Covered with "golden masks"

Critic Alexei Kiselev-about how the Russian theater changed due to military censorship

Officials and cultural figures loyal to the state declare the “abolition of Russian culture” abroad, although it is there that dozens of Russian theater directors, actors and playwrights are now forced to work there. Inside the country, directors are fired for an anti -war position and prohibit performances. Theater critic Alexei Kiselev, at the request of the “cold”, tells what is happening on Russian stage while the war is going on, and what will happen on them.

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The theater community of Russia, politically amorphous and inert, is experiencing a civilian. There are three camps. The first is the loyalists who defiantly support Russian military aggression, like the artistic director of the “Snufflery” Vladimir Mashkov or the head of the Moscow Provincial Theater, Sergei Bezrukov. The second - expressed against the war. Those of them who held leaderships immediately lost these positions (Viktor Ryzhakov was fired from the “Contemporary”, Sergey Levitsky-from the Bestuzhev Theater to Ulan-Ude, Denis Azarov-from the Viktyuk theater and so on), many emigrated (Kirill Serebrennikov, Maxim Didenko, Dmitry Krymov), someone continues to work in partisan conditions. But the largest camp is the third, and he is silent, ignoring the very fact of war.

And it is precisely through this third camp, through the eyes of its representatives closed in the war, I propose to look at the Russian theater scene. Let's conduct an experiment: imagine that nothing happened. We put ourselves in the place of most theatrical figures: the performances are going, the audience is invited to the premieres, theaters announce the festive anniversary programs.

So, what would the review of the most important theatrical events of autumn look like? Let's start with the festivals. " Lyubimovka " is the main, oldest and independent show of new drama. For some reason, this year he first went outside of Russia-in Kazakhstan and Estonia. Well, why not - an exit festival. The fact that the leadership of Lyubimovka announced the indefinite Open Call anti -war plays - we will not notice, let us miss.

After Lyubimovka, everyone usually went to the “ territory ” - to see the spectacular works of modern choreographers and performative experiments of the authors from around the world. This time, “Territory” was held only in the children's format “Territory KIDS”, which showed performances from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yerevan and Krasnoyarsk. Well. Children are important. The best is children.

The third in the theater calendar is habitually the festival specializing in the performances of European masters is the Stanislavsky season. There is no information about its conduct this year. As there is no Net festival - the most influential review in Russia of the new and best European theater. It happens. There were festivals and closed. Everything flows, everything changes.

After NET, the Russian theater “Oscar” - “ Golden Mask ” usually announces the program. She is in place, all on schedule, the festival should go, as usual, from January to April. The program includes the main Russian premieres of last season - the performances of Dmitry Krymov, Timofei Kulyabin, Rimas Tuminas. Only now these directors themselves will definitely not come to the performances and will not receive any “masks”. As, however, and others, even the most loyal directors.

The directorial nomination, one of the main ones, this year was simply canceled “by decision of the founder”, that is, the Union of Theater Workers of the Russian Federation. It is clear that this is due to the fact that all of the listed directors, the favorites of the main Russian theater award, were dismissed for anti -war statements and are now working abroad. But wait ... maybe it’s not clear. Maybe the directorial nomination was really superfluous on the Golden Mask - is it important, in the end, who staged performances? So, apparently, they believe in the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhova, releasing the programs, where in the column “director” instead of names and surnames - Kirill Serebrennikov, Alexander Molochnikov, Dmitry Krymov - the word “director” was written again. The director is the director. Wonderful.

The authors of the plays are also not binding people for the modern Russian theater. On the same “Golden Mask” this year, the nomination “The work of the playwright” with such a disclaimer was canceled: “Nominees are not presented due to the lack of a competition.”

Perhaps the problem of this nomination is that its obvious headliner would be Mikhail Durnenkov - the author of the text for the play “ P ” Yuri Butusova with Konstantin Raikin in the “satyricon” based on Gogol's “Examiner”. But six months ago, all the performances for the plays of Mikhail Durnenkov were banned in Russia, the names disappeared from the posters, and he himself was fired from the Moscow Art Theater School-for anti-war post on Facebook. However, the public is unlikely to suffer from another disappeared nomination. In the end, how many of them, nominations, there are still many.

