BETWEEN THE OLDER AND NEW GENERATIONS IS A PIT. BUT NOT ORCHESTRA

OPERA GLASSES

“I was lucky that I ended up in Sovremennik. There are phenomenal acting talents - say, Evstigneev, Tabakov - who are born as actors. And I could be a teacher, I could dance ... I had neither courage nor ...

“I was lucky that I ended up in Sovremennik. There are phenomenal acting talents - say, Evstigneev, Tabakov - who are born as actors. And I could have been a teacher, I could have danced ... I had neither the courage nor the ambition that giftedness presupposes. But "Sovremennik" developed my nature, my average abilities and, most importantly, taught me to understand why I exist in this. At the Moscow Art Theater School-Studio we studied the profession. And with regard to what is happening on the street, they were complete stools. Efremov and the group of founders first put me in front of the question: why does the theater exist today? Made me let it through. When I saw that Efremov, Kvasha, Volchek, Tabakov - very young people - live in their fatherland and create a theater with a specific goal, everything worked out in my head.

This is about the theater in which Alla Borisovna Pokrovskaya served for more than forty years.

“Their lively attitude to the material may not correspond to my conservative ideas, but they exude a freshness of movement, and this is always interesting to me. If they were not, I would be a completely underdeveloped old woman. And this is about young directors, one of whom invited her to the Moscow Art Theater in 2004. In her three performances on this stage, the actress brilliantly demonstrates that the school of Russian psychological theater does not contradict the directors' search for avant-garde forms. An actress of the legendary generation, the “crossroads” of the famous theatrical dynasty (her grandson, Nikita Efremov, is already studying in the second year of the Moscow Art Theater School), a teacher with forty years of experience, she, not realizing the solidity of her status, still doubts ...

- Is the teacher of the Moscow Art Theater School-Studio with almost forty years of experience interested in today's generation of future actors?

- Interesting! Although they have lost a lot in school education. In the Soviet Union, they knew something - there was a school education system. And today, the people we receive from different places are educated in completely different ways. They may know many things that I do not know. For example, they are well versed in modern cinema. They may not know who Turgenev is, but they know who Tolkien is. All are individualists. For us, teachers, it becomes a serious problem how to connect them into a team.

In addition, today, with so many series on TV, it is not very common to go to the theater. Understanding the meaning of the theater by applicants is reduced to one-time impressions. I don't know if they tell good actors from bad ones, but they definitely don't know anything about previous generations - unlike us. They start from scratch - as if they had not invented the wheel before them. Probably, this new contingent needs a new approach. But when they talk about renovating the school… After all, the school is by definition conservative! With all your skeletons in the closet. Why fight a tradition that has been built up over the centuries?

- How faithful were the young "contemporaries" to the traditions of the Moscow Art Theater?

— We did not betray the methodology of the Moscow Art Theater School. But the performances of the Moscow Art Theater then seemed to us inanimate, untruthful. Let's say the great Yanshin plays the Freeloader. He sits in the center, and the nobles huddle on the sides, because he is a people's artist and does not walk well due to illness, and the director puts him in the center. What kind of parasite is this? It's a freeloader must be huddled! The example is rather primitive, but it seemed ridiculous to us ...

It is known that every 10-15 years a generation in the theater is replaced and a new language is developed, rhythms change. Now, when I remember the old graduation performances that I staged with students, I think with horror: what did I do?

- The seventies became the period of restructuring of Sovremennik ... What determined a new stage in the development of the theater - the departure of Efremov or the onset of an era of stagnation?

- Of course, the departure of Efremov was a revolutionary event for the theater. And thank God that the young actors who then came to the theater turned out to be such bright personalities and artists. We still played Climbing Mount Fuji and other performances that continued the line of the young Sovremennik, but already in Valentin and Valentina with Fokine, with Kostya Raikin, with Yura Bogatyryov, Marina Neelova, a generation of sharp individuals came to Sovremennik, who began to “turn out” the hall. They personally (and not like us - all together) did not address the hall, but to everyone in the hall. Oleg Dal came and went (he is basically a loner), and Dahl's terribly pessimistic understanding of time also had an impact.

All this was a defense of the originality of human nature in times of stagnation. Then Elena Yakovleva and Sergey Garmash came, then Chulpan Khamatova, whose appearance, by the way, is somewhat similar to the appearance of Marina Neelova. But Marina brought her inner discomfort - something like this: "I will live as I want, and I am very nervous about this." And Chulpan Khamatova is a harmonious figure: “I will not let my inner harmony be destroyed by anything.”

- What is lacking today in the Russian system of acting education?

- Don't know! I am now in a state of serious doubt: maybe my time has passed?

- Can you remember the last strong impression of the audience from the theatrical production?

