I will eat you

A cap, hat, why do you have a violin in your hands? A cap, a cap, why do these strange animals with clarinets haunt you? A cap, a hat, why are such bizarre sounds distributed around?

Familiar from childhood “why” from the fairy tale Charles Perrault can temporarily forget: on the stage of the Meyerhold center, they will not surprise “big ears”, but an amazing “instrumental theater” for children, still unprecedented in Russia. Musicians are not just musicians, but real actors, and in addition to the usual game by sounds, they use words, gestures and plasticity of the body.

The author of this fascinating action is Georges Apergis - a real world celebrity. For about half past a century, the composer’s musical and theatrical performances conquer the largest festivals and sites. Among its awards there is the “golden lion” of the Venetian Biennale - almost the highest award for contemporary artists. What is the peculiarity of Apergis and why is they waiting for him in Avignon almost every year?

The composer, born in Athens, learned the main idea of ​​the ancient theater: the unity of the word, melodic recitation and gesture. Moving to France at the age of 18, which allowed to regularly attend concerts of modern music and communicate with newly -thinking composers (xenakis, Boulaz, Kagel), expanded his ideas about the boundaries of sound and modern theater. To find his own way of interacting all elements, Apergis in 1976 created an atem's creative laboratory, which included both musicians and actors (including his wife, actress Edith Skob). They were isolated from Paris in the city of Banole to completely immerse themselves in work. Endless trainings and joint improvisations have developed an author’s method and a recognizable language.

The sounds of the human body, voice, speech are in the spotlight. The person says, “they say” his fingers when playing, “says” the instrument itself in the seeding of the rhythm. Six musicians participate in the Red Red Riding Hood, each of which is like a macro -tool: it owns the skill of speech from a whisper to recitation, movement, gestures and, in fact, an additional “bonus” in the form of a violin, clarinet, piano or saxophone. The text of the fairy tale is divided between them and is repeated several times in funny variations, so that each viewer manages to track the action.

Apergis did not separate the heroes of the fairy tale separately, and you will not succeed in finding a red cap in the score, a gray wolf or grandmother: there are only hints of them in the form of a text from the author and his tips in choosing tools. The plot itself about a naive girl and a dangerous wolf fades into the background, since the metamorphoses of sounds and rhythms are fascinated much more. For a child, for whom an ordinary chair will completely go beyond the horse, and a comb - for a microphone, a similar performance with unusual transformations will be understandable and simple. In addition, he will have the opportunity to punish who is who and why.

Apergis’s “Red Hat” can open the way to Russia for a unique theater with original French humor and musical taste. The production is prepared by one of the best Russian ensembles “New Music Studio” and the laureate of the Nano-Opera contest, director Alexei Smirnov. The performance is included in the program of the NET festival, where in the first week the audience was already forced to believe in the rain in the opposite direction (“Project of unusual phenomena”), and aliens in the Tomsk region (“Museum of Alien Invoices”). When asked if the wolf will eat a hat and whether it is worth waiting for her release, it is better to look for an answer in the fairy tale of Charles Perrault. The “Red Red Rand” by Georges Apergis will surprise not the plot, but how it is told.