How they taught

Festival “The Future of Theater Russia”

The concept of the festival of student works “The Future of Theatrical Russia”, which has been held in Yaroslavl at the Volkovsky Drama Theater since last spring, is illustrated in the booklet with the dashing slogan “Professional debut - on the first Russian stage!” Students who came here from all over the country - from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg - took the exam at least so that one of the artistic directors of Russian theaters would take a young actor into their troupe. There is a logic to the fact that such a festival is not held in Moscow, because the most ambitious will rush to conquer the capital, but the shortage of young actors in cities that do not have their own theater school will remain.

In student performances, performed almost with paternal tenderness, all the taste, repertoire and simply human preferences of the teachers are revealed as if under a magnifying glass. Collected into one program, they only confirmed: not a single creative university has such a credit of trust in the master as in a theater university. Otherwise, how can we explain that in two plastic performances - “Jeeps. The Last Breath" of the Yekaterinburg Theater Institute and "Along the Waves of Life" of the Arctic Institute of Arts - well-tailored boys and girls danced selflessly to the hits of the "disco of the 80s"?

The Yakut performance, invented by Stepanida Borisova on Andrei Borisov's course, minus the acrobatic numbers, turned out to be cute. Short everyday scenes “from life” were performed here accompanied by throat singing. Let's say, two young Yakuts are drinking, the wife of one of them comes and gives a beating, but since they are singing and not talking, the situation is removed in a completely comical way. Or, the deceiving husband lies that he is going on a business trip, pulls on his jacket, and the wife sings: they say, why are you lying, so-and-so!

Much more depressing are the detailed course performances, in the spirit of the bad Maly Theatre, like the Ekaterinburg “Children of Vanyushin.” And they say correctly, and they put up a wooden buffet, and sprinkled their hair with gray, but the Vanyushins and their nannies are not appropriated by the current twenty-year-olds. It's not just about the material, but also about the keys with which these texts are opened. When these keys are not found, it is a pity that instead of Naydenov or Sollogub with his “Trouble from a Tender Heart,” Yekaterinburg students did not try the taste of their fellow countrymen-playwrights.

But with wit and with a clear understanding of distance in relation to the bygone era, students of the Ufa State Academy of Arts played Sanaev’s hit “Bury Me Behind the Baseboard” - without unnecessary sentimentality, with a grotesque, foul-mouthed old woman and a strange creature in stretched tights - the grandson.

The main success of the festival was “Demobilization Train” by Alexander Arkhipov, performed by graduate students of Alexander Kuzin from the Yaroslavl Theater Institute. Kuzin is generally one of the best Russian teachers, and he produced a full-fledged performance with Yaroslavl students. The chamber auditorium of YarGTI is decorated with hospital tiles, the “toilet” is also separated with a white curtain, and the stage area is separated from the hall with a black curtain. When the curtain is pulled back, we will see soldiers standing at attention in their underwear and “Farewell of the Slav” will ring out, an important leitmotif of the performance.

There are three people in the ward: the acrobatic and charismatic Zhenya Seleznev (Dmitry Slinkin), the autistic Vanya Sokolov (Sergei Azeev) and the depressive legless Tikhon (Dmitry Tarkhov). Seleznev’s blood plays, as they say, he dances around the cramped room, rushes at the nurse and calms down only after an injection received in the buttock. Vanya Sokolov, wounded in the stomach, listens to the player, but one day, driven to despair, he tries to hang himself behind the curtain in the toilet. Tikhon secretly writes poetry and dreams of entering the literary institute. Kuzin gives the solo to Seleznev - Slinkin - an actor of frantic drive, who gladly demonstrates everything he can do. His Seleznev is the liveliest here and believes more than anyone else in the airborne troops, the Motherland and Lenka from his village. But the other two “cellmates,” and the small roles of the General (Boris Chistyakov), spoofing to pop singer Igor Nikolaev and swilling cognac from his throat, and Wahhabi (Ivan Stryuk), sneaking around a strategic site at night, were played perfectly. The general, the Wahhabi, the nurse Nastenka, as it turns out in the finale, are only imaginary to us and the heroes. The guys have been dead for a long time, the undertaker takes their measurements, putting down the restless Seleznev, who is preventing him from doing his job. The director accompanies the tragic knowledge that dawned on Tikhon, Zhenya and Vanya with video footage: the good open faces of Russian officers, a tanker driving through a destroyed city, a soldier running from an explosion with a child in his arms, the Russian tricolor are projected onto a tiled backdrop. During the final “On the Hills of Manchuria,” the audience is ready to mourn “the heroes of the Russian land, the fatherland of their native sons,” who were shot by a bad Chechen, and not sent to death by the state. This far from indisputable approach to Arkhipov’s play, in which there are no heroes and cannot be, caused consternation precisely because it unexpectedly turned out to be artistically convincing and ideally appropriated by the actors. It’s normal that today’s twenty-year-olds find it easier to understand their peers. Another thing is that they can no longer explain what happened in this incomprehensible war.

Kristina MATVIENKO