There are many chances

The program of the student festival “Your Chance” has been announced

The Moscow International Festival of Graduation and Postgraduate Performances “Your Chance” will be held at the Theater Center on Strastnoy for a whole month, from May 15 to June 15, non-stop. The festival is being held for the fourth time, but never before has its program looked so impressive: in addition to theater universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg and eight other Russian cities, the most reputable theater schools from Germany, Finland, the Czech Republic, the USA, Serbia, Bulgaria, and from Italy are participating in the show and Switzerland even two.

In addition to showing performances, there is a very dense festival program that will run almost around the clock. There will also be lectures by theater professors: for example, Shakespeare scholar Alexey Bartoshevich will give three “Golden Lectures” on Shakespeare in the modern world, dedicated to the plays “Othello”, “Macbeth” and “The Tempest”, Spanish scholar Vidmantas Silyunas will give two lectures on Spanish classics in the theater and cinema, there will be lectures by Anatoly Smelyansky, Americans Robert Chapel and Blair Andresen on US theater, and Italian Massimo de Frankovich on the specifics of the Piccolo Theater school (all this, of course, is open to everyone, and not just to students of theater universities). And numerous master classes: Robert Chapel on the American musical, Alexey Levinsky on Meyerhold’s biomechanics, Vakhtangov School teacher Andrei Shchukin on plastic arts, Finnish, German and Bulgarian professors presenting their methods of teaching acting. There will be open meetings between students of theater institutes with playwrights, directors and actors Ivan Vyrypaev, Evgeniy Grishkovets, artist, director and teacher Dmitry Krymov, director and choreographer Alla Sigalova, with a specialist in new technologies in the theater Igor Ovchinnikov. In the mornings, the largest domestic casting agencies will work in the lobby of the center on Strastnoy - students will be able to add their names and photographs to their databases; Late in the evening, critics will conduct discussions open to the audience about the performances that have just taken place. There are also promised musical concerts as part of the “Chance-party”, an exhibition of young theater artists and various competitions for aspiring theater experts and producers.

As for the performances themselves, the organizers assure that the program has been very strictly selected, so that there will be no very weak productions, and everyone knows that even not the strongest student performances, thanks to their youthful enthusiasm, usually look cheerful and fresh. On the other hand, we know cases when not only new theaters, but also entire theatrical movements grew out of graduation performances, as, for example, it happened more than forty years ago with Lyubimov’s “The Good Man from Szechwan.” This means that it is worth watching with particular interest what performances with students are staged by directors who are considered among the promising (such as Fomenko’s student Sergei Puskepalis, who works with students in Magnitogorsk, or Zhenovach’s student Alexander Koruchekov, who stages at the Shchukin School). Experts call the real headliners of the festival the Prague “The Brothers Karamazov” (directed by Daniel Shpinar), Platonov’s “The Pit” from the Bulgarian National Academy of Theater and Film (directed by Ivan Stanev) and Dunaevsky’s operetta “White Acacia” from the Shchukin School (directed by Vladimir Ivanov).

Well, they also promise a spectacular street opening - on the square in front of the center on Strastnoy on May 15 at six in the evening, to live music, students will demonstrate classical stage combat and fencing, exercises in stage movement, acrobatics, martial arts, etc.

Traditionally, the main prize of the competitive festival program was the opportunity to keep your play alive for another year (for example, throughout the past year, in the shopping center on Strastnoy, a production by Roman Samgin was performed monthly at Mark Zakharov’s course at the RATI “The Cripple from the Island of Inishman”). But this year, Alexander Kalyagin announced that to this award, students who took the Grand Prix will be able to add one more: STD of Russia will award them one million rubles for a trip with the whole team to the Avignon Theater Festival.

Dina GODER