Translated material
A little about the destruction of the Gogol Theater
What is happening to the Gogol Theater is abnormal for any civilized society.
There is a theater that is unlucky with its location: somewhere behind the platforms of the Kursk station, invisible to everyone who is not specifically interested in it.
But excellent actors of the level of Svetlana Bragarnik or Olga Naumenko play there. And there is a long-term artistic director - Sergei Yashin. A successor to the traditions of the Russian national theater: not just the main director - the creator of a theater house, a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly rare in our theatrical practice.
Every home goes through happy times and difficult times. Everyone has ups and downs. But I imagine the state of people who, after a vacation, return to a house with which they have become close, full of plans and anticipating a new interesting job - and suddenly discover that the house no longer exists, that the creator of the house and its long-term inspirer were simply shown the door. Although during his long creative life he brought the country much more joy than all the new potential owners combined.
“And the invaders enter my pet store,” Okudzhava wrote about the new Arbat, which easily rejected its past and pushed aside its owners, as if they were not there. This is approximately what is happening with the House of Sergei Yashin - the Gogol Theater.
This is a precedent. We are reminded once again that there are no more authorities in the country - neither scientific nor artistic. None, except criminal ones. The critics serving the “new theatre” have long ago formed a clique, a pack barking at the very idea of the Russian repertory theater. Although it is the repertory theater that gives both actors and audiences the incomparable happiness of being united in soul. He gives viewers the most fascinating of theatrical stories: to follow how their favorite theater develops, how its troupe matures and renews itself. This is the happiness of the audience - together with the theater, they experience its victories and its defeats, its gains and its losses. Every good theater in Russia has long been overgrown with such devoted spectators and constitutes an important element of their life for them.
Attempts to kill the repertory theater are an aggression against millions of its fans in the country and in the world, where they value experiments for dozens of gourmets that are not promoted in narrow circles.
No one is encroaching on the sacred right of gourmets to listen to swear words from the stage and see actors thickly covered in shit. Let them experiment. But to declare this misery the future of Russian theatrical art is yes, this is aggression, this is an attempt to impose one’s specific tastes and ideas on the entire cultural space of the country.
Let them experiment. But without invading the houses of strangers, not built by them, and without throwing the new “Rachmaninoff piano” out of the windows. Let them build their own. But they don't know how to build. They are “jumping dragonflies” and only know how to dance on the ashes they have created.
I am interested and respectful of what Kirill Serebrennikov, an undoubtedly talented, sensitive and intelligent director, is doing in cinema and theater. But precisely as a sensitive and intelligent director, he has no right to tarnish his reputation by being so reminiscent of the invasions of St. Petersburg revolutionary sailors into other people's habitable houses. Well, he will set up a communal apartment in the palace - but what will happen from this, we already know too well from the recent history of our country.
Last year, the so-called Film Forum was created in St. Petersburg with great fanfare - colossal money was spent, fabulous tricks were given, some films were shown - no one remembers which ones, but everyone remembers caviar for a free breakfast. This forum tried to oust the Festival of Festivals that had long existed in St. Petersburg from the cultural space, and no one could understand - in order to build our own, why destroy someone else’s. A year has passed - where is this forum? And what is his team doing, what new budgets are they spending?
Now Lenfilm is under threat - and everyone understands: the claw is stuck - the whole bird is lost. Despite the fact that this “bird” stood at the origins of all Russian cinema, that the best films in our film history were created under its wing. But someone had their eye on it - and regardless of the protests of the largest St. Petersburg masters, the outcome, in modern times, was predetermined.
It seems that culture is in a hurry to deal the final decisive blows. Culture both in the narrow and broad sense - as the culture of human relations. Precedents are being baked before our eyes, and all our masters, the creators of theater houses in Moscow and Russia, are now under threat. Critics, like the first students, are already outlining new goals. Cries about the crisis of the Russian repertory theater and its irreparable archaism have intensified again. The theoretical basis is being robbed, so to speak.
I offer my most sincere condolences to the troupe of the Gogol Theater, which fell under a new round of division. I offer my condolences to everyone who cherishes the art of the Russian repertory theater.