Unlimited person

As director Yuri Butusov left Russia and staged an absurd play by Stoppard in Vilnius

Yuri Butusov is one of the most famous and loved by a wide range of Russian audience of directors. Since 2011, he headed the Lensovet Theater in St. Petersburg, and in 2018 he became the chief director of the theater. Vakhtangov in Moscow. His performances were distinguished by a special style-the randomness of the composition and the constant use of music, which is why they became like rock concerts. Yes, and Butusov himself in some way resembled a rock star and could easily go out during the performance on the stage to dance with his actors.

He was never associated with the political theater, but after the outbreak of war, Butusov suddenly left Russia. He did not make “high -profile” software statements, but his position was already obvious. Soon he was fired from the post of Glavrezh of the Vakhtangov Theater. A year and a half, Butusov produces in Vilnus his first foreign premiere - the play “Rosencrantz and Guildenster are dead” based on the play of Tom Stopard. The story of how the premiere passed, and about the director’s path in his homeland and outside her Matilda Vinogradov continues the theme of the new “Russian seasons” outside of Russia.

The artist is out of politics

Having graduated from the director's faculty at 34 (before that he managed to get out of the shipbuilding institute), Butusov immediately became a star. His diploma performance “Waiting for Godo”, where Khabensky, Trukhin and Porechenkov played, in 1999 received two “golden masks” at once.

Putting at the beginning of 2013 in the theater. Pushkin “Good Man from Sesan” (he still goes with the Angels), Butusov simultaneously committed two revolutions. Firstly, he demonstrated how to work with the canonical text, with which, due to the legend of the previous production, they tried not to deal (“a good man from Set” with Vladimir Vysotsky and Zinaida Slavina became the starting point for the theater on Taganka and the directorial career Yuri Lyubimov). Secondly, the production of Butusova finally dealt with the “Boulevard” reputation of the theater. Pushkin.

Butusov was the chief director, and then the artist of the St. Petersburg Lensovet Theater, every year he issued several prime ministers in both capitals, gathering a full house and nominations for the Golden Mask. Although the Lensovet Theater under him became a record holder for the number of awards among the city theaters of St. Petersburg, when Butusov had a conflict with the director, the city leadership did not stand on his side and did not prevent his dismissal of the south from the theater. Butusov moved to Moscow, becoming the chief director of the theater of Vakhtangov (at Khudruk Rimas Tuminasa).

In January 2022, Butusov released in Satyricon the prime minister “P” - a performance, which became a warning and prediction at the same time. Playwright Mikhail Durnenkov, who was invited to the team after the start of rehearsals, rewrote Gogol’s “auditor”, not only transferring him to modern realities, but mounting there the names of the repressed, who were read out on the promotions of the “memorial”, and the monologues where the text from Facebook is not coming, and then the orderlies noted in the snow in the snow. A wheezing mother, adjacent to an attempt to recall whether you threw or did not throw an ice on the homeless puppy with everyone on the school site. And the puppy after that died (among the stories that sound in the play, there are stories of both Butusov himself and Durnenkov).

“R” became the best performance of the Golden Mask of 2023, but in 2023 the crowded hall still does not laugh, and is somber to be silent in those places where he laughed in January 2022.

But here is a paradox: despite the acute -social “p”, on the prophetic “running” in the theater. Vakhtangov and even on the Brekhtovskiy “drums in the night” and “Kabaret Brecht”, Yuri Butusov was still not associated with the political theater. Butusovsky Theater, with its sketch approach and energy pouring from the stage such density as if it could be touched, looked as impressionist as it was generally possible for the theater.

In August 2023, Butusov would tell Forbes how scared he was when, during the “Kabaret Brecht” (the premiere took place in 2014) in the hall whistled due to anti-war texts, and when the actor said that he would be a refugee than he would go to the war, a scream came from the hall: “You need to shoot!”. This episode gives an idea of ​​which public-not at all liberal-political-came to its performances.

For theaters of Butus, this is Shakespeare and Chekhov, whom the director put most often. This is an unbridled track list with music (fans still recall how in the "Seagull" Butusov, like Kostya Treplev, he danced with the actors in one of the scenes), these are scenes that are repeated a different way several times, these are artists who try on several roles and/or changing in the same performance, this is, after all, kinematographically conquering Visual series.

How did you leave?

The absurd play by Tom Stoppard “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Dead”, Butusov planned to put on the main stage of the theater of nations with the artist Dmitry Lysenkov, who played in his St. Petersburg works. The premiere was scheduled for May 2023 and was supposed to be the first performance of Butusov at the Theater of Nations.

But in November 2022, Kirill Krok, director of the theater. Vakhtangov, said that the chief director of the theater, Yuri Butusov, decided to quit, because "he is in Paris and in the near future he could not come to work." June 22, 2023 in the theater. For the last time, Vakhtangov was played by his “Pers Gunta” (the Laureate of the Golden Mask - 2021 for the best work of the director), after which the performance of the former chief director was removed from the repertoire.

