Grigory Zaslavsky. Amateur activities sober

Amateur activities sober
Grigory Zaslavsky

Publication date: February 18, 2004

What a great idea it was: to bring onto the stage three or five of our famous political strategists, sort of like Pope Charles, or Karabasov (or even Duremarov) of the early 21st century, in whose hands unknown lieutenant colonels become presidents. And let them speak in their own voices, but to our theatrical tune. The authors of the project are Olga Darfi and Ekaterina Narshi, the first, they say, studied with Khotinenko, the second is already a famous playwright, the author of television series broadcast throughout the country, and plays that are shown almost nowhere. In an interview obtained from the Internet, both managed to promise: “This will be a noisy project. The very fact that such information donors have been disturbed will arouse interest... The play consists of monologues in which the “gray cardinals” will utter words about time and yourself."

The location of the action is the basement of " Theatre.doc ". On the appointed day and hour there is no special crowd, but the usual youth audience for these places is effectively layered with representatives of the new political technology class - also young or skillfully youthful gentlemen, dressed in expensive suits, fragrant, but not a mile away, but so that expensive smells can be heard only at the moment when the invited guest asks for forgiveness and makes his way past to his place. Gold-rimmed glasses, an expensive leather briefcase, a cell phone that was turned off in time - in short, everything that such people should wear in such cases.

Despite the apparent originality, we can say that the new project for the “documentary theater” is quite traditional, not going beyond the scope of interest in extremes, in the exoticism of life. And it doesn’t matter that homeless people are on one side of life, and political strategists are on the other. If one of them, one of the masters of the political backstage (like a certain Snezhana, a girl-angel who found herself in the camp of PR devils along unknown paths), is destined to die in a car accident, then she does not crash in a Jaguar. The melodramatic plot is something like an inserted short story in a narrative constructed as a series of monologues-revelation in the first person (in the manner of “The Decameron”), but all the other characters in “Sober PR” are completely devoid of any sentimentality.

The authors of the project are also the heroes, or rather, the heroines of the theatrical-documentary-analytical project: the two actresses call each other Olya and Katya, and the “documentary” political strategists also address them, but we never learn their names. The “specialists” present in the hall recognize their colleagues, although without names. And those who are at least occasionally interested in internal Russian politics will also recognize them - some by intonation, others by revelations already included in legends. (And - I ask the authors to forgive me this involuntary suspicion - some Narshi and Durfi quoted without the consent of the authors.) In the melodramatic story about Snezhana, the names of those who came to her funeral are named - Mamut, Khloponin and even Abramovich (“Already Roma doesn't go anywhere at all." And in yet another case, off-stage characters are given easily recognizable pseudonyms-masks (the same Snezhana easily got a job for some school teacher as an assistant in Lusyanov’s office : another touch on the theme “kings can do anything”).

The best thing about Sober PR is, of course, the quotes. They are remembered. For example, a story about manipulative sociology, which was invented by one of the heroes of the project: for this it is necessary to release a certain number of people into the city who will ask the townspeople how they feel about the fact that candidate so-and-so has a Chechen son-in-law? The next day the city will know about the Chechen. Another hero calls September 11, 2001 a grand sociological test: on September 10, hardly anyone would have responded to the election item on the fight against terrorism, and the next day this problem became the most important one. Political strategists, therefore, need to learn how to organize their own little September 11th where elections are taking place. Further: “The best elections are elections without a candidate. It’s better to come up with a virtual character...”; “In politics there is no concept of “below the belt”, there is no top”; “You know that the president was identified when they realized that the “former” was completely finished and something had to be done. Then they launched various studies throughout Russia. And the answer to the question, which was especially tested in focus groups: “Your beloved character?" - was the movie character Stirlitz. That's it. There was no need to invent anything, he was in the right place, at the right time, then everything was elementary"; “Our rich experience should be used not within the country. We will create thirty-three crises anywhere. We will quarrel between Pakistan and India, let them fight among themselves! We will divide China into four parts... Divide and conquer!” In fact, these quotes now move from one article to another.

One can imagine how three Khazanovs could play this (the fact is that there are three political strategists in the play; probably, several prototypes had to be divided into three of them at once). Or Tatyana Vasilyeva, if she got the role of one of the two heroines. The variety and reprisal nature of the sounding material is obvious, the sketchy character with shocking aphoristic remarks catches the eye (and also the ears, and then is imprinted in the memory). When the current, prosperous and self-excommunicated Khazanov complains about the lack of high-quality satire, he could be recommended to familiarize himself with the available “sound material”.

There is neither Khazanov nor Vasilyeva in Sober PR. Those whom Olga Darfi and Ekaterina Narshi entrusted with reading what they collected and somehow processed, with the acting task, one might think, met for the first time (perhaps, except for one or two - Dmitry Goldman, playing a political strategist with a pipe, and Alexander Vartanov, playwright and director, who was entrusted with a touching melodramatic plot). The rest have poor diction, poor intonation, and massive, irrepressible gestures. It can also be said that “Sober PR” collected and even focused the problems and shortcomings characteristic of documentary theater and “new drama” in general. In terms of dramaturgy and in terms of performance. This is unprofessionalism, which “emerges” at the stage of composing the text and is reinforced and brought to logical imperfection by the performers. In the end, even a poor performance can be forgiven, as long as it does not preclude or close off the possibility of subsequent interpretations. But when the material cannot be called anything other than material, “when the whole idea is already clear and the theme has been guessed” (as Levitansky once wrote), unprofessionalism ceases to be excusable and sweet. After all, something really interesting could have turned out about something that everyone is really interested in. Really serious and really funny. It could, but it didn't work out.

This song was ruined. It's a pity.