The rider of the apocalypse

Only a few words are needed - such lungs as the elves in the Lilican Theater. Only a few instant outbreaks are needed, like a match -chir . And where to get this lightness, this bitter smile of John the Theologian, Ecclesiastes, Faust? The children's smile of the sage, who knows the secret of the universe and carelessly jokes over him? Ilya Epelbaum, along with Maya Krasnopolskaya, are inseparable creators of a small huge world, arising from the wave of Prosperovo magic in a small space of several rooms. This place immediately increased in the myth: the first private family theater "Shadow" since 1988 has been located right behind the huge five -pointed theater of the army. And in 1996, Ilya and Maya came up with their main project - the Lilikan Big Royal Theater, and another inscription appeared above the entrance to their friendly ark - “The Shadow of Theater”. The openwork, exquisite shadow, performed by some hidden philosophical melancholy, plunged the theater into the forgotten atmosphere of mystification and draws, involved small spectators and great creators into its orbit. Anatoly Vasiliev, Tonino Guerra, Peter Fomenko, Nikolai Tsiscaridze, Sergey Yurishovets, Robert Sturua, Roman Viktyuk, Mikhail Levitin, Alexander Bakshi, Lev Rubinstein, responded to the ideas and calls of Ilya.

A flickering dizzying change of scale does something with our idea of ​​his own greatness. It is not for nothing that his ironic-appropriate performance-the Moliere Misanthropus-Anatoly Vasiliev put it there. And what a terrible and funny “scene from Faust” made there Epelbaum with Peter Fomenko ... Looking at the huge luxurious theater, through the opening of the royal bed two “Velivpina” in the red and white - Faust and Mephistopheles in the performance of Valentin Gaft - look at their tiny doubles on the Lilican stage.

The openwork, exquisite shadow, performed by some hidden philosophical melancholy, plunged the theater into the forgotten atmosphere of mystification and draws, involved small spectators and great creators into its orbit.

“I am bored, a demon” ... a small sailboat, noticed by Faust on the horizon, approaching, turned into a huge liner, falling in half over the heads of the audience to find fragments, fragments and fleeting images of the Pushkin “elements” - poor Eugene, running from a copper horseman along a confused granite embankment, whose networks dragged the dead man, The dead princess and the heroes emerging from the waters ...

"The big universe in the cradle of a small eternity is sleeping." Irina Uvarova, in her old beautiful article about Ilya Epelbaum, quotes this line of Osip Mandelstam. Very accurate. Actually, it’s better to say about Ilya.

In another project of Ilya, the theater of imagination, the theater-sequence, theater-thought, the idea of ​​a “paper performance” about Covid -fearless, desperately funny flashed! There was another performance in his project, invented with Anatoly Vasiliev ... "Apocalypse", a puppet performance for one viewer. The phonogram, which sounded in it, made up the Russian text of the Gospel of John the Theologian, mounted by the word from the voices of those who have gone and living - Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, Alice Konen, Ivan Moskvin, Vasily Kachalov, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Vladimir. Mayakovsky, Innocent Smoktunovsky, Peter Fomenko, Anatoly Vasiliev and many others. Riders, animals and people darted in matchboxes. A match flashed in complete darkness, highlighting what was happening in a box for a few moments. Then again the darkness ... Again a flash ...

The cheerful, performed humor and fearlessness is the rider of the Apocalypse, Ilya will now always compose incredible performances in her imagination theater. True, now the distance between our worlds has greatly increased - and the difference in scale has become even more obvious. So, you will need special efforts so that the Little Lilikan Theater still opens for us, Veliputov, a portal to other worlds, other scales. And so that the fiery flashes illuminate this invisible transition.