The nomination is not awarded

The presented the updated Golden Mask Award took place - now under state control. Get a reward now not joy, but a dilemma

Until August 2023, the Russian National Theater Prize "Golden Mask" was scolded and praised in all ways. But the arguing: conservatives, liberals, and fans of the director Konstantin Bogomolov version of the Bolotnaya version , and the fans of his version of Bronnaya - Theater Viktyuk - there is still a space for dialogue. Almost all (with the exception of completely ultrapatriots who were not directly related to the profession or theatrical community) agreed that the “mask”, with all its minuses, features unjustly deprived or overly awarded nominees, was the only bonus uniting all theatrical Russia and representing (as details as possible!) The entire scale. The very entering the list of applicants for the Golden Mask was for theaters - especially independent or regional - the most important event, because the “mask” included not only the distribution of prizes, but also tour and festival programs, both in Russia and outside it.

In the spring of 2023, when the director Yevgeny Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk (who received the award in 2022 as the best playwright for the performance “Finist Yasny Falcon”) were already in jail, distributed the last “same” “Golden Masks” in history. The nominations "Best Director" and "Best playwright", however, there was no longer in them. Then the professional communities caused Facebook that the performances probably put themselves and wrote themselves, without the participation of Yuri Butusov, who left Russia (“P”, the Satyrikon Theater, Moscow; became the best performance of a large form), or Dmitry Krymov (“Kostya”, the theater named after Pushkin, Moscow), or Timofey Kulyabin (“Wild Duck”, theater, theater, theater, theater, theater. "Red Torch", Novosibirsk). Then the director of the theater. Vakhtangov Kirill Krok, receiving a reward, decided to replace in his speech the name of Rimas Tuminas with the turn "a man without whom there was nothing and who has an operation on Monday." But the presentation ceremony itself (which, for the first time, not counting the covid online, did not call journalists) still looked like a holiday of disobedience.

In the summer of next year, the state still decided to end this. The “Mask” was reorganized, the head of the Union of Theater Workers (and the head of the Golden Mask, plus the artistic director of “Snufflery” and recently the Khudorok “Contemporary”) has become a man of amazing effectiveness, judging by the number of places of work - Vladimir Mashkov . And a new ceremony was held on the stage of the theater. Vakhtangov, so that another effective theater manager Kirill Krok can demonstrate his effectiveness. Krok has not been demonstrated something not so long ago: he canceled the evening of memory of Rimas Tuminas and publicly supported the witness of the accusation of Karpuk , who reported during the testimony in the process of the very “finist” that he does not know who Valery Gergiev (at some point, by the way, suggested not nominating himself for the “golden mask” so as not to take the next one; now he talks about her along with Mashkoov about her about her. Update on the air of “Channel One”) or who is Polina Agureeva.

Actually, the team for the 30th festival, at which there was such a great responsibility, was assembled in line with all the current trends. There was only a problem remained: what to do with a list of nominees, which gathered the former expert council.

For example, there was a performance by Leo Dodin “Chaika”, which received two “masks” at once: for the best directing and the best acting duet of Elizabeth Boyarskaya and Igor Chernevich. To take the “mask” fell (or I had to) the boyar - and now, of course, comments have already appeared: how is the actress, who, with literally from the release from the theater academy in 2007, plays Zhenya in the performance of Dodina for the “life and fate” of Grossman, is not conscientious? In response, of course, I would like to ask: so how should people have to get by with this award like Leo Dodin or Svetlana Zemlyakova, who received a mask for the play “General and his family” at the Vakhtangov Theater? Zemlyakov, by the way, is one of the best teachers of the director of the GITIS, its performances are well known to everyone who monitors graduation students. And its production in the “Practice” “Pyotr and Fevronia Murom” became the best in 2015 in the now canceled nomination “Experiment”.

However, about who, when and with what formulations he received a “mask” in the past, now also needs to be written and explained separately: after all, instead of an old premium site with an archive for all the years whose start was almost coincided with the dawn of Runet, “error 404” comes out. On the new one, created on the basis of STD, there are no data on seasons until 2022. With the dramatic performance, which received the largest number of nominations in the season - namely with the production of the artistic director of the Alexandrinsky Theater Valery Fokin “One eight eight -one” - the announcement of the author of the play by Boris Akunin with a terrorist helped to avoid complex elections. The performance was removed from the show , and the jury, respectively, could not see it.

Another laureate "Masks", called the best composer Dmitry Kurleand, wrote on his Facebook (spelling preserved):

“The news about the presentation of the Golden Mask found me by surprise - I seemed to have fallen into real depression for the first time. I completed this work exactly a month before the full -scale invasion of Russian troops to Ukraine - so for me it is a “news” from another, forever lost life. The performance is beautiful (although I saw it only in the record), the team - close and dear people to me. The performance, as usual, is largely about the horror and dirt in which we live. <...> Of course, I can’t accept this mask - this is a personal nomination, so I have the right to express my personal opinion - for me personally, the mask has become a grimace of the system that destroys the theater, and behind it human lives - today, when Russia continues the destructive aggressive war in Ukraine and destroys the disagreed inside, the symbol of the new official Russian theater is the process over Zhenya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk. ”

Yes, right on the day the new “mask” was presented, the first closed meeting in the trial Berkovich and Petriychuk took place. And they decided not to award the prize in the nomination “The work of the playwright” this season (as the lawyer Petriychuk Sergey Badamshin wrote : “There are no volunteers before the sentence of the 2nd Western District Military Court”). Like the awards in the nominations “The Best Spectacle in the Opera”, “The Best Director in the Opera”, “Best Actress in Operetta / Musicle”, “Best Director in Operetta / Musical”, “Best Actress in the Ballet”, “Best Conductor in Ballet”, “Best Performance in the Genre of Modern Dance”. According to colleagues from Kommersant, this happened due to a clash when choosing nominees with an “old” expert council with a new conservative jury, which thus decided to go to some demarche.

And the directors of the last ceremony of the Golden Mask in 2021 - the one, as we remember, were Zhenya Berkovich and Nina Chusova.

A complete list of laureates and professional performance ratings, which probably deserved awards, can easily be read in the materials of the media not prohibited in the Russian Federation.