Translated material
Better for an adult
What to do if you want to take your children to the theater
Here again the moment has come when all the parents I know with children who are not yet of school age ask the question of which theater to go to with them. And for those with 15-year-old children, this problem is no less pressing than for those with four- or eight-year-olds, although for the little ones, the first days of the holidays will be spent in a series of inevitable Christmas trees. Since I have to answer this question all the time, let’s finally stop getting attached to the holidays and talk to the point.I am sure: there is no need to go to the theater with your child at any cost, just to introduce him to this type of cultural leisure. You need to go only for the best and it is not at all necessary that it be labeled as childish. So if it turns out that nothing really worthwhile is on in the theaters on those vacation days when you have time, it’s better to go to the skating rink. And do not be deluded by the fact that it seems that the child does not distinguish good from bad and enjoys everything. I took my daughter to the theater a lot and indiscriminately when she was little and seemed to enjoy everything. And then, at about nine years old, the child suddenly said harshly: “I won’t go to your theater anymore, everyone is screaming there.” And the next time I decided to send her to a performance only when she was 14 years old, to see something that was, of course, adult and obviously beautiful. Since then, she happens to go to the theater and even enjoy it, but she is still not interested in theater as an art form. What I mean is that bad theater is not harmless.
Now more specific. I really don’t recommend going to “adult” theaters for children’s performances. They are always staged according to the residual principle; matinee artists do not like matinee performances and, knowing that no director on duty will get up early to check them, they allow themselves to do whatever they want on stage. There are a huge number of anecdotes and feuilletons about matinees, and if you don’t want your child to see all these swollen faces, dull eyes, a plot skewed from skipping episodes, and the endless acting gags with which the participants in the play entertain themselves and their colleagues, don’t go. In Soviet times, every entertainment institution was required to have a couple of children’s performances in its repertoire, but then they stopped forcing them, and matinees in “adult” theaters began to die out. But in recent years it suddenly turned out that this genre was becoming a good source of income, so it began to slowly be revived. This spring, one children's play was even positioned as the highlight of the season - the musical "The Little Humpbacked Horse" with texts by the brothers Presnyakov and Kortnev at the Moscow Art Theater was staged by Evgeny Pisarev as an expensive performance for the whole family, focusing on today's principles of full-length animation: for children - the plot, for adults - - jokes. This show has fans, but I wouldn’t take my child to see such a cake performance, which in its noise and sparkle is reminiscent of a Kremlin Christmas tree.
Another thing is children's theaters, for which the matinee does not go to the department of “non-core assets”. But here there is always the danger of encountering the most vulgar lisp and mummers speaking in exaggeratedly ringing and cheerful “pioneer” voices. In Moscow, however, this is better than in the provinces. Of the two main Moscow children's theaters, RAMT is perhaps more suitable for younger audiences. Here they usually put on quite good-quality classics and the “golden series” of sentimental novels for girls like “Polyanna” or “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” And now at RAMT there is, in my opinion, the best play performance in Moscow, designed for children 5-10 years old. This is “Tales for Just in Case” - a cute performance based on short fairy tales by Evgeniy Klyuev, where young actors, with the help of colored rags, turn into animals, insects, and even objects like a chamber pot or a creaky door.
In general, children really love it when young people play, when they have fun and fool around, especially on a small stage where everyone can be clearly seen. Therefore, I think a curious child from the age of ten can be taken to such productions, even if it is not said that they are for children. For example, young RATI graduates from Oleg Kudryashov's Workshop play funny Chekhov stories with tricks and music at the Theater of Nations (Nikita Grinshpun's play is called "The Swedish Match"), they also have fun in Andrei Nedelkin's production of "The Nose" at the Youth Theater. In the “Theatrical Art Studio” of Sergei Zhenovach there is a glorious and imaginatively composed performance by Alexander Koruchekov based on the Shakespearean comedy “As You Like It”, based on the same play, turned into a musical by Yuli Kim, Pyotr Fomenko is about to release the premiere of “The Tale of the Forest of Ardennes”. , and very young theater interns will play there.