In early July, the Vilnius old theater (until September 2022 was called the Russian Drama Theater of Lithuania) published a schedule for September. It turned out that the first premiere of the new season will be the performance of Yuri Butusov "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Dead." The cooperation of the director and the theater was discussed even before the pandemic, and Butusov came to Vilnius with master classes, was friends with the composer Faustas Latenas (Latenas worked in the Vakhtangov Theater with Rimas Tuminas.-Ed.), Suppose he spoke about the most important Lithuanian director Aimuntas on him and his performances Nyakroshus . So the premiere in the old theater can hardly be called sudden.

What does it say?

In a few interviews, boots are focused on loss and the impossibility of staying within the situation of violence. “I was always repelled by aggression, a cult of power. I always knew that this was evil. I always believed that kindness and mercy are the innate qualities of a Russian person. Now I don't understand anything. I don’t understand how you can not see the obvious how to say that everything is not so unambiguous, ”says the director in an interview with Bernardinai.lt .

In the video interview, Forbes in August 2023, Butusov notes that his move is an attempt to stay alive.

“With the beginning of [“ Special operation ”* - ISPR. Forbes] Pognechka began to develop restrictions. Censorship began to enter my life. They began to ask me to remove some texts from the performances that sound like anti-war. In my case, this happened inside the theater. It was very delicately, very calm. [...] And if you agree with this, it will continue, it goes on and further. I don't even want to touch it. It is painful for me. I am painful to be in a restriction situation, let it be soft. I think that the theater is like life, in fact, but the theater especially is the territory of freedom. ”

How did Butusov set Stoppard with an accent of a nanny?

Before the closed curtain, the leader of the troupe of stray actors, who should play his performance before Gertruda and Claudius, instructs the audience with Stoppard text: “It will cost a little more if you yourself want to participate in action, unless, of course, your taste and times are the same as they are.”

The curtain opens: Rosencrantz and Guildenster, secondary heroes of the Shakespearean play, play the eagle - an eagle falls all the time. “Eagle, eagle, eagle” - the word is repeated countless times. Of the numerous buckets with which the scene is forced, ropes with weighted-cooks are raised upstairs-they will become a rain that goes almost the entire performance. The warning and reminder - about the upcoming journey from Denmark to England, where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from the letter that they need to give to the English king find out that in England they will have to chop off their heads.

Classic Butusovsky methods of repetitions with deceiving the expectations of the viewer perfectly fall on the absurdism of the play: for example, in the third act, Rosencrantz and Guildensterns will take off white shirts, worn one on top of the other. And the viewer seems to be waiting for the uniform heroes to take off everything - but no, they don’t take off. Why is it waiting? Because at the beginning of the second act, the same actor of the wandering troupe throws the public accusation - along with his clothes. At some point, he begins to cover the penis with a wig, but then forgets about this necessity. A rather innocent by the standards of the Russian Theater of the 2010s and 2020s, the episode provokes, however, to leave the hall several spectators.

However, such a prank is a slight injection for the viewer, hypnotized by visual beauty. Marus Nyakroshus, the artist of the performance and the son of Aimuntas Nyakroshus, can give a master class on how to turn obviously not the most expensive performance into a series of visual attractions. Here Rosencrantz and Guildenster have dinner, trying to saw stones with faces with a knife and fork, instead of wine, sand shimmers in their glasses, and dozens of real candles are lit (the luxury impossible by Russian fire -fighting standards), and the coins are falling from the numerous buckets with ringing - the subject world here plays its performance.

It will remain a mystery, who is the authors of the two monologues of Guildenster, mounted in the text of Stoppard, mentioned in the program, Igor Abromovich, thinking of the time, and Dmitry Denisyuk (Hero of History - a soldier who lost the shovel and for this fault closed in the drying room, where he rubs shoes with gutalin). It is not known what war (or service) all this happens.

Butusov’s fans will be lamented: where is the usual rampant playlist, was there really enough money for only a few tracks (including the classic “spring” Vivaldi), why there are free places in the hall - in two Russian capitals, fans would hang on the chandelier. And the author of this text will have to shrug: she was too good at this performance, in which the foreboding of death, humility and the inevitability of fate were being poured. Yes, this is the usual Yuri Butusov, not only his performances consist of dancing and bizarre musical mixes.

But will Butusov be able to play in his magical illogical poker with a “stranger” viewer, will the Lithuanian techniques scare away? The ovation in the final of an almost four -hour premiere performance does not give (for now) an answer to this question.

What next?

The extensive list of productions abroad, like Timofei Kulyabin or Kirill Serebrennikov, does not have Butusov. The plans that the director voiced in the already mentioned interview, he said about the future: “I have prospects in Norway, I will have work there-this is probably what you can talk about with some kind of certainty ... Then the fog begins to fall out a little already. But still there is some interest, negotiations with theaters of different countries. There is some kind of tank with Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, recently called from Belgrade. ”

If all these plans are implemented (you can only wish good luck here) and in all these countries the branded performances of Yuri Butusov will appear, then the fans of his work will be much easier to endure the hardships of emigration. Whether Butusov will fit into the context of the European theater, time will tell.

Nearest shows of the performance: October 11, 25, 26 - Klaipeda Drama Theater