- In youth, because you know life worse, you perceive more sharply what the theater gives. Since I have lived a difficult life for myself (Greta Garbo, with whom we were born on the same day, begins her book with the phrase: “My life, like any other, failed”), it is difficult to surprise me with anything.

But just recently I saw in New York how Meryl Streep plays Mother Courage in Central Park (I stayed after the summer school in America - I decided that I would die if I did not see Meryl Streep live!). Free to the public for a whole month. To get a ticket, people stand for days. Vasya Arkanov conceded his ticket to me - from what Russian journalists were supposed to.

Every day for a month, Meryl Streep plays in Central Park, that is, on the street. An unusual performance, very Brechtian and appropriate to the place where it is played. And then Meryl Streep shocked me - like a pro! She has such an intelligent, harmonious texture, it would seem that it does not at all correspond to the role of this aunt, and suddenly such unusual plasticity, internal and external reincarnation, and almost without makeup. So many finds!

I sobbed! It also turned out that she has a professional ear, she sings brilliantly. Other stars played with her, but she is over the barrier. Four years ago, she played Arkadina in The Seagull, and now she played Mother Courage.

Brechtian, base idea. Everything is very simple: Courage leaves on a wagon, there is nothing on the stage except the wagon, war, dirt. Mother Courage is a merchant and a bastard, children are dying - that's what war is ...

— I know that you follow the work of young actors. In particular, watch the performances of Zhenovach's studio...

- I watched the performances of Zhenovach's course when they were not yet a studio. I followed them in the third, fourth years - they were so "even". And now, one by one, they began to “crawl out”.

- You played in three performances by Kirill Serebrennikov - "Petty Bourgeois", "Playing the Victim" and "Golovlevs". Do you have an advisory voice when working with an innovative director?

- Kirill Semenovich discusses with all his actors all the problems that arise. And it creates an absolutely wonderful rehearsal atmosphere. He is a very open person, I am very closed, cowardly, reserved, shy; I can’t immediately give the result, I “save” for a very long time, and the director toils with me: does she understand - doesn’t she understand? I'm used to the fact that the director knows about it - that you have to wait.

However, the first two performances worked quite easily, but “Golovlevs” didn’t work for me at all, there was a period of incomprehension: what Kirill Semenovich wants from me and what I want from him. I basically worked with directors who were actors themselves - Efremov, Volchek - and therefore knew how to help the actor's individuality, it was not difficult for them to send me somewhere unnoticed by me. Kirill is not an actor, he has a different upbringing and worldview, and at first I could not hear his prompts for a long time.

Does an actress with your experience need any hints?

- All actors need them - masters and not masters. Everyone has it from scratch, every time: I don’t know anything, I don’t understand anything. When I recently worked with Kostya Raikin as a director on work with actors on the play “Cosmetics of the Enemy”, he listened to the explanation of the role like a child, even joked that each role is rehearsed the way it was in the fourth year. Of course, there is a set of clichés into which craftsmanship sometimes turns, it seems that everyone has already done it, it is becoming more and more difficult to find something new. My wonderful teacher Viktor Yakovlevich Stanitsyn, under whom I graduated from the Moscow Art Theater School, told us that the first thirty years in the theater are difficult, and the next thirty years are even more difficult. We laughed then, but now I already understand what Viktor Yakovlevich was talking about.

- Did you find any new colors in the role of Golovleva?

- Don't know. But never before have I played a sharply negative role. I was very impressed by Georgievskaya and thought: I need to surprise me with something unusual in myself - which I did not succeed at all. And the time is different, different staging, a different view, which every director has the right to. Comparing us, of course, is ridiculous.

For a long time she could not adapt to Zhenya Mironov. Smoktunovsky played such an evil genius, which I was horrified by, but in no way attributed this to myself: wow, what terrible people there are! And Zhenya plays in such a way that I suddenly thought: so I am also like that. Not me - Arina Petrovna, but I - Alla Borisovna. I am no different in some things from my heroine. As soon as I realized that if I, Alla Pokrovskaya, sat in this test ... This story is about the absence of love in general, any.

— What new topics are of interest to your generation today? Which, by the way, has the same right to speak out as the generation of twenty-, thirty- and ninety-year-olds ...

- Here Fomenko speaks out. He takes eternal themes and a way of expression that lies in time. The way of expression is not necessarily formal things, but also internal ones. I read an interview with Korshunovas in Novaya Gazeta, in which he says: “Just don’t try to listen to the older generation!” Indeed, a pit has formed between the older generation, brought up in the Soviet space, and the new generation, who grew up in the post-Soviet space. Finding common ground is quite difficult. On the one hand, he is right, on the other hand, why should we be killed now?! Or maybe it really is time...