Another important platform where the new generation of theatrical directors, actors, artists, playwrights, composers and choreographers traditionally try itself - this is the Meyerhold center. Something amazing is always shown here. Oh, they no longer show. After February 24, the leaders of Tsima Elena Kovalskaya and Dmitry Volkostrelov left their posts due to an anti-war position. Almost the entire team quit, and the Department of Culture announced the unification of this theater center with another - the “School of Dramatic Art”, from where Dmitry Krymov had previously left the scandal. Olga Sokolova now leads all this exotic neoplasm. Arriving at the QIM, she chose the memorial table of Vsevolod Meyerhold as a workplace. None of the former leaders of the center was sitting behind him - as a sign of respect for the memory of a theater reformer tortured and shot in Lubyanka. Sokolova awkwardness does not notice this. Nobody. Nothing. He does not notice.

It seems to be with festivals. We go to the premieres at the main venues of the city. And what about the sites themselves? Here is the Gogol Center. "Gogol Center" is not, instead of it again the theater to them. Gogol with the new repertoire and protege of Nikita Mikhalkov as a Khudruk. The modest director Anton Yakovlev, known mainly by the fact that he is the son of actor Yuri Yakovlev, at the opening of the season, spoke boldly and programmatically: “The theater, of course, should respond to time requests, but at the same time he must move away from vulgar sociality.” “Vulgar sociality” - these are presumably the performances of Kirill Serebrennikov. That's where the absence in the theatrical life of Moscow is difficult not to notice. But the difficulties do not scare us: do not notice, say silence.

One of the most popular theaters in Moscow is the theater named after Vakhtangov - celebrates a century. The theater became popular thanks to the director Rimas Tuminas. You can’t get to his performances: “War and Peace” is the main contender for the Golden Mask. But Tuminas was dismissed (formally - he left the post for health reasons), and the head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin solemnly opened the new season instead of him.

In the Ermolova Theater, where until recently was a performance for the currently banned Dmitry Glukhovsky, Khudrok Oleg Menshikov signed a certain “cooperation agreement” with the same investigative committee. That's who becomes a truly noticeable player on the Russian theater map is the Investigative Committee.

Another successful theater is the theater. Mayakovsky - also celebrates the anniversary, also 100 years and also with a dismissed artistic also of Lithuanian origin. Mindaugas Karbauskis - in the distant and beautiful 2011, brought the theater out of a deep coma - with the beginning of the war he quit. The new artistic director Yegor Peregudov outlined the course somewhere in the classics. Whether new performances will be noticeable - an open question.

The Theater of Nations will not release performances with Chulpan Khamatova or Ingeborga Dapkunaite: both leading actresses left Russia. The sensational “Iranian conference” based on the play by Ivan Vyrypaev had to be removed from the repertoire. Zorypaev himself shakes the Russians from Poland. He is arguing with him twice fined for anti-war posts and dismissed from the post of artistic director of the Bestuzhev Theater Sergey Levitsky: “Many reserves ... easily hung labels on people who continue to do something in the conditions of total lack of freedom. <...> It’s easy to be clean, to be clean, to release manifestos, to brand everyone in a row in vain. ” But this post of Levitsky is “under the castle” - no one will notice him.

The main event in the Theater of Nations is a musical about fascist Germany "Kabaret". Khudoruk Evgeny Mironov went to the bombed Mariupol, announced his readiness to take patronage over the Mariupol drama theater. That was an event. They even talked about him on federal channels, usually to the theatrical life of the indifferent.

Another widely discussed event of the last season is a performance about Stalin with Olga Buzova at the Gorky Moscow Art Theater. The performance, however, does not go anymore, and the ex-gudruple of the theater Eduard Boyakov now gathered a team of conservatives and conservatives and announced the creation of a “new theater” on the basis of an old mansion on Myasnitskaya. The manifesto of the theater mentions the “ideals of the traditional family”, “patriotism” and “Russian cultural code”. What is a Russian cultural code? The answer, it should be prescribed, is contained in the performances preparing to release. In the poster - Dmitry Pevtsov in the "Lavra" according to Vodolazkin and Leonid Yakubovich in the Moliere "stingy".

