Freedom of the director

Russian theater after the "Serebrennikov case"

• In Russia, there is less and less space for free creativity, censorship declares more and more.
• The fear of the new and commitment to conservative values since ancient times are characteristic of the Russian public.
• In the Soviet Union, the cultural industry was an instrument of ideological manipulation.
• In Russia, there are few free non -state theaters, and in state innovation and experiments are less and less possible.
• If the Creator wants to earn money and be safe, he is forced to join the conservative-setting state trend.

Sergey Medvedev: From Tangaiser to Nureev, from the case of the Seventh Studio to the case of the construction of a small drama theater in St. Petersburg - theatrical criticism is increasingly reminiscent of a criminal chronicle. What happens in the Russian theater? Is the freedom of the directorial utterance limited? Is the new Zhdanovshchina coming?

Our guest is a theater critic, art director of the Meyerhold center Elena Kovalskaya and music critic Vadim Zhuravlev .

There was a scandal with Tangaiser, Tangaiser as a result, Kulyabin now puts in the Bolshoi Theater. There was a scandal with Nureev: the premiere was delayed, but in November took place, now in June there will be shows again. Maybe this is a lot of noise from nothing? Maybe there really is no such censorship?

Vadim Zhuravlev: Probably, one could say that it was not if the play "Tannheiser" was still in the repertoire of the Novosibirsk Theater. But the performance was shot after two or three shows, and the scenery, apparently, was burned.

Sergey Medvedev: Lena, do you feel the onset of censorship?

Our president went to the elections with one program, and when he was already elected in 2012, he announced a conservative course in the fall

Elena Kovalskaya: I felt it for a long time. Facebook today reminded me that four years ago, in 2014, the Mikhalkovskaya newspaper "Culture", dedicated to these villains - experts of the Ministry of Culture, who support harmful art. I was just one of the experts that this newspaper was linch, who were supposedly dismissed by Mincultu. Before that, it seemed to me that it was rather my public duty, mission than work or earnings.

I participated in the expert council of the Ministry of Culture at the time when Sofya Apfelbaum was in charge of the theater department. Then, too, at first there were elections, and then the laws on mat, the law on the promotion of homosexuality among minors, the law on insulting the feelings of believers were adopted - these are censorship, these anti -constitutional laws went a string. Already sat in Pussy Riot prison. It was clear: censorship is not needed, sufficiently administrative or financial pressure, and it has been in 2012.

Our president went to the elections with one program, and when he was already elected in 2012, he announced a conservative course in the fall. Further, already in the field, in the regions, officials were in a hurry, fled in front of the steam locomotive. Administrative levers are the most effective. No censorship is needed: it is enough to remove the director and put the other that your assignment is to remove the objectionable performance.

Vadim Zhuravlev: As was done in Novosibirsk.

Elena Kovalskaya: Yes, it was done when the directors of Madzrich were removed. Moreover, he now cannot work anywhere, he has a “wolf ticket”. Now we go to the courts, express our solidarity with Serebrennikov and Malobrodsky and understand that this is also censorship. And our senior comrades, the heads of theaters, are wondering who the customer of this case is.

Sergey Medvedev: It is already more or less determined that the Serebrennikov case is political, that this is not just a random victim? Why was Serebrennikov chosen? In the end, it was not the most revolutionary, not the most protest theater. This is enough commercial art.

Elena Kovalskaya: Based on Cyril Serebrennikov, there was an attempt to defeat the Theater.doc - the theater of political and public, non -state, truly free. This is the theater, which created the performance “Eighteen Hour” about the death of Sergei Magnitsky, made performances about Beslan, and recently released a performance about the Beslan mothers who were dispersed in this September, when they spontaneously organized a rally at the school. And here, too, it did not need any censorship, there was enough a call from the presidential administration to special people, and then the lessor drove them out of the premises. They moved to another place, we were building a new house together, but the owner of the mansion seemed so liberal at some point again informed the theater owners that he was terminating the lease.

