Hamlet in Focus

A student theater festival will be held in Moscow

As soon as the May holidays are over, the fifth annual theater festival of student and postgraduate performances “Your Chance”. Already last year it looked impressive: performances, lectures, master classes, parties took place at the Center on Strastnoy almost around the clock. The current one, it seems, will not slow down. The only sad consequence of the crisis: there will be no prize of a million rubles, which last year was allocated by the Union of Theater Workers so that the winning troupe would go to the Avignon Festival. We planned to allocate the same amount to the winners’ trip to Edinburgh this year, but it didn’t work out. But the traditional “Your Chance” award - the opportunity to perform the winning performance on the stage of the Center on Strastnoy for the entire next season - will remain. (True, the question arises: what will happen if students from distant countries win? Who will take care of their tour? But, it seems, the organizers are not worried about this question yet - until now, students from Moscow have always won.)

On May 10, the festival traditionally opens with a street show on the square in front of the Center - it is staged by Andrei Shchukin with students from all Moscow theater universities. At the same time, an exhibition of young theater artists, stage designers and artists from RATI-GITIS, the Moscow Art Theater School, VGIK, and the School named after 1905 will take place in the Center - this year it is dedicated to the memory of Oleg Sheintsis, who once invented it. On May 30, at the closing ceremony, the name of the artist whose work experts consider the best will be announced; Fortunately, the prize for him, equal to $1,000, has not disappeared. (The same awards will be given to the best review of the festival performance and festival photograph; of course, also student ones.)

Master classes and “golden lectures” (by the way, for everyone and free of charge) from the best domestic and foreign theater professors will again be held. It unexpectedly turned out that the special focus of the current festival is “Hamlet”: the lecture “For whom Hamlet was written” will be given by the wonderful Shakespeare scholar Alexey Bartoshevich; two performances about the Danish Prince, followed by a general discussion, will be shown in a row by students from Vladimir and from the Moscow Art Theater School. By the way, the lead actor in the Moscow Art Theater production is already legendary in Moscow, so there is another chance to see a talented American student read “to be or not to be” in the original language in the middle of a completely Russian production.

There are many new foreign participants in the program. The Brazilian Institute of Theater Arts (Sao Paulo) is presenting a performance based on Kafka. Another newcomer, the Krakow Higher Theater School named after Ludwik Solski, will show the musical “ Process” based on the same Kafka - the organizers promise that it will be great. They consider Ostrovsky's Pupil from Prague to be the hit of the program - it was staged by Golden Mask winner Lev Ehrenburg with students of the Higher Special Acting School POPOSEDEM in his favorite harsh naturalistic manner.

As for domestic productions, it’s worth paying attention to the RATI graduates from Sergei Zhenovach’s new course - they are very praised. They will show Ostrovsky's The Snow Maiden, and there will be no other chances to see this performance - in June the students will finish their studies and go to the theaters. The course by Konstantin Raikin (Moscow Art Theater School) will present, in addition to “Hamlet,” “Woe from Wit.” Dostoevsky is represented by two large-scale productions at once: at the RATI, on the course of Oleg Kudryashov, the novel “Humiliated and Insulted” was staged in two evenings, dividing “Natasha” and “Nellie” into parts, and the famous St. Petersburg director Grigory Kozlov and his students made a four-hour “The Idiot” - - they assure us that it’s excellent. The festival will also be completed by St. Petersburg residents: Ruslan Kudashov and his student puppeteers created a performance based on Zamyatin’s dystopia “We,” where actors and puppets act on equal terms. Looks like it can't be missed.

Dina GODER