Theater antithesis

Когда новаторство превращается в крамолу, выставка - в театр, а театр - в улицу

The Russian modern theater is more and more like journalism, and not only in the capitals. What returns us in ancient times, when there was no media. Social tension and civilian pathos migrated to the stage, possibly also because theatrical activity until recently belonged to the field of high art, which could hardly become mass, and it was here that the niche unknown to the state ideology has been preserved.

In addition, the theater is not limited by such a framework as the media law. In any case, it seemed so until the scandal around the opera Tangaiser, which the young director Timofei Kulyabin, did not echo, and Kirill Serebrennikov was not accused of fraud in Novosibirsk. (The allegedly nonexistent performance "Summer Night" we publicly discussed in 2012).

Two more circumstances that contributed to the arrival of relevant topics to the theater are not associated with ideology, but with the form. And the point here is not at all in modern drama, especially since the classic with the right reading will always remain relevant (a striking example of this is the setting of the same Kirill Serebrennikov). A language that is available for spectators and does not require large financial investments just appeared.

This is not to say that this phenomenon is purely Russian, but it was here that the free statement has gained special severity, since there was practically no other public space for this. The documentary theater is literally, as in the theater.doc , where the audience was shown the “Magnitsky case” , and the technique of verbatim, when the actors write off their characters from specific people, as students of the workshop of Dmitry Brusnikin on the Moscow -Vladivostok train make it possible to close as possible to the event, not only understand, but also feel its reliability.

Another thing is that the circle of theatrical viewers is small, but it was so in Soviet times - few knew the names of the directors - Lyubimov, Tovstonogov, Efros. However, the stability of the theatrical tradition in Russia is based both in the spirit and on the form. The Red Army soldiers on the Taganka Theater, planting input tickets on bayonets, "people silent" - turned up to the hall, and much more that Yuri loved one had to defend before officials from culture - these are traits of a modern immersive, interactive theater. Plus, the director’s intention to shake the viewer out of everyday life and put in such a context, from where he can look at the story not from the side, but from the inside of the event, as John Reid who came to revolutionary Russia did.

“The viewer, like John Reed, moves in space,” explains director Maxim Didenko the idea of his play “Ten Days, which shocked the world,” but he is not able to see everything and understand this. And this is the feeling of impossibility, regarding the revolution, it seems to me fundamental. ”

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Specal "10 days". Didenko

Maxim Didenko about the revolution and its theater incarnation

Indeed, the feeling comes to the rescue where knowledge is missing - in the real theater, touching, forcing to worry, including unfamiliar, frightening emotions, both in the play of Yuri Loving and Maxim Didenko. Both there and there the tongue is extremely conditional, but in the case of Didenko this convention removes direct contact of the viewer with the characters and finding the action in the space, in the thick of events, so to speak. How the Lyubimov, who set the “10 days that shocked the world” reached in 1965, says Veniamin Smekhov in detail in the Galileo room, since the performance of Maxim Didenko (Site-Specifis) is played in the decorations of the Lyubimov and Time exhibition and the time in the Moscow Museum.

But wherever the viewer is - in a comfortable chair, or pacing among a drunken sailor, under the aim of rifles, he will receive exactly as much as he is able to get, reading subtexts. “There is no only correct way to watch this performance,” they warn you at the entrance. “Only part of what is happening will show any way. Everything happens at the same time.”

And yet the truth, in this case, is historical and class, lies on the surface - revolutionary soldiers do not know who Trotsky is, their fight is cruel and meaningless. The texts from the royal diary and the wandering silhouettes of Nicholas II denote his presence and guilt for what is happening, and for those who do not see the obvious - the final scenes of the execution, which occurs simultaneously in all spaces of the performance several times, and with each one -year -old more and more people in modern clothing.

However, interest in history, in its understanding in the theater environment is connected not only with anniversary events. At the festival, artmigration this year showed a performance on the Chechen diaries of Polina Zherebtsova “Ant in a glass bank” - “War that was not” (director Semyon Serzin, Yeltsin Center, Yekaterinburg) and “Flight Bilchirskaya History”, the material for which local residents gathered (director Zhoszhin Zhambalov, the Buryat theater named after H. N. Namsaraeva, Ulan-Ude). In addition to this, the festival of young directors demonstrated another important trend - the theater outside the two capitals is taken for relevant topics and is as close as possible to the viewer.

“So far, I’ve been from the house where I lived in Kansk,” the director Danil Chashchin explains, who staged the play “Boarding Stories”, “was hanging out on the bus all the time, peeping some things. That is, the details were taken directly from that city, from those guys who are standing near the theater, smoking, but they didn’t go to them.

Artmigration

Anna Ildatova, curator of youth programs STD:

- I found three festivals of artmigration, but only to the present, fifth a certain tendency was determined - young directors began to excite social topics and topics based on the document as such. Quite often, the desire of directors to find a new theatrical language leads them to other spheres of culture, sometimes far from stage art. This is how Boris Pavlovich works in a social theater with people with an autistic disorder. And we are very proud that our festival brings social orientation performances to Moscow, since these topics are little meaningful in the central region.

In general, this is a difficult thing - the choice of material, a place for the performance. It seems to me that young directors, when they go to work in the regions, always remember this. And this is also a question of personality - how ready you are in the city of Kansk or in Cherkessk to put a performance, after which you can be offended on the street.

At the festival, we want to see experimental work. We want to see how the young director who came from the capital does not equal to the local level of theatrical culture, but continues to develop. Indeed, quite often, regional theaters prefer to live in the old way, not changing anything for decades. Therefore, to the festival, we will bring work out of respect for the act, for example, for choosing material, topic, etc.

