The results of the summer

Alexander Genis: Today Ach will open with a new release of Irina Simakovskaya’s theatrical review. In it we will summarize the summer season in New York. This period can hardly be called off -season, because just in the summer many interesting theaters from different countries come to the festivals. This is the time when you can see the performances unexpected, exotic and, of course, interesting. Ira, what did you bring us today?

Irina Simakovskaya: You are right, saying that summer is the time of festivals. In New York, every summer is a very famous, very respected festival in the Lincoln Center, which is called Lincoln Center Festival. It is highly quoted in the world because it is a festival of world stars. This time there are only four performances: two Israeli, one Syrian and another English performance of the Improbable Theater, which can be an example of a “scientific theater”. This is a performance about what is happening in the heads of all of us, those who bring performances, for those who participate in these performances and those who look at these performances. The performance of the English theater is staged according to the famous book of Skinner about the psychological experiments of the twentieth century.

Alexander Genis: This is a classic of science, the famous supporter of behaviorism. As I understood, the directors and actors explained what was happening in our brain, they put psychological experiments right in front of the audience. This reminds me of a performance that made a gigantic impression on me. It was the sweatshirt of Peter Brook based on the book of Oliver Sax “The Man who took his wife by the hat.” He showed how strange and unexpected the human psyche. The trick of the play was that there were only three actors and one white robe on the stage. He who put him on, he became a doctor, and who was filming is a psycho. This cycle on the stage showed how relative our ideas about the norm are relative. These “scientific” performances expand the idea of our consciousness. In my opinion, the theater is primarily for it.

Irina Simakovskaya: Other performances caused a storm of protest or vice versa of enthusiasm even before they crossed the thresholds of theaters in which they played. The Syrian performance, for example, called “While I was waiting,” based on the play by Mohammad Al Attar, has encountered the new American law that one cannot enter America from certain countries of the Middle East.

Alexander Genis: Some participants in the performance were simply not allowed.

Irina Simakovskaya: One participant in the performance in the end was never allowed into New York, all the others were released. But until the last moment, the organizers of the festival did not know whether this performance would take place. Thank God it took place. This was very important for the organizers of the festival, because their idea was to show what was happening in Syria outside the war. Syria close -up. It seems that we see on the TV: suddenly the camera ran into some private house, on some private hospital and told us about people, ordinary, simple, not terrorists, not the military who want to live their lives, but to whom the war in Syria does not allow this to do this.

Alexander Genis: The worst thing, as one of the main characters of the play says, has been going on, and nothing has changed since 2011: Assad is in place, everything is in place, the war is going on and there is no end to this.

Irina Simakovskaya: This is a narrative theater (I would call it that). The story of a pretty and quite civilized young man who takes part in protests against the Assad regime from the very beginning is spinning before the eyes of the viewer, all this was so fun and beautiful. But at some point, he falls into the clutches of the special services, and they bring him to such a state that he flows into a coma and enters the hospital. In this very hospital, an action takes place. The author of the play comes up with a sharp move: the young man lies in a hospital bed in a coma, but at the same time observes the life of his loved ones, who visit him in the hospital. Their stories tell us, they themselves tell their stories, the stories of their friends, the story of a friend of the hero who went to ISIS, because he believed that ISIS was a salvation from the war in Syria, he sincerely believed. Sister, mother, father - how their life develops, how they are afraid to come to Damascus, what happened to Damascus, how they loved this city, which is destroyed, in which it is impossible to be and in which this performance could not be played. It was placed outside Syria, the Syrians who live in the world - in Europe, in the countries of the Middle East, in Egypt, in Lebanon. They gathered and made such a performance to explain to the world what is really happening with simple pretty people in Syria.

Alexander Genis: Well, how, they explained? You better understand the nature of this conflict?

Irina Simakovskaya: This performance is not about politics, it is about people, about their feelings, about their relationships and how war intervenes in these relationships and how it makes it all.

Alexander Genis: What did the Israeli theater show? Recently, we have been talking a lot about Israeli cinema, which is becoming more interesting and interesting. What happens to the theater?

