Exhibition of achievements and failures

In the near future, the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater will again bring down the Val Premier on the viewer. And as always, not a single theater will be able to keep up with this factory factory - neither in brilliant achievements, nor in deafening failures.

This season for the Moscow Art Theater is anniversary: ​​110 years ago, the playwright Nemirovich-Danchenko and amateur actor Stanislavsky opened the theater, which for decades became a standard for actors and directors around the world.

What we are observing now is a fundamentally new moment in the history of the Moscow Art Theater. And in the history of the Russian theater as a whole.

Thanks to the fantastic energy of the head of the theater Oleg Tabakov, the Moscow Art Theater has recently turned out to be the center, if not theatrical life, then theatrical activities. The Moscow Art Theater has turned into an exhibition of achievements and failures of a modern Russian theater. To make a claim against the Moscow Art Theater means, in fact, to present them to the modern Russian theater as a whole.

Czechs, Japanese, Georgians, Armenians, old, young, unripe, overripe, provocateurs, conservatives - everyone has a place at the Mkhatov Theater Feast, no one is offended. Here, on several scenes, they simultaneously deny traditions and worship them, send the texts of the classics to all hell and protect each letter of their creations. Moscow Art Theater SuperTolerant: Here everyone prays to his God, fully assuming that other deities can exist.

Theatrical people throughout Russia are used to focusing on what is happening in the Art Theater. The famous critic Anatoly Smelyansky even suggested that the Moscow Art Theater is “genetically charged to be a mirror of the country.” For example, in 1987, in the Ephraim Moscow Art Theater (he had not yet lost the letters and in the abbreviation) began to share artists, orders, costumes, artistic ideas, stanislavsky, garages and privileges. A little later there was a collapse of the country, the collapse of ideology and a grandiose redistribution of property. New state shoulder scenes were established.

There are a lot of such examples, which costs Mikhail Bulgakov the “theatrical novel”. The art theater as the cast of the country is shown here: the most complicated unhealthy organism, where anything can happen to a person, where he loses his will and mind among mirages and deceptions.

If the thought of the mysterious connection of the Moscow Art Theater and our country is true, now Russia is experiencing a period of exorbitantly energetic affairs, however, directly opposite to each other in essence. Their results are difficult to get along in the same territory. We run very vigorously, not understanding where. The wind blew - we need to open all the doors, all the windows: we will check on ourselves what he will bring, what he will do. In this “worldwide responsiveness”, the share of confusion is great.

Equally revealing in appearance, peaceful coexistence within one theater of representatives of different generations. As in the entire Russian theater, and in the Moscow Art Theater no longer we are talking about the conflict of theatrical generations: young and old, perhaps without experiencing special love for each other, actively cooperate in all areas.

The era when “Taganka” and “contemporary”, “partnerships on faith” were created, left. The current young directors and playwrights speak only about individual existence, denying the possibility of unification on the basis of general ideas or a general understanding of the tasks of the theater.

The Moscow Art Theater records this condition: now - everything is one by one. There is no conflict, but there is no unity. Everyone for himself, but is ready for the sake of artistic and financial benefits to enter into any alliance. The managerial conclusion that Oleg Tabakov made may be the only true: let all the flowers grow in his meadow.