Festival. The first Olympics took place in Delphi, Greece (where else?), it was dedicated to new interpretations of ancient Greek tragedies, headed by director Theodorus Terzopoulos (the same one who owns “Medea” with Alla Demidova in the title role). In his view, the meaning of the Olympics is formulated as follows: “without theatre, without art and spiritual wealth, not a single person can survive. The 20th century is ending - the century that passed under the banner of classical Russian theater. And therefore we are entering the 21st century in Moscow.”

The second series of the Olympics is a Japanese city with the funny name Shizuoka. Having seen the colossal theater complex, which was cleared out by the local authorities for the occasion, Russian theater workers returned to their homeland full of shizuokas. Apparently, two new Moscow theaters were built under the sign “Catch up and overtake Japan” in order to at least a little calm down the agitated representatives of the “classical Russian theater”. By the way, 50 theaters are participating in the Moscow Olympics - versus Japan's 30. The second theatrical Olympics was held by the Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki and he echoes his Greek colleague: “Russia is the country that gave life to the theatrical art of the twentieth century. And it is simply wonderful that it is here, in the cradle of the theater of the twentieth century, that an event takes place that, we hope , will answer the question of whether theater is needed today and what it should be like.”

Looking ahead, I note that the question “is theater necessary?” The Olympics gave a comprehensive answer in the very first days. In the premises of the Maly Theater, also the Maly (Piccolo) Theater, but from Milan, showed the legendary performance by Giorgio Strehler “The Servant of Two Masters”. We played “The Servant” on the big stage for eight days. There weren't enough tickets for everyone. Crowds of sufferers knocked down the doors of the Maly Theater, and the administration of the Maly Theater billed the Confederation of Theater Unions for the damage caused. By the way, the doors were broken all eight days. Here it’s time to bring one more quote - from the English set designer Nick Ormerod, co-author of all Declan Donellan’s performances: “Moscow is the only city in the world where, even after the economic collapse and financial disaster, the theaters were full and the restaurants were empty.”

Our Olympics are held under the motto “Theater for the people.” These words are borrowed from the title of a book by the great Giorgio Strehler. “We lived the dream of the theater as a festival for the whole people,” writes Strehler. And a little further: “The idea of ​​a folk theater, understood as a holiday in the park, where everyone, holding hands, dances in the light of the stars and together applauds the Sid, has suffered a complete collapse.” The utopian idea turned into reality - for one evening in Moscow. Only it was not Corneille’s tragedy that was applauded, but Goldoni’s comedy.

Joy tinged with melancholy

The play "Harlequin, Servant of Two Masters" was staged by Strehler at the Teatro Piccolo di Milano in 1947. It is believed that this work of theatrical art refutes the idea of ​​the fragility and fragility of performances. After all, the play has been playing for half a century, and the theatrical smoking room Harlequin is still very much alive. Still, if you look at photographs of the old performance, you see that something different is being played now.

The point is not that the role of Harlequin is no longer played by Marcello Morreti, but by Ferruccio Soleri. There cannot be any fundamental differences here, since Morreti hand-fed Soleri this role: “By some miracle,” says Strehler, “the process typical of commedia dell’arte, the process of learning the craft, has suddenly been revived these days. A craft whose secrets the comedian conveys comrade, enriching him with my experience." To this day, Soleri immaculately reproduces the previous role. Of course, people who have seen the performance more than once say that Soleri is no longer the same, that he is losing pace, passion, and rapidity of speech... What is funny is not that these claims are made to a 70-year-old artist with the figure of a teenager and the gutta-percha of a circus boy. It’s funny that the same complaints were addressed to Marcello Morreti 40 years ago.

In the 1947 production, as the curtain rose, the audience watched as a troupe of comedians prepared for the performance. Someone was rehearsing a pirouette, someone was rehearsing an acrobatic stunt, someone was singing, someone was quarreling... Then a servant of the proscenium appeared. He tapped the floor with a wooden stick (there were no bells), and the action began. Nowadays, an old man in a cap, looking like a brownie (in fact, he is the brownie of the ancient theater) comes onto the stage while the curtain is still closed. He lights the candles placed on the proscenium, mutters about something of his own, hits with his staff - Goldoni’s play begins. The principle of a theater within a theater is preserved, but the fact that this is an ancient theater in a modern theater is greatly emphasized (compared to the first version) . Even the stage mirror is framed, which deepens the perspective - not only spatial, but also temporal.

