Tatyana Frolova : “ Our teeth were knocked out a long time ago ”

Tatyana Frolova is a director, born in Komsomolsk-on-Amur , in 1985 she created an independent theater there - the KnAM Theater . In its early years, the theater staged works of Western and modern Russian drama - Sartre, Ionesco, Strindberg, Mrozhek, Dmitry Prigov and other authors. Later, the team moved on to original and documentary productions, often based on interviews, chronicles and personal stories.

The theater participated in international projects, toured in Russia, France, Germany, Portugal, and Italy. After the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, Tatyana emigrated and took with her the entire theater staff . The KnAM theater now lives and works in France. We talked about the war, emigration, theater, why I couldn’t stay and whether it was difficult to find my feet in the new reality.

Tatiana Frolova's website : www.tatianafrolova.com

Tell us about yourself.

— My name is Tatyana Frolova. I am 65 years old. I was born in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. There is such a city in the Far East. The city is the former Gulag Amurlag, where prisoners were brought. I lived there for 60 years and left. Then, I think, forever.

I do what I like most in life - these are documents, the traces of a person that he leaves, traces of living and inanimate nature. And, in fact, I do theater, but I don’t really like theater as such, but what I love is collecting some stories and these traces of ours, our lives.

How did the war affect your life?

- Well, she, of course, had a very strong influence. Although I was ready for this, I probably already said several years ago that there would definitely be a war, because we were heading towards this, Russia was heading towards this.

And after the war, we had to close our theater, where we spent 37 years, the theater premises, and go to nowhere altogether. It's easy to leave. First we took tickets to Mongolia just to at least cross the border. Well, then the theaters from France pulled us out, and now we are in Lyon. This is a completely new life, this is my second life.

Why did you leave Russia? Why was it dangerous for you to stay there?

- There is no word “dangerous” in this. And when the war began, I had the feeling that the whole air had changed. These are such strange sensations that you cannot understand at first. This was the first time in my life when you enter a theater and you feel as if everything smells like poison. Then I poured myself coffee, and it was already tasteless, not the same as before. That is, instantly the whole environment began, due to the fact that, apparently, there was a lot of stress and a lot of fear, it began to change and squeeze me out.

And all the things... there was a feeling that, you know, the air had gone, the air had been sucked out, and all the things stood so naked, somehow undisguised and very, very alien. Well, there was such an existential feeling that, like an animal, you need to run, run, because, well, it’s very dangerous for the body. And my body, it took this step, a simple jump.

Tell us about the life of your theater in Komsomolsk-on-Amur before the war. You had an independent theater. Why was this important to you?

— After tenth grade, I went to Moscow to enter theater school. I had such a goal right from childhood that I wanted to be an actress. But I lived there for a year, and naturally I didn’t get in. But I saw... and I saw the theater that I would like to do. I saw Taganka, all the golden performances with Vysotsky, with Alla Demidova. When everything was just beginning for them, it was seventy, in my opinion, the ninth year, yes, this is the seventy-ninth year, seventy-eighth, seventy-nine, the very heyday of Taganka. I saw how people reacted to this truth that the actors spoke about what was happening in the country.

And, apparently, she received this, this inoculation of such truth. And when I came back to Komsomolsk, I wanted to do something similar, because this... art... I watched, by the way, I was even at the rehearsal of Anatoly Efros, I watched the first performance of Anatoly Vasilyev. Well, that is, I was in it, swam in this modern theater and was simply fascinated.

And I came to Komsomolsk, I decided that I wanted the same theater. He was so explosive, he was so real, there was such a nerve in that theater. This is not such a dusty theater with costumes and so on. This is something so modern and made from the principle of such blocks. That's what I wanted to do.

“Frozen Heart is the best thing I offer you.” "Cold is pain."

“You don’t know anything about how the grandmothers lived or the repressed. I don’t know anything about this. Who's in the family? Maybe you had executioners? Yes, maybe repressed. No". “Don’t think, don’t feel, don’t worry. Go ahead and buy a phone. In short, sit on your phone and watch a movie.”

You have been making your own theater in Komsomolsk for more than 30 years. Have you ever had a desire to move to Moscow or St. Petersburg?