Irina Simakovskaya: This summer, at the festival in the Lincoln Center there were two Israeli performances. The first was dedicated to Yitzhak Rabin, he was called “Yitzhak Rabin: the Chronicle of the Murder”, based on the memoirs of Lia, the widow of Rabin. One cannot talk about this idea as a theater performance-it is rather what we called a literary and musical composition. But it was done competently, informative and with music. Two actresses read pages from the diaries of Leah Rabin just when the prime minister of Israel occurred, thinking about why this murder was committed. They showed slides and newsreels, even attracted Julia Caesar to shed light or make a conversation about the murder more convex, more significant, somehow analyze it. It is interesting that this performance was a stone's throw from the theater, where they showed the performance “Oslo” (we talked not so long ago about it in our review), in which Rabin was then killed later.

Alexander Genis: It so happened that in those days I was in Israel at a congress of journalists. I saw Israel said goodbye to Rabin. It was like everything in Israel, unusually intensively - disputes continued even on the day of the funeral. No one in Israel never stops arguing. As God said about Jews - a cruel people. But the memory of Rabin, lives, and disputes about it still live.

Irina Simakovskaya: In another performance brought to the festival in the Lincoln Center, which was called “on the end of the Earth”, set together by the Gabim Theater and the Gabim Theater, the war plays the main role. The heroine of this performance is Ora, a 16 -year -old girl at the beginning of the performance. She is the center of the love triangle, and now the mother of two adult children, one of whom, having come from the war, again goes to war. She is not able to wait anymore and pray not to be killed. She goes on a hike only in order not to sit at home alone and not wait for bad news. She thinks that this can be taken away from her son. This very strong performance about maternal fear and the war that affects everything in the life of Israel. It was made based on the novel by the wonderful Israeli writer David Grossman. As I understand it, it has not yet been translated into Russian.

Alexander Genis: This novel, in my opinion, is not, but other books are translated into Russian, it is well known in Russia and in America. I have long suspected that soon one of the two Israeli classics will be given the Nobel Prize - either to Grossman or Amos of the RAM. These two writers, in my opinion, have long earned the Nobel Prize.

Irina Simakovskaya: Yes, he is a wonderful writer. It is a pity that outside this performance there is a lot of very interesting for the soul and heart.

Alexander Genis: Moreover, the book is associated with biographical details - his son died in the war on the last day of the Lebanese War.

Irina Simakovskaya: After that, Grossman thought that he did not have the strength to finish the novel. They say that Amos Oz persuaded him to finish the novel. He said that if for your heroine, survival is that she leaves the house, she does not want to sit and wait, then you must finish this novel in order to survive.

Alexander Genis: Very Writing Council.

Irina Simakovskaya: The performance was staged by Hanan Snir. Of course, this is also a narrative theater, like Syrian, but a little better made than the Syrian performance. It is very subtle in the sense of psychologism, it has excellent acting work. An excellent main character, and the actress, who plays Oru - Efrat Ben Zur. The beautiful, subtlest actress, which is a pleasure to look at. Her lover Abram, Dror Keren, also a chic artist, incredibly charming. Each of their heroes has an irreparably tragic fate, because Abram himself was in the war, and Ora is waiting for his son from the war. But they have each other, and they have the land that they love, for which they and their children are fighting. In the center there is a recovery of the fate of normal, educated people with a wonderful sense of humor, with excellent spiritual qualities, and their intersection with the war.

Alexander Genis: You said that these performances caused large protests.

Irina Simakovskaya: Yes, even before the arrival of the Israeli performance “On the Earth” in New York, a protest of the Palestinian organization called “Adala” was published. In addition to the end of the Palestinian cultural figures, the appeal to the leadership of the festival was signed by famous American and British cultural figures, well -known playwrights, directors, deesa, some laureates of Pulitzer, the heroes of our reviews with you. This organization does not oppose the art and authors of this performance as such, but against the company of the Israeli government, which is called the "Israeli brand" designed to improve the image of Israel in the eyes of the world. He opposes the performances of the Gabim and Chamber Theater, as well as other artists, musicians, organizations that the government supports in the occupied territories in the gas sector and on the western coast. By the curious coincidence of the circumstances, Grossman himself in 2010 signed the call of the Israeli artists group to boycott Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. Now the protest is addressed to the performance set according to his novel. And the organizers of the festival, fearing the waves of protests, cordoned off the whole street, did not let either go through or go, we could enter the theater about the same as we landed on airplanes. But it all ended well. The tour of the performance in New York took place. David Grossman went out to the public and bowed.