Shadow, know your place

Last Wednesday, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation made two loud purposes: actor Konstantin Khabensky was appointed new artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater named after Chekhov, artist of the Mikhailovsky Theater Vladimir Kekhman, the new director of the Moscow Art Theater Gorky. About personnel permutations that caused a scandalous resonance in the theater community - Alena Karas.

Actor Konstantin Khabensky was appointed new artistic director of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, Interfax reports with reference to the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.

From this plot with new purposes in the "male" and "female" Moscow Art Theater - first of all, in the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov (at the Moscow Art Theater Gorky, of course,, too, but there are more comic overtons) - most of my interlocutors had about the same feelings: bitterness and nausea. Moreover, both are completely unrelated to the attitude to the characters of this drama. The background of these feelings was not the appointments and the names of new leaders themselves, but the very form of developing decisions and their presentation to the public and the leaders themselves-they called and said something like "you are no longer working here."

These or similar words were addressed to the director, whose candidacy in 2018 was strongly approved by the Ministry of Culture. In the theater (and around him) they were waiting for anyone, but not Zhenovach . Inna Solovyova, the oldest historian of the Art Theater, suggested his candidacy, which she recently talked about in Novaya Gazeta. She and her like -minded people seemed correct to sharply expand the channel of this energetic, inventive, successful and noisy theatrical business, in 2000 saved by Oleg Tabakov, and direct him back to the roots, to where the directorial will determined the development paths (and partly extinction) of the Russian and Soviet theater. Forty days after the death of Tabakov, this decision seemed to many an irresponsible or well -calculated provocation, an undermining, a mine not very slow action. Twenty years ago, the same people were horrified by the same invectors by coming to the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov of the actor-manager, who will lead to the final collapse of the great idea (about these ends and the beginning!) And will turn the unique theater into a supermarket. Such a giant institution as the Moscow Art Theater can lead anyone - an actor, director, playwright and even, perhaps, the historian of the theater. The main thing is that he is a producer. And to be in its place. And so that his appointment was the result of a serious competition in which not only the individuals, but also their programs would participate. But this, apparently, will have to talk about this at the next round of history.

Even if such a directorial figure could theoretically arise, in reality it could not be Sergey Zhenovach, who created his small beautiful studio and released one performance there a year, or even two. Obviously, his consent to head the Moscow Art Theater was dictated by the sum of obvious and hidden circumstances. Perhaps the obvious one can include his own need for changes. Among the barely hidden circumstances was blackmail associated with the very existence of the theater art studio. Studio and became a division of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov. And it remains so to this day ...

Neither consulting, nor offer open competitions, nor to appeal to experts in order to at least somehow demonstrate loyalty to the professional community, the power of the covid curtain era is not going to. After all, she saves everyone.

As a gesture of salvation, the actors of the theater then, in 2018 , nominated their candidate-Konstantin Khabensky. But this number did not pass. It is now pointless to reflect on how Khabensky would become Khabensky in that situation. This is not about this now.

The speed and cynicism with which it was decided to remove Sergei Zhenovach (officially, as always, of his own free will) and the appointment of Vladimir Kekhman (as if completely unexpected for the leadership of the Moscow Art Theater Gorky), even the views of the theatricalists caused a random. The same institution and almost the same people (the current minister Olga Borisovna Lyubimova is in many ways close to her previous colleague) who put their candidacy, spitting on the will of the theater and the logic of his development, who proposed to Sergey Zhenovachu in essence the sacrificial role (the consent of Zhenovach to play this role - a reason for a completely different conversation), returned to the option, which is the MKHT troupe with the MKHT. The very beginning and suggested ... Now, they say, let this one twist on the navel.

Whatever the catalyst for such a sharp dual -purpose (can Kekhman Bankrupt by the law manage the theater, it doesn’t matter: it’s impossible for a stranger, it is possible), it can clearly signal the new stage of unceremonious (in the old days they would say - voluntarist) relations of the authorities and theater. Having planted everyone on budget money, in the context of the pandemic culture-minerium, he now does not want to stand on ceremony at all. The indignation of the chairman of the STD Alexander Kalyagin by the fact that the most important personnel permutations were carried out without any preliminary discussion with the people of the theater, sounds the voice of a flagrant in the desert. Neither consulting, nor offer open competitions, nor to appeal to experts in order to at least somehow demonstrate loyalty to the professional community, the power of the covid curtain era is not going to. After all, she saves everyone. So, the music will order which one wants. And no one will hinder her.