— I never had such a desire to move specifically to Moscow and St. Petersburg, because I understood that Russia is the same everywhere. That is, it doesn’t matter where you live, your body is Russian, that is, the bodies of people who lived before you are collected there, namely the peasant population, what constituted, in general, the population of Russia, and such a slave consciousness. Even in Moscow you can’t escape your body. That's why I didn't want to move there.

And in ninety-nine, when we first arrived in France, I realized that this is me at home, this is my viewer who understands me, who reads these things that I do. And if you move, then only here, but not to some big city.

Because for me, Europe is like a small island of such a culture, which, well, has accumulated a lot of this, this cultural layer. In Russia, if this is a millimeter layer, then here it was, well, 10 centimeters. Therefore, of course, I was always interested in this particular territory.

How did you end up in Lyon?

- It was no coincidence that we ended up in Lyon, because since 2012 we have been showing our performances in Lyon every 2 years, starting with our play about the Chechen war in 2012 - this is the play “Mager Personel”, that is, “My Personal War” was called a play based on the stories of Babchenko. And continuing almost every performance, we showed here.

We were invited by the Sens Interdits festival and the Celestin theater - it was like our home always. Even director Patrick Pino, when he met us, said: “You are home, this is your home.” And then all the directors who came after him, they also, well, said that this is your home.

And that’s how we ended up here, that the theaters showed such cooperation. These are several theaters. The national theater from Brussels, the theater from Switzerland, from Valence and now the “Sens Interdits” festival, and the festival from Oy, and the Celestin theater. So they got together and pulled us out. They bought us tickets, we had visas, because we just arrived from the tour in December, and in February we already left with the same visas forever.

What language do you currently perform your performances in?

— Since 1999, we have been going to France on tour. We are invited to various festivals, well, not only in France. Here. And that’s why we always have a very interesting story with subtitles, because we always integrate them into our performance. These can be titles or captions. It’s like a direct translation, when our translator, our actress, stands on stage. Blew. She stands on stage and interprets for the actor. That is the principle. She sometimes sits at the table, also translates or reads her monologues.

And we have, of course, subtitles. And in this performance in our “I am fine”, which we did last year, we already speak parts of the text in French. We try, we even there... we have some scenes where we ask the audience: “Do you understand what I’m saying?” - and the audience says: “Yes, yes, I see.”

Well, that is, this is such an interaction with the help of these roots, we are also trying to grow here. We're trying, if we're already here, we should know French, right? That’s why we all learn French, and it’s a very beautiful language, very logical, very complex, with tenses that don’t exist in Russia. And that's why it's very interesting. This is our story.

You have received political asylum in France. Who do you feel like now? Refugee, emigrant or something else?

- You know, almost nothing has changed in my sense, in my way of seeing the world. I feel more like an alien who doesn’t understand how everything works here, and therefore he’s very interested in people, no matter where. And so I want to pull out information and look for what these are - survival strategies. This is how people survive in any territory. I did this for 37 years in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. And I continue to do this here.

I feel that I am, of course, a migrant, because it is very difficult for me to navigate all this, although I understand that this is my land, my world, which I want to improve. But still, you don’t know the language well, because in order to integrate into French society, you must perfectly master this root, this root, which... language is our roots. And I learn the language, of course, I have lessons twice a week. I say, I can already communicate with students without a translator, I can already simply tell some things in French, but still you are still... you are still Russian. But I think that due to the fact that I have little time left, the Russian core is here, it will not go anywhere.

And I can only talk about myself, about my experience, but through... through some images that are very understandable, for example, to the French or the Germans, or the Swiss, or the Belgians. The image is national, therefore anti-national, yes, we can say that the image, like music, immediately penetrates the heart of a person. And after our performances, people’s bodies change.

And it’s amazing that sometimes people meet us in Nancy and say: “We remember your first performance of “Metamorphosis” based on Kafka. We remember, we still get goosebumps.” Well, that is, these are things that remain in people’s memory for a long time. This is precisely the image that penetrates there like a virus and does some kind of invisible work with a person. It seems to me that only art can truly change people. Everything else cannot: neither politics, nor nature, nor anything - only these images that can change consciousness.