Vadim Zhuravlev: I experienced it on my own skin. I worked at the Bolshoi Theater, there was a scandal with the production of "Rosental children". It was a very terrible time for us. It was scary to go to work: there was a Putin Komsomol and the Books of Sorokin in the toilets stood. We came to work and saw people who do not want to go on stage to rehearse with a nurse. And to our questions: "Why don't you go?" - They said: "Why? Putin will call now and cancel everything." This censorship actually did not disappear anywhere, it still sits in people.

Sergey Medvedev: This is rather not a cesura, but some kind of internal firmware, which remained both at the level of administrators and at the level of performers.

Vadim Zhuravlev: It was 2005 when it seemed to us that everything was already fine with us, we had a liberal country. And then the artist already felt with an interior that everything would not be so simple. When everything suddenly became so bad, I was already prepared for this to some extent. When I saw the reaction of the public at the premiere of Ruslan and Lyudmila, when people began to shout out different slogans, it was very scary. You suddenly understand that people are not able to perceive some kind of statement of the artist, and then digest, discuss him. They come and wait for compliance with some norms. And the same Gogol Center, the Moscow Art Theater, Bogomolov and a lot of directors teach people to think and look differently.

Elena Kovalskaya

Elena Kovalskaya: 20 years after perestroika, our cultural industry worked exclusively for the artist. Maybe because there was no dialogue between cultural institutions and society, and criticism served as art, and not its audience, this skew occurred when art developed, but the audience did not. You need to build a dialogue.

Sergey Medvedev: In Russia, the art is a few steps ahead of what is ready to perceive the public, given the flow of commercial theaters?

Elena Kovalskaya: We do not have a commercial theater, no commercial art.

Sergey Medvedev: But they are commercially successful: the same Theater of Nations, Gogol Center-full halls, tickets of ten thousand.

Elena Kovalskaya: These are theaters that are financed by society, funds, commercial structures and repel their funds. We have state and non -state theaters. Our culture is primarily state. And the thin layer of the private sector in art is divided into commercial and non -profit art. And a truly interesting search, impudent, socialist art is in the thinnest zone, which is called the "non-state non-profit theater." And this area is extremely narrow.

This, of course, is a monstrous bias, and the state played a role here. A healthy culture has two wings - state support and private, public support. In order for public support to be significant, the law on the philanthropist is needed, which would come into line with the Tax Code. We do not have the will of the state to develop this private sector, because it wants to control everything. And as a result, it controls everything. And when in 2012 the state decided that it would control the culture, it also remembered that the cultural industry was once created as a manipulation tool.

It was an ideological tool. For example, the theater turned people of different views into a single community - the Soviet people. And the authorities remembered that you can use this tool - and come on! The basis of cultural policy arises.

In 2014, in our country there was a discussion about the national idea. I open the Constitution: the 13th chapter, the 2nd point-we do not have and cannot have any general ideology. When the state raises the question of ideology, that is, about the national idea, for some reason, society supports it. This means that this freedom and this constitution is not needed by anyone. Here, the fault of not only the state, but also of society, which did not form institutions, did not create a society itself.

Vadim Zhuravlev: We need to teach people to what could be somehow different.

Sergey Medvedev: It seems to me that the problem is the original patriarchality of Russian society. And this is the atmosphere of the fact that the theater pushes a new statement in this patriarchal society creates the necessary tension. Maybe this is what is happening in Russia now - the theater is constantly pushing forward this area of the experiment?

We do not have a commercial theater, no commercial art

Elena Kovalskaya: Yes, of course, the theater also has a conservative part, but there are innovative, experimental parts, however, this is a very narrow segment. In Moscow, this is easier with this, there are 88 state venues, and people know where to go. Another thing is in the region, where there is three to five, or even one theater, and it should ensure the whole variety of culture. And there, more often than in Moscow, we are faced with rejection of the public when she sees an abnormitative performance that asks complex questions.

But I am against considering the public as a fool, to accustom her to something, to form. In the center of Meyerhold, the public will give odds to our artists. And the layer of such an audience is in any city if there is such an art. But it cannot arise at the State Theater. An experiment is the space of a non -state theater, but we do not have it, since there are no funds and grants to support the non -state sector, there are no philanthropists.