In general, all sorts of fairy-tale stories with adventures and learning always go well among teenagers. Among such premieres, for example, Calderon’s costume play “Hidden and Shrouded” at the Youth Theater is suitable, and it is a pity that Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” directed by Evgeniy Kamenkovich is no longer staged at the Fomenko Workshop. But the old Fomenkovsky play “Wolves and Sheep” based on Ostrovsky with the irresistible pair of Tyunin and Stepanov, and in general with excellent actors, still looks great and will certainly appeal to high school students. Like another Ostrovsky comedy - “Truth is good, but happiness is better” staged by Zhenovach on the stage of the Maly Theater, where Vasily Bochkarev does such things that teenagers will fall out of their chairs laughing. However, it’s not just about the funny repertoire. The play “Boys” with a fragment from “The Brothers Karamazov” at the Theater Arts Studio, I think, will make an impression on a sensitive teenager, even if he has not yet read the novel. And the three-part “The Shore of Utopia” at RAMT, where the life story of Russian writers and revolutionaries of the Herzen circle needs to be watched for a whole day, will be an excellent theatrical experience for a humanitarian-oriented high school student.
But this is all from the category of traditional, play theater with actors, and children, it seems to me, should try to show more unusual things, this awakens their imagination and does not allow them to become rigid. In this sense, the best Moscow theater to take children to is the Shadow Theater, which at first was part of the puppet department, but is now increasingly drifting towards the artist’s experimental theater. Everything that Ilya Epelbaum and Maya Krasnopolskaya do in their small theater - shadow shows, puppet shows, live actors, dramas, operas, ballets and various video projects - all of this is unlike anything else and is mostly suitable even small children. Once upon a time they even had “Hamlet” - a performance of plays aimed at four-year-olds who came to the theater for the first time and are still afraid, even when the lights go out. Moreover, fragments from “Hamlet”, as well as from “Eugene Onegin” and Chekhov’s plays, were actually there. Most of all, “Shadow” is famous for the ongoing project “Lilikan Museum of Theater Ideas”, where famous directors stage 15-minute performances in a magnificent baroque theater that fits on a table, and the few “big” spectators are forced to look into the windows of tiny Lilikans.
Smart children aged 10-12 should also be brought to the “Dmitry Krymov Laboratory”, which plays on the stage of the “School of Dramatic Art”. Young actors and artists here play in the theater of objects, built on associations, and the performances “Innuendos”, “Donkiy Hot” or “Demon. View from above" can shake a child's imagination. Even if he does not understand some details, the impression and the pictures he saw will remain in his memory for a long time, perhaps forever. In the same theater, a cheerful and inventive digest of classical plays Optimus mundus for 12 spectators, directed by Arseny Epelbaum, will become a real adventure for a teenager, which he will then excitedly tell all his friends about. The same goes for the performances of the traveling Liquid Theatre, where games and clown scenes in a garage style are combined with circus tricks and a fire show to thundering music. Here you don’t have to worry that the child won’t understand something - he won’t have any problems; rather, this whole set of numbers will seem somewhat incoherent to you.
As for puppet theaters, and they have always been number one on the list of theaters for children, in Moscow this matter is very bad. The only place you can see good puppet shows in the capital is at festivals. Russian ones - at the “Golden Mask” (according to the last year’s programs it is clear that mainly domestic puppeteers nest in St. Petersburg), foreign ones - at the summer “Gavroche” and the autumn “Big Change”. There, by the way, you can see very charming imported play performances. Now, both in terms of theater for adults and children, tours and festivals are our everything. For example, the French cultural center has a long-running project “Another Theater from France”, so it is simply necessary to take children to its chamber magic performances, combining performances by artists, puppeteers, circus performers, dancers and many others, although this has not been announced anywhere . And, of course, a sea of children's happiness is expected next summer, when the Chekhov Festival, this year dedicated to a new circus, that is, a theater with magic, will dump its riches in front of us, and we will see the world's biggest stars in this field.
Well, if you want to take your child to the theater right now, without waiting for the summer, then I don’t even know what to advise you. There used to be a nativity scene festival in Moscow during the Christmas holidays. Very naive, unsophisticated, often amateurish and at the same time touching, where there were many home performances with wonderful homemade nativity scenes and children singing Christmas carols with their mother. Now this festival has moved to Kolomna. Perhaps you should go there.