1917 from a new distance

Dmitry Brusnikin , actor, director:

- Since the play "10 days that shocked the world", set by Lyubimov on Taganka, more than 50 years have passed, and everything has changed. Today we live in a completely different country. This is both creatively and humanly very interesting task-to look at 1917 from a new distance. For seventy years in a row we were told that the Great Socialist Revolution is a victory. November 7 was a holiday, a red day of the calendar-someone won someone. And only in the last fifteen years, people began to comprehend that this was not a victory, but a huge tragedy that happened to the country, with the nation.

One of my first roles in the Art Theater was Ulyanov, executed Sasha Ulyanov. Anatoly Aleksandrovich Vasiliev led the production, and Valera Sarkisov made the performance. This performance was opened by a small scene of the Art Theater. And on the big stage, Oleg Nikolaevich Efremov then released a no less eventful performance for the country - "So we will win!" And all these were some new, completely unexpected for the public, for the viewer and for the country, views on history.

Then there was a lot of propaganda. Of course, I understand that many people who lived at that time understood what was happening. But Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wrote the book "Red Wheel" almost all his life, comprehending this misfortune and this tragedy. And the country has changed if you pay attention to the composition of the book, in general, in three days. On February 26, there was one country, and on March 1 - another. In three days, everything has changed!

While a person is alive, he will analyze this time

I think that while a person is alive, he will analyze this time. And after 100 years, and after 150 we will return to the events of 1917. It was not by chance that I mentioned Alexander Isaevich with the Roman Red Wheel. The amount of material that his brain processed, a lot of sensations that he missed through himself, the characters that he analyzed - this is also documentary material. Perhaps, from the point of view of a certain artistry, there is something to complain about there. But he could not do this. Just as Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, "War and the World" could not do this. This is a serious challenge. Because time changes, the context changes. Where to get a good, positive hero in that story now? 70 years were red and white. And now, or something, the red are bad and the white are good?

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About censorship and state support

Students of the workshop of Dmitry Brusnikin about censorship and money

Everything is changing: directing undergoes transformations, actors, but still we can talk about the continuation of theatrical tradition. It so happened that Katalin, the widow of Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov, visited our workshop on Konarmia in the production of Maxim Didenko. And she decided: "This is the successor of the case of Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov." And then we thought that it would probably ever happen that we will find a common interest. And he arose, this interest in the 100th anniversary of Yuri Petrovich and the exhibition, which was designed as artist Alyosha Tregubov. That is, the exhibition in this case is the decoration of our performance. And this compound was so organic and correct that I am sure that there is a tradition.

The theater is changing, the tongue changes, a lot is changing, but the tradition remains. I remember when Roman Grigoryevich Viktyuk also watched Konarmia, he asked: "And Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov saw this performance?" For some reason, everyone sent us in this direction, suddenly hearing such Tagankovskoye. Although our performance "10 days" is not at all a reconstruction of the performance of Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov. There is a completely different team that sets completely different tasks, from our times.

When the innovation is seducted

Elena Lenson , philologist, expert of the design laboratory for the study of the work of Yuri Lyubimov and the directorial theater of the XX-XXI centuries of the Higher School of Economics:

- Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov repeatedly said that the label of the political theater for him is already completely unbearable. Of course, he did not feel his theater as political. Yes, he, in general, was not only political. Because he was the theater of a completely new artistic language and thanks to this innovation seemed seditious. On the other hand, not everything is so simple, because Yuri Petrovich, of course, was not only an artist, but also a citizen.

It is interesting that in the old building of the theater there was a theater of drama and comedy, where Yuri Petrovich with his students of the Schukin school just moved. And, of course, it was not immediately decided to give the premises to the famous actor, as the director not yet quite showing himself. Therefore, a commission was created, which ruled that the theater of drama and comedy has lost the intonation of citizenship. Thus, the theater of Yuri Petrovich, the new theater, which then became called the theater on Taganka, should have strengthened this intonation of citizenship.

But when it came to real citizenship, when Lyubimov began to honestly read the classics, the same Pushkin ... Boris Godunov was banned. Officials who did not accept the performance each time did not arrange the phrase "The people are silent." Because in the performance of Yuri Petrovich this replica was said to the hall. And thus, the situation was immediately transferred to date - "people are silent", why are you silent, shouting!

Officials were not arranged by the phrase "The people are silent"

As for Soviet theatrical censorship, if you take an example of the theater on Taganka, this is a tragic story. If at first it was possible to release the performances, somewhere, having corrected something, convincing the authorities (how much time and time, endless runs, discussions were a separate conversation), then by the time of the forced emigration of Yuri Petrovich it became worse and worse. “Zhivago” was not released, “Boris Godunov”, the performance of Vladimir Vysotsky was banned. When you read the transcript of discussions of the performance, it becomes clear how often in these discussions from the organs, low -skilled people participated. Yuri Petrovich told such a story. Once he is called by the head of the Rodionov Directorate and says: "I turned off all the phones. Come on cleanliness. Have I ever helped you in anything?" And Yuri Petrovich honestly replied that "no, never and nothing." That is, the state gave money and believed that for its money it would receive what it wants to get.

It was always necessary to receive "lit.". Even the texts of the flooded play, recommended in the theater for the production, still had to once again get the LIT. The script too. As for Lyubimov, the further, the more, he took complex texts, and not always drama. He put prose, moreover, articulated different texts, traditional poetry, modernist. The topics that Yuri Petrovich was interested in - God, the relationship of the artist and power is at all times relevant.

More than the theater. From beloved to Didenko