You conducted master classes with emigrants and refugees from other countries. What did these master classes help you understand about yourself?

- Well, yes, it was the twenty-second year. We just arrived, we were very confused, like all people, probably. We understood that we did very little, even if we did some very sensitive political performances, we did very little. And when we arrived, “Sens Interdits” simply provided us with this format - to meet other people from different territories of the Earth. And when we talked, we began to understand... it turns out that this is such a pain of losing your house... Well, how can I say, it is clear that a house is not a material concept. I see, right? That he is always somehow invisible. You carry it, you spread it, like a smell, yes, like a flower around you, this house.

But it was impossible to believe that people from all countries are suffering because of some particle, a small piece of this planet, which is there in the stars - it is not visible at all, this particle, planet Earth, yes, but they are suffering because of some kind of grain, a small grain of salt. And it was so amazing and so close. And yes, we made a film about this master class. We tried to draw with them, we tried to sculpt with them, because they sculpted such strange, strange broken bodies. And it is very important to understand that until you collect your body, this house, you are disabled.

And, for example, our second performance, made here, on this territory, it begins with this very phrase: “Everything that does not kill us makes us disabled.” That is, this is really true until you collect your body. For example, one woman, when she saw me, she was from France, she was from France, but she was a refugee, and she said: “You walk and your body does not touch the ground. Buy heavy shoes,” she told me. And this was also included in this performance.

I bought these shoes, and I suddenly began to realize that I was walking and feeling the weight, the weight of my body. I feel this land, this land that is now mine. And this began to help me a lot therapeutically. And we all bought heavy boots, the whole theater, all eight people.

And now our performance even begins with this, that we all bought boots, and now our second life from scratch, it began here. And that's great. It’s just wonderful that we were able to find this ground under our feet and the hands of friends and people who support us, really support us. Well, the fact that we left as a whole team, we just took everyone like that and took them out is also a great happiness, because we continue our work here.

Tu sais, je me dis parfois que si on fait la même chose tous les jours à la même heure comme un rituel sans relâche systématiquement tous les jours. [screaming] [singing] Alors ça changera le monde. Quelque chose en lui changera. [music] Ce n'est pas possible qu'il en soit autrement.

During master classes with migrants, you asked the question: what was the most important thing from your homeland that you took with you in your suitcase? What was the most important thing you took?

— Our first performance was built on this - the fact that everyone took something very important for themselves. I, of course, took my mother's embroidery, which she did when she was 18 years old. So, 35... Well, those were sometime during the war years. And they had no light, no money, naturally. Yes, they sat by a splinter at night in the winter, when nothing, everything was swept away, they embroidered these incredible flowers, incredible colors. And, of course, I couldn’t... I took it. You know how, for example, they carried milk from a cow and carried it to exchange it at the market, to exchange it for colored threads, or they took threads out of clothes. And so they embroidered these flowers.

But it seems to me that my mother passed on to me precisely this peasant energy of survival. And as if through art, through these flowers, through the fact that you do something with your hand, you create some kind of imaginary world in which you can experience any suffering, any incredible pain of loss, and so on. For example, my mother - there were 11 of them, but six of them died directly. Uncle Vanya died there, little ones, because there was no food. Yes. Here. And, of course, this... you just freeze your heart, but at the same time this beauty saves you.

And this frozen heart, it also found its expression. Well, the fairy tale about the Snow Queen is an old fairy tale of mine from childhood. I fell in love with her very much. And because this heart is frozen, our entire nation has it. That is, we are so frozen inside in order to survive. To survive. And because if you react too much, your brain will simply explode [sighs heavily], and you won’t help anyone. That’s why my grandmother, she was a very stern woman with frozen hearts. They are like this all generations. And my mother, for example, she also never showed this tenderness. She warmed me up a little, a little, because it was such a generation. They gave us things and matter, because matter for them is the most important thing.