Elena Kovalskaya: Society is ready to meet in the theater with such a reality as it is, but the authorities are not ready. Moreover, they prohibit these things. And then it was enough to perform several symbolic gestures. They announced that the enemies of the nation are people who put a modern play, that harmful plays are supported by experts: to change experts, to notify the population through the newspaper Culture, and then you need to drive a broom in Moscow Theater.doc. And this symbolic gesture does not cost the authorities, but he reports the message: "It is better not to take on a modern play." Serebrennikov is another symbolic gesture, “Nureyev” is a symbolic gesture.

Vadim Zhuravlev: Two symbolic gestures for one performance: at first they were banned, and then allowed and began to interpret that there were no censorship.

Elena Kovalskaya: From 1917 to 1937, they created a powerful suppression machine in Russia, a repressive apparatus. And ours did not create this repressive apparatus, they cannot transplant everyone. Today, there can be no 1937 for artists, today's Meyerhold will not be destroyed in Lubyanka. But we remember these things, this tectonic horror lives in every heart. Therefore, these several symbolic actions are enough so that the artists will be reinsured 15 times before they say what they think.

Vadim Zhuravlev: It seems to me that the authorities are simply not ready. A chic example was recently in Saratov, where George Isaacan set the Aida, and there at the end Amneeris did not just die on the tomb of Aida and Radamama, but opened her veins. So, the prosecutor of the region came to the performance and openly announced: "Now I will open the case, because this is the propaganda of suicide!" Amneeris does not have the right to open the veins at the play "Aida"!

We see officials like Kapkov, whom someone clearly took, put forward and said: "Look in this direction. Here is the right art, here it is modern and developing." And Kapkov led in this direction. We also have an expert community in a strange way. Who believes the same power? Yes to anyone. They believe in their ideas about what art is.

Sergey Medvedev: It is sad that Chernyakov no longer puts in large after Ruslan and Lyudmila. But, let's say, Mariinka. Remember the same classics - Graham Vick put Boris Godunov, this is an acute opera with a fairly serious political and social message. Maybe the problem is at the Bolshoi Theater: it is too close to the Kremlin?

Elena Kovalskaya: There is no theater in the country closer to the Kremlin than Mariinka.

Sergey Medvedev: Maybe the problem is in large imperial theaters?

Vadim Zhuravlev: The whole story of Gergiev and his success in the country is connected precisely with the fact that he is as far as possible from the Kremlin: the authorities do not go there and does not watch performances, and there you can do anything. There are bursts like Boris Godunov, but basically there they are now putting absolute semolina, such opera Ivanovna - costumes, wigs ... all this looks monstrous, because it is still terribly old -fashioned. And the Bolshoi Theater, oddly enough, is the eternal attention of power. About 300-350 tickets bend for each premiere of the Bolshoi Theater for the presidential administration and the relevant structures in the government. This is a protocol. When the premiere on the new stage, where there are 800 seats, it is just scary, the atmosphere at the premiere is terrifying! And it is clear that the one who will be more careful will sit for the longest.

Sergey Medvedev: And the Western big theaters are the same? Does a large format contradict the experiment there?

Vadim Zhuravlev

Vadim Zhuravlev: This story is connected with what society is. For example, the Royal Theater in Madrid “Real” or La Scala Theater is a very conservative audience: there are expensive tickets, young people do not go there. The Berlin State Opera is very similar to them. The audience of this theater has an age qualification. And there is a categorical resistance, up to the fact that Gerard Mortier, an outstanding person, simply burned down in Madrid due to a constant struggle with the audience, with a society that requires: make us beautifully, give us costumes, not experiments!

The worst thing is when the performances are shot under pressure. The same Tanniger was removed due to the 15-second show of a poster, which reminded someone to the crucifixion of Christ between the legs of a woman. The performance was unimportant, frankly, but that is not the point. He could not be removed for such a reason!

Sergey Medvedev: Is the freedom of the director's statement in the modern theater remained? This, in particular, is argued by the screenwriter, Honored Artist of Russia Yuri Arabov .

If you want to receive money in the field of art, then any freedom in the era of a tough state system is impossible here

Yuri Arabov: If you want to receive money for your work in the field of art, then here is absolutely impossible any freedom in the era of ideological and more or less rigid state system that we entered. The option is to adjoin some trend. The most powerful trend is offensive-patriotic. This is what the Ministry of Culture preaches today. You enter this trend in the cinema, enter the meiga who receive favorable financing from the state, and make a picture. If it is recognized as useful, then the field of private cinemas will even be cleared under it, as under the picture "upward movement". This is a patriotic and setting picture. Our state is currently finances the same projects.