The picture is impeccably beautiful. Candles burning in candelabras on the proscenium close the stage and auditorium of the Maly Theater into a single whole, in the interior of which there are also candles in candelabra. Cream candles - on a white background. The costumes have lost their colorfulness, as if faded in the sun of Italian squares (maybe they have faded with time?). Some of the enchanting charm of the performance lies in the fact that it has an undisguised and piercing nostalgia for the naive era of folk theater. The moment between the past and the future becomes the main character of the play. Moving, creeping time that mixes sounds, highlights colors, softens rough jokes.

In 1947, the task was simpler aesthetically and ethically more complex: “Our Harlequin appeared in Europe at the end of a bloody war, which left its indelible stamp of despair and hopelessness on many souls, and he commemorated and preserved countless centuries-old values ​​of poetry and thereby became a harbinger of trust to people, making them laugh sincerely and surrender to pure theatrical joy." In the performance that Moscow just saw, pure joy is tainted with melancholy and cultural reflection.

Strehler adored Goldoni . In his book, he defended him from Gozzi (the main theatrical enemy) with such passion as if Goldoni were his only son. But if Goldoni had seen the play “Harlequin, Servant of Two Masters,” he would have hated Strehler. The fact is that Goldoni spent his life disowning the tradition of commedia dell'arte. He was against the use of dialects, against masks as such; he wanted their place to be taken by characters with characters changing as the action progressed. Even the main character's name in his play is not Harlequin, but Truffaldino. Strehler staged "The Servant of Two Masters" according to all the rules of commedia dell'arte. Traditionally, two couples in love do not wear masks because youth itself was considered a mask, but raise their hands to the sky, sigh, sing and dance like animated puppets. Old people are traditional: one is pot-bellied and inactive, the other is skinny and fussy. The servants are traditional - funny, stuttering on any word starting with "ko", and therefore looking like a young cockerel, Brigella, and cheerful, simple-minded Smeraldina. The ladies and gentlemen speak literary Italian, and the masks speak breathtaking dialects. This is how it was supposed to be in folk tradition. Lazzi were introduced into the performance - a kind of respite in the path of the plot, which was filled by an improvising actor. Harlequin Soleri sits on the letter and then searches for it for a long time, diligently turning his back to the hall, on which the expensive missing item is emblazoned. The harlequin catches a fly, takes a long time and savorily tears off its legs, and also eats them. With truly circus agility, Harlequin catches the plates flying out from behind the screens, takes them to the wings and manages to run to the opposite edge of the stage, from where another portion of kitchen utensils flies out. The harlequin frolics with the pudding trembling on the dish and spanks it on the “cheeks” like a chubby baby. Harlequin climbs into the chest, in its cramped space somehow incomprehensibly manages to change into a white shirt with long sleeves, and hangs out of the chest not even as a mask, but as a fair doll - Pulcinella, Polichinelle, Parsley.

What was improvisation in commedia dell'arte is firmly fixed here by the director. This is the only concession to Goldoni that Strehler made (Goldoni did not like improvisations.) There is no talk of any characters here. All that can be said about Harlequin is that he is an evil creature, always mocking everyone and profiting from everyone, gluttonous, like Gargantua and Pantagruel in one bottle, but without the slightest sign of conscience. Closer to the end, he gets poked and punched more and more often, one trouble after another falls on his head, but no one feels sorry for him. A stick cries for him.

Such a performance is perceived primarily by a modern viewer as a museum exhibit, and by modern actors as a different methodology. What should the Russian theater think about? Over the fact that Strehler seems to be engaged in a craft, and not in the “service of the Muses,” but he does not see anything shameful in this for himself. The fact that you can laugh without “tears invisible to the world,” but make you laugh without vulgarity. The fact that you can amuse the public in a cultural manner, without mocking, making fun of, and without poking your fingers out of shallow pockets.

And then, when at the end of the performance the ingenious stage light turns all the comedians into shadows and they, like ghosts, melt away before our eyes, you will remember not at all about the naive comedy of masks, but about Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. And you will begin to think about the elusive beauty of Strehler’s performances.

By the time Strehler directed The Servant, commedia dell'arte was a long-vanished phenomenon. By the beginning of the 21st century, Strehler’s performance itself is a dying thing. Strehler's shadow now dances along with the shadows of the actors. And those that once, under Goldoni, represented his creations, and those that left during Strehler’s lifetime (like the same Marcelo Morreti). Farewell, dear theater of the twentieth century. And long live the new one!?

