| Hungarian director conducted a social therapy session The “Territory” festival began with the theater, which is generally logical. Firstly, the organizers of the festival are entirely from the theatrical environment: actors Evgeny Mironov, Chulpan Khamatova, director Kirill Serebrennikov, theater critic Roman Dolzhansky and Teodor Currentzis - the chief conductor and artistic director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater. And it is clear that it is Roman Dolzhansky, one of the directors of the NET festival, who is an expert in independent, contemporary, avant-garde, etc. theater, that is, he knows what to choose and where to get it.
Secondly, theater is the very territory of synthesis, where each type of art is a partner in relation to others, and yet the organizers of the festival, judging by their declarations, are exactly what they are trying to achieve.
The first event of the new forum was the play “Blackland”, staged by the Hungarian director Arpad Schilling in his own Kretakor theater.
The Territory festival considers one of its tasks to be presenting to the Russian public, especially its young part, new names unfamiliar to it. Arpad Schilling is not entirely unknown in Russia. In 2004, his “The Seagull” was shown at the NET festival, which everyone really liked and for which Schilling was awarded the Stanislavsky Theater Prize “For the development of ideas of psychological theater on the modern Hungarian stage.” However, there have still been no normal tours of his theater in our country, and only those who have seen “Blackland” can understand why.
Schilling is one of the new generation of theater directors highly sought after in Europe who have emerged in the last decade, mainly in the post-Soviet space: Thomas Ostermeier (Germany), Grzegorz Jarzyna (Poland), Oskaras Korsunovas (Lithuania), Alvis Hermanis (Latvia). .. He was born in 1974, in 1995 he organized his own theater Kretakor, in ten years he staged more than fifteen performances, mostly based on classical plays, made films, and was a participant in the Edinburgh, Vienna, and Avignon festivals. That is, it fits perfectly into the context of the European theatrical process.
But those few spectators who saw the almost minimalist psychological “The Seagull” could not imagine how hooligan and provocative Arpad Schilling would appear in the play “Blackland”.
The huge stage of the New Opera Theater is almost empty. Lots of doors, stools with the names of artists, three monitors on which the first texts appear. This is dry information about Hungary - size, population, attractions...
A girl appears to play a saxophone solo and sits on the proscenium, legs spread wide. He brings the instrument to his mouth, but immediately puts it down. Several attempts, and the audience clearly understands that the lady is doing with the saxophone what usually happens with a completely different object and certainly in a completely different setting. The process lasts quite a long time, and at the stage when completion should already follow, music begins to sound. And a message appears on the display screens - something about the replacement of a socialist prime minister with another, who promised to restore order in the country... A man comes out with a glass of champagne, greets him and burps... These burps, sounding with different intonations, constitute his speech, outwardly quite similar to a traditional ceremonial speech...
Further action develops according to the same principle. The actors perform short scenes where they clearly, with the help of their own bodies, that is, physiologically and visually, demonstrate the situation, which then, through words on the monitor, the viewer himself adapts to social reality. The spectacle, I must admit, is intelligible.
Here the padre teaches three choristers to sing psalms - and in the process takes one of them backstage. Those remaining sing diligently, and when the tired choir member and the pleased padre join them again, no one has any doubts about what exactly happened between them. The comment follows: in Hungary, one-time cases of “pedophilia” are not grounds for removing a pastor from service.
An illustration for the information about the deprivation of champion titles of Hungarian weightlifters “for failing to provide a sufficient amount of urine for analysis” looks like this: a young man with a medal around his neck stands on a table completely naked, and several representatives of the Olympic committee are fussing around him with a glass, which the unfortunate man quite naturally squeezed out a hundred grams of yellow liquid... During the process, it becomes clear that he cannot do any more - the tube that supplied fake urine without traces of doping has become disconnected. And then the record holder has no choice but to chase his tormentors with a growl, like Tarzan.
The play runs for an hour and forty minutes, and during this time its creators manage to talk about joining the European Union, and about self-immolations, and about attitudes towards refugees, and about terrorist attacks, and about neo-fascists, and about abortion, and about violence against children. A kind of political cabaret, daring and completely reckless. The technique is essentially the same, but stylistically the performance is incredibly precisely constructed. Therefore, the pleasure - from the professional and virtuoso work of the actors, from the director’s ability to simultaneously evoke the desired emotion of the audience, calculate and anticipate its reaction, and immediately make fun of himself and the viewer - is, of course, much greater than could have arisen if the performance had been an ordinary social satire.
By the end, the actors have already completely let themselves go - four men with their hands tied are subjected to bullying from a sadistic lady, who first pulls down their pants, and then, dressed in yellow utility gloves, does things to their butts and penises that would not cover the pages of a serious newspaper. will stand up to description. However, that's not all - the lady, making sadistic grimaces, is accompanied by a man with a digital camera, who films all these arts and transmits the close-up image to those same monitors. Another man, with a guitar, plays and sings rollicking verses, so rhythmic that someone in the audience cannot stand it and begins to applaud in time, but then, embarrassed, shuts up. Having thoroughly enjoyed the humiliation of the victims, the trio of torturers bow and thank the audience. Text on the monitor: in 2002, George W. Bush was elected to a second term. The audience, finally realizing what was happening, laughs.
And here the last comment is offered. The actor comes out and explains to the public what is happening, immediately outlining all possible interpretations - from the figurative embodiment of the deep conflict of the European mentality to a simple confession of a passion for shocking, in the desire to make an impression and achieve an effect at any cost. Everything is reflected, I must admit, much more gracefully and clearly than real critics of the play could have done.
But what, in essence, is it about, readers who have not seen the play and do not understand will ask me, what is there to be happy about in this mixture of obscenity and indecency (and I also forgot to mention obscene language)? I'll try to formulate it.
This is the experience of collective awareness of a reality that has turned into an absolute fiction. News about political and social life, delivered daily by the media, does not become part of the life of an ordinary person, but does not leave him alone. The world is illusory, filled with cliches and is no longer experienced as one’s own experience. The goal of the performance, in my opinion, is to liberate a person - both actor and spectator - from the automatism of perception. In one interview, Arpad Schilling admitted: “I believe that it is necessary to activate the public, and therefore I like to put them in an unusual, even uncomfortable position. The inconvenience may be contained in the theme of the production or in the situation...” He managed to achieve what he wanted - his theater jars, confuses or pleases, he does not leave anyone indifferent, does not slip into the usual channel of boring comfort.
There remain two questions to which I would like to know the answer. The first is: can such a performance be born on domestic soil? Do we have enough internal freedom to laugh at our own - and not the defamiliarized Hungarian specificity - infantilism, idiocy, connivance and xenophobia?
And here is the second: what is the fate of strong remedies? Bare bottoms and obscene expressions in this performance are prescribed precisely as potent drugs, and in our gentle fatherland such drugs are truly unusual. A sanctimonious attitude still reigns in Russia: in ordinary life strong words are quite welcome, but under no circumstances should they be allowed into the public space. And I’m not even talking about the chastity of our audience, who want to see only “beautiful” on stage. But sooner or later you get used to everything... However, the fact that this performance traveled half the world and was accepted and understood in those countries where neither a naked body nor obscene language would surprise anyone, testifies to the fact that Arpad Schilling did everything right: his irony over himself and his own methods cannot be ignored. And this, in essence, is the most attractive thing about the performance, which is smart and funny, and most importantly, completely devoid of pathos. Alena Solntseva |
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