“The theater is everything. And you are capable of everything "

One of the main newsmakers of the outgoing theater season of both capitals was the 35-year-old St. Petersburg director Maxim Didenko: in Moscow he staged two performances one louder than the other ( “Konarmia” in the workshop of Dmitry Brusnikin and “Mouse” in Gogol-Center), in St. Petersburg, the Laureate of the Breakthrough Prize and the Breakthrough ”and constant The Golden Mask nominee has just released the prime minister “Earth” on the new stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater - plastic drama based on the film of the same name by Alexander Dovzhenko. Maxim Didenko spoke about the path from theatrical counter-culture to the Art-Mayanstim in an interview with Colta . Ru .

- By the time of the debut on the big stage, you were unequivocally perceived by the theatrical community of the Andigund hero. The success of your first loud work was all the more impressive: set in the St. Petersburg Youth Theater in 2012 “Lenka Panteleev. The musical ” was immediately nominated for the“ golden mask ” , and the surname of the little-known director was in a short list next to the names of the directors from Ginkas to Boglybnichko and Tuminas. I well remember how many were amazed to learn from the booklet “Gold Oy Mask ” that you are the ex-member of Derevo , the founder of the parataatar association The Drystone , author of joint projects with "P.T.V.P." And Alexei Nikonov - at one time studied, it turns out, on Mokhova . Where in your biography this pample mixture of academic tradition and counterculture?

- Everything is quite simple here. I was born in a theater family, my grandfather played with Tairov, then, being a Jew, he was sent to Omsk at one time-where he not only created his own theater at the turn of the 1940-1950s, but also founded local television. My grandmother founded her theater in Omsk - working a lot with the Soviet “New Drama”, she gathered around her Omsk underground, surrounding me from birth. Plus, my uncle, who was engaged in pantomime, who took a lot from Polunin and practiced a hard physical theater ... had a strong influence on me ...

-This happened already in the 1980s, against the backdrop of a common interest in the at that time of the Soviet scene, in a plastic theater?

- Yes, this experimental wave in those years swept Omsk. For the first time I went on stage for six years-I played some small roles in my grandmother’s theater. And then the nineties came, I decided to become a lawyer-however, there was enough desire for a short while: I still returned to the stage, played at the Irkutsk Pantomime Theater Valery Shevchenko, was a dancer. I tried both that and this, I tried to absorb everything a little ...

- That is, by the time of admission to the St. Petersburg Theater Academy in 2000, you already understood what exactly you want to do on stage?

- And very clearly. By that time, I had already visited many festivals-artists from America came to Irkutsk, for example, Pina Baush’s performances were shown to us, Vyacheslav Kokorin conducted training on the Mikhail Chekhov system ... For the first time in Petersburg, I arrived in 1999 and immediately got to the Hamlet Mashina Andrei Molch. Around the same time, we went with touring in Chelyabinsk, where we met the same mighty and Oleg Zhukovsky - that is, by the time of receipt, I was already quite cut into the context of the alternative theater.

- At the same time, you went to Mokhovaya to Grigory Mikhailovich Kozlov, one of the main adherents of the psychological theater today.

- Do not forget that it was fifteen years ago. Of all the masters who gained courses that year, he seemed to me the coolest. Grigory Mikhailovich then walked around Mokhova in a white suit with red lifts and was generally at the forefront of St. Petersburg directing- “PS ” was just released in Alexandrinka, the state aid for the “forest” in the Litein theater was just received ... moreover, it also coincided that the course he had consisted of quite adults, and the first academic year was quite dynamic-to communicate with the first academic year-to communicate with To classmates who came to St. Petersburg from different parts of Rus', it was terribly interesting.

- Did you really not feel any contradiction between the experience of the physical theater, so to speak, with mother’s milk and conservatism accepted on the Mokhovaya traditional education system?

- The fact that this theater and this education system are not mine, I began to feel, of course, almost immediately. But at first I somehow distracted a certain flirting with the film industry-Valery Ogorodnikov tried me to the main role in the film “Red Sky. Black snow ” : samples were held during the year, kilometers of film were shot ... As a result, it ended in nothing, another artist played the main role, and we began to make a performance in the educational theater on Mokhova,“ Seagull ”-and for me everything somehow finally dissolved in the usual routine of the drama theater.

The theater is a social institution.

- Just do not say, please, that in the "Seagull" you played Treplev.