Bob Wilson's Sleepy Kingdom

The theater of American director Robert Wilson , presented at the World Theater Olympics with the play “The Game of Dreams” (based on the play by August Strindberg), is clearly in the hands of the new century. “The motivation for me to work as an Artist,” says Wilson, “is to ask questions. Because if an artist knows what he wants and everyone else knows the same thing, then there is no reason for his work. "The question 'What is this?', not the answer to this question. In this frame I create theater, sculpture, installations, whatever."
In Wilson's brief biography we read: "Born in 1941 in Texas. Studied architecture and business at the University of Texas, then art in Paris. In the 60s he went to New York, made several dramatic performances. Since the early 80s he has worked mainly in Europe: for the Avignon Festival, the Berlin Volksbühne, the Hamburg Thalia, the city theaters of Bologna and Ferrara, Milan's Change Performing Arts. In America, he produced Euripides' Alceste at the Repertory Theater and Wagner's Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera." However, what Wilson himself says about himself is much more interesting than official biographies.

“I grew up in a small town in Texas, and I didn’t have the opportunity to go to theaters or museums, so I never went there. I first went to the theater when I moved to New York, at 21. And I didn’t like the theater . Basically and still don't like it. I didn't intend to work in the theater, it happened by accident. I was walking down the street in New Jersey and saw a policeman about to hit a child with a baton. I tried to stop him. He said: this is not yours business. No, mine. I am a citizen of this country and, plus, I don’t understand why it is necessary to beat a child. We went to the police station together, only there I realized that the boy for whom I stood up was deaf and dumb. He was 13 years old, he was African-American, he did not go to school and was illiterate. The people with whom he lived did not perceive his condition as a problem. It was believed that he was generally unteachable. I decided to take him in because I was interested understand how he thinks, but he thought in images. In court they asked me: where did you see mental abilities? And I answered: he has a sense of humor. I asked the lawyer: what words should I find to convince the judge? He answered: I don’t know. I asked: do you think they will give it to me? He said: hardly. And then I couldn’t stand it and told the judge: if you don’t give me custody of him, but ban him in a special institution, it will cost the state of New Jersey a damn lot of money. And the judge understood me. In general, my first work for the theater was written with this boy. It was a seven-hour play without text, without sound, only images - from the drawings of this boy. And what will I tell you: this boy noticed something that I did not see because of my concentration on words. And he understood everything completely differently than I did. That's how I started working in the theater."

From this speech it appears that Bob Wilson is a neophyte. Only a neophyte can prove with genuine passion to Russian theater critics that it is possible to say “I will kill you” with different intonations. You can speak threateningly and loudly, or you can smile softly and tenderly. The second option is scarier, that is, it’s not what a person says, but how he says it. In the theater this was invented by Stanislavsky , it was called “text and subtext”, in English many years ago it was repeated by Harold Pinter : “It doesn’t matter what he said, it’s important how he sat.” Pinter is apparently closer to Wilson. He doesn’t care about “what” or “how” the characters say - only how they stand, move, and what place they occupy in space. Let's say the heroine of August Strindberg's play is Indre. On Earth her name is Agnes, she is the daughter of God. She was sent to Earth to find out about the peculiarities of human life. The social and symbolist are mixed in not the best play by the great Swedish playwright. None of this matters to Wilson. It is important that Indre is different, so she is played by an actress with a pronounced Asian appearance (probably Japanese). She comes down to the people on the bridge (the flower bridge of the traditional Japanese theater), dressed in silver pants and a robe (something like an embellished uniform from the Chinese Cultural Revolution), she often freezes in place in a Buddha pose and dances something very similar to Indian folk dances . She is a ballerina and a tightrope walker, everyone around is craftsmen, if not dolls. Everyone is dressed in the same white, everyone mechanically repeats the same movements, like a bear and a man from a wooden Russian toy.

The entire performance is storyboarded, like an old movie that has not yet seen editing. That is, the light flashes, you see a stunningly beautiful picture, the artists are doing something against its background, the light goes out, new music starts playing very loudly, the light flashes again, the picture is completely different. For example, the libretto says: Agnes meets the Glazier. What do we see? Young girls are playing with a hoop on stage. They are waiting for someone: in their hands they have a pie for the guest. A man wanders along the proscenium, glass flies over his head, then somehow gets stuck to his back. Try blaming Wilson for the Glazier's absence. It existed, but it arose not from Strindberg’s play, not from its plot, but from Wilson’s associations with the glazier.