One of the actors of the "New Theater" Boyakov, a former Russian Guard, recently voluntarily went to the front of the agenda. The artist’s name is Pavel Ustinov, he is known for the hashtag “I/we Pavel Ustinov”. Three years ago, he was detained on the street during peaceful protests against the uncertains of independent candidates for elections to the Moscow City Duma. Pavel was awarded three and a half years of the colony “For the use of violence” to the Rosgvardeza who detained him, although he insisted that he had nothing to do with protests. For Paul, dozens of artists, directors, playwrights and popular actors, who are today opposed the war, stood up then. The Moscow City Court canceled the decision, replacing the real term with a conditional one. Ustinov is fighting. If the court had not changed the decision, Pavel could meet mobilization in conclusion. Would, however, meet Evgenia Prigozhin there and still go to fight.

In some places, everything is still: in the “practice” “Brusnikins” play their usual repertoire, the “theater.doc” belongs to their existence, the lion Dodin in the MDT, Andrei Mighty in the BDT, Sergey Zhenovach in the Studio of Theater Arts, Boris Yukhananov in the “Electrotheater”, Konstantin Bogomolov in the “Theater on Bronnaya”, Yuri Butusov where is the existence. That was not. The potentially curious premieres of the Moscow Art Theater are prepared. Chekhov, Theater named after Pushkin, Ramt. It is possible that in some performances, acute topics will be touched on, topical associations will pop up. It is possible-if, of course, someone does not notice them.

But less and less those who are ready to notice. Magazine "Theater." Closed, editor -in -chief Marina Davydova - in Germany, the star of theatrical Zumers and the author of the book “We are sick of us all” Viktor Vilisov stopped writing about the theater.

Russian theater life really boils abroad. Kirill Serebrennikov-in Hamburg, Maxim Didenko-in Berlin, Timofei Kulyabin-in Sofia, Semyon Aleksandrovsky-in Tel Aviv, Dmitry Krymov, it seems, in the USA. Director Ilya Wrashitsky staged performances in Yerevan, producer Yuri Shekhvatov consolidates Russian theater emigrants in Almaty, an author of the cross -disciplinary projects of Vika Privalova - the best director of the theater for teenagers Polina Struzhkov - in Tallinn.

Yes, one of the most extraordinary practitioners of the new theater Artem Tomilov remained in Russia, who announced the laboratory of the “pussy laboratory”. The frontman of the Moscow underground Vasya Berezin and its “binary bio -deriter” remained and continues. In the new Moscow space, “inside”, which replaced the Tsim for many homeless teams, play their anti -war performances “Soso’s daughters” - the Zhenya Berkovich project - and the theater of mutual actions. Until recently, Vsevolod Lisovsky developed the “transition theater” in the underpasses, Marina Dmitrevskaya, without hiding the anti -war position, was dragging the “St. Petersburg Theater Journal” on his shoulders.

The Resistance Theater has been created. The anonymous association of the producers was announced by Open Call: applications for the creation of anti -war performances are accepted both in Russia and abroad. The advantage in the selection is behind ideas, the embodiment of which is possible on the Internet. Here is the project manifesto: “We believe that the policy of the Russian Federation is imperialist and colonial, and this must be tied with it. Together with the artist, we will look for answers to questions: how to comprehend the past, but not live? How to interact with other cultures for which the Russian language is the language of oppression? How to work with guilt and responsibility? And how not to lose yourself in all this? ”

Under the manifesto, however, so far there is no real signature of any real director, actor, playwright or critic. Russian theater figures, especially those in Russia, are trying to not notice the war and how a week after a week the posters are poor. I think it is more and more difficult for them. But the choice is small: to surrender or radicalize and leave.

There is, of course, the third option - to put on each other “Golden Masks” and already through them look into each other's eyes.

The author’s opinion may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial office.