- It was Trevleva that I played. Moreover: Chirva even kissed me for this role. But then my classmate Roman Gabria and I began to do something of our own, trying to find an alternative to the type of theater that was in honor on Mokhova.

- What strategy did you choose in relations with the official theater environment during the years of study - conflict or parallel coexistence?

- Rather, the second. I always had an excellent relationship with Kozlov: he gave me the main roles in educational performances, in my second year he introduced me into the “Concert of the Towsted Prints” (the performance of the theater on the Litein on the “golden calf” Ilf and Petrov, 2001- ed. )-I remember only the first act, the first act was played in the anti bomb. Outwardly, everything looked like safely - but the routine of theatrical life simply shocked ... Here, say, the first discovery made by me: the center of gravity of theatrical life is located in the buffet - there was no question of any professional discipline. There was no main thing in the repertoire theater - rituality. Well, except perhaps the ritual of the buffet. And this, in my opinion, is monstrous.

- I will allow myself a small lyrical digression: on the run of the “earth”, I experienced, as they say in such cases, a strong and complex emotional experience. The Leningrad Theater underground of the late 1980s, the tradition of Polunin and Adasinsky, as you know, did not have the heirs in a straight line-of course, there were some growths on the body of Derevo , But There was no need to talk about a creatively full life of life. In the "Earth" this branch of the St. Petersburg Theater is fruit, enriched with chronologically and aesthetically new artistic experience ... How did you meet Adasinsky ? Today, Anton, giving master classes almost monthly, again became the usual part of the local theater landscape-but at the beginning of the zero derevo , as I remember, it was planted only occasionally in St. Petersburg ...

- I was always interested in the half -minor, Adasinsky and, in general, those branches of the theater, in which energy was felt, - over time, this interest, of course, was only heated. In the summer of 2001, Gabria and I, instead of the first exam in acting, fled to Moscow at the carnival of street theaters (special project of the World Theater Olympiad . - Ed. ) And already personally met Polunin there - on the Snow Show, however, we didn’t get: the excitement was such that the only person, whom the fame could be held for the performance that day, was Andrey, Andrei was Andrey. Voznesensky. There we also met with Adasinsky for the first time, he invited us to his underground master class on Mokhova. Well, then there were already “vertical”, the Derevo project in the Peter and Paul Fortress, Anton recruited a school; It was the end of the fourth - the beginning of the fifth year, I broke up with my first wife, shaved my head, slept on concrete and completely plunged into Derevo . I never graduated from the Academy - instead, I moved to Dresden.

- What did work with Adasinsky give you?

- Incredibly useful and infinitely important experience. Anton said: Forget everything that was still, everything that happened to you was wrong, but correctly like that. Derevo deprived you of a sense of self -significance - and that was what was needed: by the age of 24, a certain number of ideas about the theater and at the same time vile theatrical habits, a conditional “buffet”, accumulated in me. And, most importantly, Anton taught to work totally - which, alas, did not give which on Mokhova. Our theater education system is still eighty percent consists of nonsense ... Derevo teaches you that you can be a scene, an actor, a scriptwriter, a cleaner, and a director, and a lighter, and a driver in turn and everyone at the same time. You understand that the theater is everything, and you are capable of anything. This knowledge is absolute, and it does not come to you at a lecture, but exclusively in the living process: you must answer everything yourself - how you go to the tour, how you put the performance, how you train your body, how you eat. And it's cool.

-In Derevo you spent five years, from 2004 to 2009. At what point and under what circumstances did you understand that you need to move on?

- It was at the Edinburgh Festival when I ran into other theater types of Derevo . I then fled from my colleagues, rented housing in the very center, on the street where the main performances of Open - AIR programs were held, became very friends with the Farma v Jeskyni Czech Theater - four years ago they became laureates of the New Theater Reality Prize. Farma v Jeskyni showed eight performances per day, at the end of each performance the scene was filled with water - and, preparing for the next show, the scene was removed in half an hour! Then this fact was completely shocked: in Russia, the same procedure would take eight hours, and even with endless abuse and curses. Farma v Jeskyni was wildly to the brisk, and since Prague from Dresden is very close, I began to go to them on the workshops ... I then really liked how they connect the physical theater with vocals - in fact, this idea later sprinkled in Panteleeva Lenka. I worked with the Czechs for several months and even almost signed a long contract with them - in fact, it was then that the pedagogical branch of my career began. Well, then we met with ahe-in 2007 Derevo made a joint project with the Russian engineering theater in Manhaim, by that time I had already seen some performances on the video, was a fan of “sine loco” ... By that time I was actually a frontman Derevo , but the prospects did not really delight me, and the guys asked me “the middle of the black” and the guys asked me To direct this performance, replacing Yan Tumin temporarily left out of work. I felt some support in Akh - and decided to return to Petersburg.