Robert Wilson applies the categories of ballet theater to dramatic theater; he considers the subtraction of meaning from a literary text, that is, interpretation, as a totalitarian phenomenon. There is no meaning in his performance, and there is no need to look for it. This is art for art's sake, the enjoyment of pure form. Wilson, who was once passionate about performance art, took it to the dramatic theater. By the 90s, performance art as a genre was already dead. By grafting it onto the theater, Wilson brought a dead body to life. Wilson was also involved in video art: hence the fast and tight cutting of episodes and neon artificial colors (as in advertising or music videos).

The play of three-dimensional figures, patterns and planes, the finest play of colors and distinct changes in light, static mise-en-scène, impeccable taste and a specific sense of humor. For example, Strindberg wrote: the action takes place at a university, diplomas are awarded. Wilson shows three fake figures of cows, next to each is a man in a lingonberry-colored suit. A woman with a pointer counts to three, and on the count of three she hits the young man's head with the pointer. He grabs the udder, the artificial cow moos and emits a trickle of artificial milk.

The voices come as if from under water, the movement is slow, the faces are whitewashed. All proportions have been slightly changed. This magical combination of the real and the implausible - in faces and masks, poses and gestures, colors and lines - creates the feeling of a dream. Vapid, but meditative, mesmerizing, like glycerin lamps with multi-colored foil floating in them. A comparison with surrealism suggests itself. But Dali's paintings, for example, are sensual and stimulating. They are not cold. Clocks melt, giraffes burn, tigers jump on sleeping women. Wilson is surrealism in a reefer. He would have been an amazing interior designer, if, of course, it was possible to reproduce the image of a computer advertisement in the real space of the house.

The heroine of the play, Indra, feels sorry for people. Wilson - not at all, since these are not people, not heroes, not even characters. I would say that these are puppets, but they are lifeless compared even to puppets.

Wilson's performance has nothing to do with life. This is an intricate act of narcissism, performed at enormous expense (one production costs one and a half million dollars). Narcissus, according to myth, was impeccably beautiful, but, having become preoccupied with his appearance, he ceased to be a man.

Let me return to the first performance of the Olympics, or rather to its author - the late Giorgio Strehler. In the book “Theater for the People,” Strehler writes: “A passion for pure symbolism can tear a theatrical spectacle away from any recognizable, tangible reality, so that in its pretentiousness it becomes sterile, inapplicable to anything from a cognitive and practical point of view.” You can't say anything better about Wilson's performance than Strehler.

About the properties of passion

It is not clear why Eimuntas Nekrosius does not write poetry. It is not clear why such a powerful poetic genius is forced to operate with such a rough texture as theater. The works of Eimuntas Nekrošius are not so much performances as poems. The last three - "Hamlet", "Macbeth" and "Othello" - in a collection of poems would be called "Translations from Shakespeare."

Nekrosius's stage fantasies belong to the poetic structure of the twentieth century. In other words, they are disharmonious. Nekroshus builds his performances from primordial materials - wood, stone, iron, fire, water, earth. He sees bird people, plant people (as in Macbeth) or animal people (as in Hamlet). Based on pagan myths and magic, Nekroshus creates his own rebellious world. In Hamlet, a circular saw hung above the stage - instead of an image of God. The father handed his son an ice block with a blade frozen into it and ordered him to take revenge. He sent his son to die. And, having met Hamlet on the other side of earthly existence, he mourned his dead boy. Isn't it a blasphemous and grandiose translation of Shakespeare's tragedy into a theatrical-religious text that does not take into account the canons of religion itself. A divine and atheistic text that, in my deep conviction, only a truly believing sinner can afford.

Nekrosius starts with the most famous stories and turns them into the basis for his own confession. It begins with demonic play, but leads it into poetry, if not into prayer. And Christian prayer comes from a pagan ritual. The director moves from the depths of centuries and traditions, because when the upper layers are poisoned, the fish goes deeper. But within each of his performances and all of them taken together, he moves along the same path in which European civilization developed. Perhaps he wants to trace where and when a terrible mistake was made.

Eimuntas Nekrošius stages performances about decaying existence. About the destroyed foundations of human life. Starting at least with “Little Tragedies,” he stages plays about God, godlessness and what will become of us all.

