January 19, 2012, 10:47 Culture

Only circus performers go into battle

Premiere of “Circo Ambulante” by Andrei Moguchy at the Theater of Nations

Alexey Nikolsky close 100%

On the stage of the Theater of Nations, the duet of Liya Akhedzhakova and Albert Filozov in the premiere of “Circo Ambulante” directed by Andrei Moguchy.

The parade of names continues at the Theater of Nations: following Eimuntas Nyakrosius, Alvis Hermanis and Thomas Ostermeier , the stage was given to Andrei Moguchy, a famous St. Petersburger who makes theater that has no analogues - a theater of object, form, picture. His works always feature complex scenography, a mass of interacting figures, unusual light; he boldly uses animation, comic book elements and other pop art techniques. The text for the Mighty is in the same row - it puts it on a par with other components, but certainly not higher.

The plot and dramaturgical basis serves as the basis for formal exercises.

This is exactly what his Moscow debut “Circo Ambulante” was, which he composed together with another connoisseur and promoter of the visual in the theater, artist Maxim Isaev , a member of the AXE engineering theater. According to the director, the source of inspiration for the work was the idea to present Liya Akhedzhakova in the image of Don Quixote. From this picture a whole dystopia was born, which the authors came up with and wrote right during rehearsals: a story about a volcanic island and its tyrant Oberconductor, about a city that was once the center of metallurgy - now only a meat processing plant operates here.

However, this is also a strategic production: bovine testes are mined here, with the help of which the dictator maintains his political and sexual potential. The chief conductor wants to open a new circus tent on the island - for the amusement of local residents, the entire female part of which works in meat processing.

The city has its own art terrorists - a trio of actionist revolutionaries; However, one of the current artists himself admits that he works part-time for the police as an informant.

In fact, it would take a long time to retell the plot, densely packed with details, but it is hardly necessary: the two hours of the performance barely contained about two-thirds of the story invented by Moguchiy and Isaev; The first, prologue part as presented by the director can be read on the website of the Theater of Nations. Upon closer examination, the storyline looks too branchy, but of all the circumstances, the only ones that are important here are those that serve as the starting point for creating the atmosphere, which is created with the help of a visual solution.

And here we have a real feast for the eyes, and then the head. Meat carcasses, altered from coats, coordinated movements of the “gut workers” at the plant in time with the boxes being shipped, polar bears entering the stage with slogans in their paws, and art terrorists hiding under their fabric skins, themselves symbolically dressed in black and white. Giant factory chimneys, the turn of which marks the transition of action from the plant to the house and reveals inside details of a dilapidated interior. Everything moves, turns, everything matters. Finally, those scenes in which special effects are needed - explosions, fights, murders - are replaced with stunning spontaneity by comics - funny pictures, in which the figures drawn on the canvas are signed with the names of the characters and ascribed “Great!” and “bamm!”

It is clear that the concept of “main role” in such a theater receives a slightly different meaning than in psychological theater, just like a text, whose purpose from a carrier one becomes a service one. Therefore, at first it seems that the main couple that Moguchy invited to play - Liya Akhedzhakova and Albert Filozov - are only an equal part of the overall composition of people and scenery.

However, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that it is with the appearance of this duet that the wheels of action begin to turn, and the circumstances with which we have been introduced for so long begin to change.

She is a former hereditary circus performer Maria, who lost her ear during a knife throwing act, lived like everyone else, but once received a club on the head from a policeman and has since changed her ideas about society. He is the former hero of the country Anton, a metallurgist who remained on the island from the times when proud steel was made here instead of shameful bull eggs, but now he is a bedridden patient. Together they are the semantic center of the play: two quixotes who, by the time they are over fifty, have gone from extraordinary people to ordinary people, from young and full of strength to old and sick, and finally told themselves that life should stop being like a meat processing plant and look like bull’s eggs. Anton and Maria decide to kill the dictator, and as soon as they decide, they literally become bigger than themselves. Anton, as if nothing had happened, gets out of bed, from which he had been inseparable for decades, and Maria puts on her armor.

And the artistic duo copes brilliantly with the task of being the locomotive of action.

Never once resembling the old dogs of psychological theater, painfully performing new tricks for themselves, Akhedzhakova and Filozov feel in a previously unfamiliar “visual” genre as if this first leap in their lives into the “theater of form” was given to them without the slightest effort.

Actually, taking into account the flawed nature of the text, it is they who become the ones here who reconcile and connect the theater of words that is familiar to us with the theater of pictures and objects. However, this is also the merit of Mighty - Isaev themselves, who avoided the temptation to turn both the first and second plan actors into demonstrators of plastic poses: for this purpose, the actors gathered for the project (including Ilyas Tameev , Arina Marakulina , Mikhail Efimov , who migrated to the production from project “Light My Fire”, as well as one of the best actresses of the Stanislavsky Theater Olga Lapshina ) would be too good. On the contrary, Moguchy gave them maximum freedom and stimulated them to creativity and improvisation - as a result, many of the scenes of the play were born right during rehearsals, arose and grew in resonance with what was happening at that moment outside the walls of the rehearsal hall.

As a result of this approach, “Circo Ambulante” turned out to be somehow frightening and impeccably relevant: absolutely amazing coincidences were added to the eternal relevance of dystopia as a genre. And both in ideas and in images. The art terrorists in the production are strongly reminiscent of the Voina group in their habits, manner of speech, and movements. The quixotic speech of Akhedzhakovskaya’s Maria in the finale almost literally resembles the one that Liya Medzhidovna said on camera before the rallies against Sakharov. Bull eggs as a means to maintain verticality, the construction of a circus on an island where all life revolves around a meat factory—Moguchy-Isaev’s metaphors are direct and simple. It doesn’t seem to be Russia, but it looks so much like Russia - formally, visually, obviously.