If you do not want to receive money, but are really concerned about expressing what you have inside, you are not contacting this trend. But then you must contact some other trends. For example, a liberal trend: in Moscow there are several liberal theater venues - Kirill Serebrennikov had, Boris Yukhananov had. And if you want to receive money, you play games.

Sergey Medvedev: And when did this offensive-patriotic trend begin? Is it related to Medinsky?

Elena Kovalskaya: This is connected with Putin: in 2012, he announced a conservative course on Valdai. Then Medinsky appeared, a man led by Mikhalkov. They say that he will again head the Ministry of Culture.

Here, world processes are of great importance. When it all happened with us, it seemed to me that this was some kind of our local garbage. And then there was a conservative turn in Poland, before us he was in Hungary, in the countries of Eastern Europe, which in a similar way developed with us after perestroika. And then there was America! And it is already clear that this is some kind of common trend.

In Russia, we ourselves allowed this when we gladly took the shooting of the White House when Yeltsin went in elections on equal terms with the Communists and, honestly or dishonestly, won, and we again supported it. At this moment, we allowed such a state that can twist us today. It is one thing when the president who has a conservative program came to power: we would say: "Well, this is the choice of the people." And so the person who carried out the modernizer course has trapped there today, or he chose another course. This is a wildly alarming situation, because a person turns the country. This is a change in courses without the will of the taxpayer, voter.

Sergey Medvedev: Let me disagree a little about the 1996 elections: they still asked the voter will, and these were competitive elections with an administrative resource. По сравнению с тем, что происходит сейчас, это просто образец демократии: там существовало пространство выбора. Сейчас такого пространства изначально нет.

Елена Ковальская: Сегодня наши старики в культуре говорят, что цензура всегда шла на пользу, что она нужна. Но это полная ерунда! Авангард был уничтожен не только в России, но и в Германии. Где баухаус? In America.

Вадим Журавлев: Самое страшное, что это у нас в крови. У нас люди до сих пор живут ощущением, что соцреализм, который многие годы существовал как единственно правильный эстетический курс, должен сохраняться. В этом смысле у нас не развивался плюрализм.

Я только что вернулся из Берлина, где смотрел, как местная публика принимает спектакль Кирилла Серебренникова "Машина Мюллер". Разница восприятия огромная, хотя это же бывшая ГДР, и там очень много консервативных зрителей.

Когда ты приходишь здесь на "Машину Мюллер", ты слышишь среди публики бесконечные разговоры: ах, они голые! – можно, нельзя... В Берлине люди смотрели дальше: они смотрели, каким предстает Мюллер в этом спектакле. Кстати, очень многие люди, которые работали еще с самим Мюллером, с восторгом отнеслись к спектаклю, потому что это уже следующий уровень восприятия.

Я езжу туда и смотрю спектакли Кирилла Серебренникова. У него было очень много оперных планов, которые сейчас просто срезаны всей этой историей. Я смотрю его спектакли и думаю: может этот спектакль, который поставил русский режиссер, состояться сегодня в Москве? И в 95% случаях я отвечаю себе: нет, это невозможно!

Сергей Медведев: Мы неизбежно снова и снова возвращаемся к теме Кирилла Серебренникова. Сейчас надо говорить не о свободе режиссерского жеста, а о свободе самого режиссера, то есть вопрос свободы ставится уже под совершенно другим углом.

Хочу закончить программу воспоминанием о человеке, который недавно ушел и был действительно по-настоящему свободен, – это Михаил Угаров, художественный руководитель постоянно гонимого "Театра.doc". Тем не менее, у него была своя публика, которая платила деньги. Иногда люди не знали, какой будет репертуар, надо было зайти на сайт театра, чтобы посмотреть, состоится спектакль или нет. Это было настоящее свободное искусство, очень социально ангажированное и политически совершенно бесстрашное. Но за свободу надо платить. И Михаил Угаров тоже заплатил за эту свободу.