- From the moment of your return to the premiere of “Lenka Panteleev”, almost three years have passed - your counter -cultural image has finally took shape, it seems, then?

-Immediately after the defeat of the “Antresoli” (the residence of the Russian Engineering Theater, the acting club, who until December 2009 occupied the premises of the small scene of the theater on Vasilievsky.- Ed. ), The ex-artist “Lyudeev” Vadim Amirkhanov decided to open his own theater studio. A suitable space was found almost immediately-an abandoned plant on Vasilyevsky Island, a twelve-story tower, the first two floors are occupied by some furniture warehouses, and the remaining ten were empty, there was nothing at all. We then rented a small room on the top floor - we drove in February, and by the summer several performances were already released: “Hell”, “Physics of the Soul”, in which, by the way, Adasinsky participated as an invited guest. Six months later, a hundred people lived in this tower, and a year later she turned into a squat, in which nine floors were occupied: besides us, the largest tenants, there were a film studio, an atelier, three clubs, two concert venues - it was difficult to imagine that this crowds began with two of us two.

For me, these months have become a period of immersion in the bottom existence: we lived in the tower for a year and a half as squat, for nine months I did not go to the store at all, did not use money, collecting, for example, clothes in the garbage dumps. Then my parataratral company the Drystone , I was passionate about the harsh, fierce punk actionism-now it’s even hard for me to imagine that today I was doing something like that. The situation of denial, total zeroing, existence, opposition to everything and everything was important. Then there was a year of relative calm - Pavel Semchenko and Alice Oleinik and I made a “blue beard”, I played in “maids” with Ksenia Mitrofanova and in the “depot of brilliant errors” by Akha. At some point, it became not enough for me to engage in actionism underground, I wanted something more, I needed to switch to a qualitatively new level-but in the situation alone it was simply impossible. Gathering an independent theater team around you in Russia is painfully, unrealistically difficult. I am elementary tired. Yes, and in the tower on Vasilievsky, the business center was supposed to open, repair began, deduced ended ...

- ... and the theater began. For a former punk activist, you quite brilliantly climbed the theater mainstream. How did your institutionalization go?

-I owe a very large extent to her director Nikolai Dreiden-in the early 2010s I was a completely asocial type, and he had an understanding of how to work with the factory production facilities of the repertoire theater. It all started with the fact that Kolya called me as a choreographer to help him with the play “Olesya” according to Kuprin in the “Comedian shelter”, but in the end I became a licenser of the play. I felt the need for professional growth and even wanted to go to GITIS, but after the first consultation I realized that this type of education was not quite satisfied with me. Leaving GITIS, I went to the Moscow Art Theater to meet with Adolf Shapiro: Dreiden called me to put with him “Lenka Panteleev” in the Youth Theater.

-You somehow made a reservation that Lenka was an installation, software performance. What was your Statement ?

“It was a pure experiment: we did not know what we were doing,” the “Lenka” was called a musical quite conditionally. I just wanted to connect the branches of all the knowledge about the theater into a certain absolute product that would satisfy me in all respects.

-Both Lenka and many of your subsequent productions were struck primarily by an unmistakable understanding of what a “performance for a big scene” is, which is actually a rarity for young directors ...

- The school of Adasinsky was probably affected. Anton taught us to make a scenes - as, relatively speaking, by minimal means to achieve the maximum result. “Ketsal” , for example, was composed in the hall for a hundred people-and then we played him in the musical Hall, in other halls-tusyers, and he easily adapted to any space. I had the same story with Konarmia-I released it in a small rehearsal room, transferred it to the “platform” in three days, and then we showed in the giant Perm Theater-Theater.

-“Long” you stepped on a reserve for the domestic scene the space of a synthetic theater, focused on a mass audience: today you are one of the few Russian theater directors working in the territory of the art mainstem, and “Earth” is an unnecessary confirmation of this. How much is such an orientation to the “theater for people” conscious, reflected?

- In the hospital, people are treated, firefighters extinguish a fire, the theater for people. The theater is a social institution. The People’s Theater is the direction in which you want to move.