Nekroshus's theater explores various human feelings that lead to self-destruction and death. Pride (Guan in Little Tragedies), thirst for revenge (Hamlet), thirst for power (Macbeth). The time has come for Iago's hatred and Othello's jealous love. Each of these feelings is so strong that it can destroy not only the hero, but also the world around him.

"Othello" , in comparison with Nekrosius's latest performances, is much less rich in images. The space of the performance, flooded with “Rembrandt” light, is calmer, the air is thinner. Time drags on for a long time - it’s time to shorten it. In the play itself there are no otherworldly forces that rule the show in “Hamlet” or “Macbeth” - no witches, no ghosts (except that the handkerchief is called “magical”, and jealousy is called the “green-eyed witch”). There is nothing inevitable in the development of events: it is not a pattern that leads to a gloomy ending, but a string of accidents - like a dropped handkerchief. In other words, Othello is not a real tragedy.

Nekrosius undertook to refute the established idea about the properties of tragedy. Rock lies within man himself. You can’t run away from him, just like you can’t run away from yourself. It is no coincidence that Othello runs in the play - deep into the stage and back.

“There is rapture in battle and in the gloomy abyss on the edge, and in the angry ocean, among menacing waves and stormy darkness...” The scene twice repeated in the play comes from Pushkin : Othello holds Desdemona over the ramp (abyss), as if intending to throw her down. At first - jokingly, playfully, when repeated - seriously and furiously.

Othello - Vladas Bagdonas. Let us pay attention to the fact that in all the tragic performances of Nekrosius (not counting “Macbeth” - at that moment the actor left the theater) it is Bagdonas who is the bearer of emotions monstrous in strength and destructiveness. He played Salieri, he played the Ghost in Hamlet, he was assigned the role of Othello. They did not blacken Bagdonas’s face.

The action, as written in the play, takes place in Cyprus. In the play, the island of Cyprus seems very small. Outside the stage there is water (the splashing of the surf or the roar of the storm serves as a constant background sound). People walk with their pants rolled up, shaking drops of supposed moisture off their feet. But at the same time, the island is a ship. The main element of stage decoration is furled sails, which also serve as hammocks and cradles for those who want to hide or take a nap. A couple of silent sailors are constantly present on the stage, holding tanks of ballast in their hands: apparently, the ship could sink at any moment.

Life on this island ship is precarious and unkempt. Pokhodnaya. Fires are burning here and there. The men often smoke, are dressed in faded uniforms, Othello drinks water from a trough, the sails look like washed linen. Othello, as you know, is a naval commander. The main one on this ship and on this island. He is a white man, not a Moor. But he differs from the others, like Gulliver from the Lilliputians (it’s not for nothing that in the storm scene he drags small trough-coffin ships on ropes - exactly like in the drawings in the first part of Gulliver ). He is different because he is rude, powerful, temperamental, but also because he is old. Older than everyone else. Old soldier. Even a martinet.

The same thing happened with Nekroshus in “Three Sisters”: middle-aged, rude warriors came to the house of young and playful girls. When they left, they left ruins behind them. Middle-aged men who drink the life out of young girls. Men who seem to love them, but also hate, humiliate, and despise them at the same time. It's the same in Othello. Iago defiantly rejects the sexual advances of the hungry Emilia. Othello either kisses and caresses the tender and very fragile Desdemona, then, spitting on his hands, rubs his saliva over her dress. The unbridled barbaric dance of Othello and Desdemona is repeated twice in the play. A waltz breathing with lust, in which the partner does not lead the partner, but literally holds her by the throat. Her body limply obeys the powerful grip. In the finale, the grip will become dead: without noticing it, Othello no longer dances, but drags the corpse behind him.

Desdemona is played by Egle Shpokaite. She is not a dramatic actress, but a ballerina. Very thin. And he seems like a shadow next to the strong, dense, gloomy Othello-Bagdonas. They cannot be a couple, and Iago triumphs in vain; it is not he who is to blame for what happened. The elements are to blame. The name of this element is water.

The murmur of sea waves brings to life the peals of human passions. The ocean splashes in Othello’s soul, raising a primitive and wild turbidity from the bottom: “I love you, but if I stop loving you, chaos will ensue.” “I cry and execute just like heaven, which punishes by loving.” Here it is, the eternal theme of Eimuntas Nekrosius: a person dares - willingly or unwillingly - to equate himself with the Almighty, he undertakes to decide who lives and who does not, he thinks that issues of mercy and retribution are in his power. He defies heaven, and heaven dies in his soul.