Maybe that's why it's so difficult for people to leave their homes, because... What is freedom? You don't understand anything. This is some kind of air. Oh well, it’s okay, you can breathe in poisonous gases, well, the smell of some kind of shit, yes, nothing, it’s, well, air, nothing. Well, here’s the matter, here’s what I’ve accumulated, and my walls are there in my apartment, the Euro repairs I did, my crib is there—that’s what I can’t lose, I can’t just give it away for some kind of invisible freedom. Therefore, it seems to me that this is how I understand Russian people who cannot leave, they say: “No, no, we can’t.”

And then suddenly mobilization began, and everyone was able to do it. Somehow they didn’t have any money. First: “No, no, we can’t, we have a sick mom, a sick dad, an apartment, and so on,” and then suddenly mobilization, and you run, just save your life like a hare, yes, you jump in fear, and mom is left there to die without you. And you have your own apartment... that is, this is such a cunning thing to play with a person that it seems to him that everything has some reason. But it is very comfortable and convenient for a person to live in this poisonous air, in this stench.

I can't imagine staying there. Because from the first days of the war I began to say all this to people: “How, how are you, how are you?” - and I saw the white faces of people, they said: “Tanya, Tanya, what are you, what are you, what are you saying? What kind of leaving? What are you saying, now everything will be done in 3 days, everything is fine, everything will be done now. This is ours, Ukraine is ours. This is ours." And this is another moment when everyone thinks about some kind of land, but does not think about what human life is, yes, dignity. It just put me into some kind of shaking. My heart was racing there, and it seems to me that it was impossible to survive.

You know, I screamed so much before leaving. It was such a howl when no one was there. I locked myself in the theater, I was screaming so much. I don't think I've ever screamed so much in my life. I howled so much as if... as if a she-wolf had lost her little wolf cub, because I had to leave this theater that I had been doing and cultivating for 37 years. We bought some new equipment there, we threw it all away, left everything there. Well, that is, when you run, and you scream so much, and you understand that you are simply saving your body, which must live.

We did a play about a suicide attempt, it was called “Sonechka’s Dream.” There we mixed Dostoevsky's story “The Dream of a Funny Man.” And just a girl was telling us about a suicide attempt when she took pills. And then for several days, about 10 days, she was in this coma, in death. And she said that it’s a very strange moment when you take pills, you don’t want to live, and at that moment your body just turns on. It dials the phone and says: “I took so many pills. My address is such and such, please save me, please save me.” And she says: “I didn’t understand who was saying this, because I made the decision to die.” And suddenly I saw how the body was fighting for life.

And that’s why all suicides trigger me so much, because how strong do you need to be... For example, my friend, yes, recently hanged himself in a pre-trial detention center, my friend is an artist from Komsomolsk-on-Amur. When you have this body that wants to live, you somehow break its neck. Well, that is, this is a huge, big job that not everyone has the strength to do.

From you everyone learned about the death in prison of the artist from Komsomolsk-on-Amur Andrei Akuzim. Tell us about it.

— Before this, a year ago, we also lost our student from the theater, to us... Vanya Demidov, Ulitka, who lived in St. Petersburg. He was a doctor, and he wrote me these voicemails. I even have all of his voices saved, and I insert them into performances, because he wrote to me: “Tanya, why should I live? For whom should I live? Look what's happening in this world. Everything is upside down, black and white. How should I live? - he directly shouted these voices. And he decides to commit suicide, injects himself with the solution, and they find him... his body.

And the media is inflating this story as if some stupid [__] just wanted to go to another dimension. Well, that is, this is such a vulgarization of death. I wrote, I swore with these people who wrote this news, not at all understanding the pain and why this person died. That this is a protest, this is a quiet protest - suicide.

And Andrei and I talked a lot about this death, that we shouldn’t allow something like this to happen, so that they would laugh at you later, that you hanged yourself in prison, ha-ha-ha, you’re such a weakling there, you couldn’t stand something [ __ ] there. And that’s why I was the first to say that this is a protest. Suicide in our Russia should now be considered as an exact protest, which is the only one left for a free person. That’s why he and I talked a lot about this, and he told me that if something happens to me, then you know that I will not tolerate it. I will not sit for 17 years to be raped there, to be beaten there, to be turned into an animal.

