On the theater stage - a game without rules

The phone call came late at night. A familiar young director, we have been friends since the days of GITIS. The voice is agitated - obviously something happened. It turned out that he had just arrived from a festival held in one of the cities of Russia. There he realized that the latest theatrical currents had finally “flowed” to the provinces and covered the whole country. The speech was halting:

Twenty performances have merged into one… Hamlet and Claudius are washing in the shower… Osric, meanwhile, is dancing the Krakowiak… Chekhov’s Ivanov enters the stage and strips naked without further ado… on a midsummer night” all the men walk around exclusively in torn socks - such a concept ... Ophelia also runs naked around the stage, because she went crazy - and what does a crazy person usually do? He undresses to be closer to nature...

Maybe when six grandfathers take turns pissing from the stage, is this a symbol of existential longing? And when Prince Shabelsky sits down by the doghouse and eats bones from a bowl - is this a sign of total irony?

All directors are over fifty, and they are such cheerful avant-garde merry fellows ... Critics are delighted: “search for modern forms”, “topicality”, “life itself burst onto the stage” ...

The confusion of the young director can be understood: now there is a game without rules on the theatrical field. Each five-year plan, new geniuses are appointed, and then with pleasure they are thrown off the pedestal by critics. The former savior of the Russian stage cannot figure out the reasons for the cooling of the capital's theatrical hangout: he seems to have remained at his abilities, but he no longer “excites”. New stars appear, more energetic, owning the same number of tricks as the recent genius demoted to mediocrity. The focus is mainly on "opposite" - just not to do it the way it is in traditional theatre. Or rather, in what is meant by such a theater.
Theater life gradually becomes like an endless presentation. A lot of projects and projects, thousands of twin performances, endless festivals where the titles of "best" and "leaders" are given out. There is an exchange of figurines and other figurines: “you give me a golden lamb, I give you a golden insect.” Of course, there are the highest examples of theatrical art. And it would be absurd to protest against the director's freedom: in the end, you can even pull down seven skins from Romeo and Juliet and let them go naked to Africa - if only it was done with talent. The point is different. The theatrical space is full of fakes, which have a choir of singers, and researchers, and followers. And it seems that a critical mass has already been reached.
In this situation, productions such as, for example, the recent premiere of The Seagull at the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg are very important. The classic of Polish stage direction Krystian Lupa staged a play about how young avant-garde artists on the lakeshore are trying to prove that their understanding of art is the most correct, and that what was before them should be set on fire. Soon these young people are bred by fate, compromise destroys talent.
This performance is significant, because it inherits theatrical culture, which is rapidly being lost in our country. Suddenly you realize that the simplest things are forgotten. For example, that an attempt to hear a play, and not to impose one's thoughts on it, becomes the beginning of an exciting theatrical journey. That the director can, without violating the author of the text, create an absolutely independent work.
In Lupa's performance there are quotations from other Chekhov's plays, and nudity, and the whole text is redrawn in a new way. But the essence of the play, its energy is preserved: Chekhov is unharmed, and Lupa is visible in every mise-en-scene, and the actors appear in all the splendor of their talents.
Those directors who force Hamlet and Claudius to wash in the shower, and Prince Shabelsky to eat from a dog bowl, also seem to have both a game of quotes and irony, in a word, postmodernism to the fullest. But the difference between such performances and what masters like Christian Lupe do is like capricious willfulness and true freedom.