But I didn't expect such strength from him. And I don’t know, in fact, maybe it wasn’t suicide, or maybe it was he who was hanged. Nobody can tell me anything. Everyone is so afraid. Everything... this body, it works so much that you just become, well, so to speak, a zombie, and you just remain silent and can’t even say anything about how he died. My friends didn’t tell me anything, not even what kind of body they were given. Maybe there were traces, yes, some kind of, well, suffocation there, maybe, well, something should have remained or... well, that's what, I don't know. And so it’s easier for me to say that this, well, how could it be a myth, but judging by the way we talked to him and what he wrote to me, that this is precisely a protest and an unwillingness to live like an animal.

In France, you also staged the play “We Are No Longer...”. Tell us about it.

- “We are no longer” and an ellipsis. We no longer... The fact is that, in my opinion, in the twelfth year we made the play “I Am,” dedicated precisely to the rallies of the eleventh year and our disappointment after the rallies, that we said: winter came to Russia in the twelfth year, that’s it, we need to dress warmer, because now winter has come, when the protests were suppressed very cruelly, when this wave began, and we already realized that that’s it. But we called the play “I Am.”

Because for the first time I felt like I had my own voice. For the first time I felt that my relatives were fish who never spoke, never talked about politics, and considered politics a dirty business. But their hands directly pushed me to do it. We made it, naturally, in Komsomolsk. And it went like this... well, after each performance, we had about an hour or two hours of people actively talking about these topics, about everything about their family stories.

Almost everyone, everyone had terror. Or a grandfather who himself was repressed, or, for example, the same grandmother as one girl who shot these people. Well, that is, for everyone it’s just... this is the kind of nation we are. And so, as it were, “I am” was a performance, then, then many, many, many passed, and finally we... we are no more. That is, “I am” and “We are no more.” It’s like the completion of this statement about what is impossible, what is impossible to do something else without a change in mind. Because this is a very important topic.

We had a play that we did, “I Haven’t Started to Live Yet” in 2017. It was just the centenary of the revolution, and we traced this whole bloody path from Lenin to Putin. And this is a really big idea of ​​socialism, which later took over the entire globe. This is a very scary idea, because this is a religion where human life is worth nothing, and the main thing for people is to do something like this, to do, as it seems to them, to drive people into happiness. Why were these millions killed? So that we today have 85% of parents dreaming today that their children will become military men, officials and security guards.

“This is a story about our heritage, the psychology of the zone and the Gulag, which every Russian carries within himself,” you say, talking about the play “I Haven’t Started to Live Yet.” What is the psychology of the zone?

- Well, yes, you know, when you have an interview with Herman in the play, and he talks about when you are born in a zone, and your mother sits in a zone, and you were born in a zone, you understand exactly like an animal all these unwritten rules. What is this called? Concepts. You know them for sure. And this is in every Russian - that you cannot contradict your boss under any circumstances. This is the first one. That you can’t express your opinion openly, because... that’s the second thing. They'll cut you off right away. Be like everyone else. This, these are bodily practices when they put you together, when you are a pioneer, and you go, for example, in a march with everyone and sing a song. You can’t stand out with your voice, you can’t sing louder, you have to sing in chorus. All together.

That is, it is not for nothing that choral art is now very developed in Russia, because a personal voice is not needed. You shove it up your ass, right? And come on, in unison, we must all go together to where we need to go, where they tell you. These laws are unwritten, they are written in our bodies. I'm not just saying this. Scientists actually study this and say that a lot is passed on from the grandmother to the grandson, not from the mother, but to the grandson. My grandmother was a fish. Well, that is, she was silent. She... even her husband beat her, but she never protested. In the photograph she is sitting like this, smiling. My grandmother is from the nineties, born in 1900. Here. And this whole wordlessness, voicelessness, it is all passed on to the grandchildren, and then from the mother it is passed on to your children. Well, roughly speaking, that is, a lot is passed down from the grandmother. And that’s why it’s all in the bodies of Russians.

Just look at the Russians. These are basically very compressed bodies, compressed shoulders, because shoulders are a human feeling. If you breathe, if your arms are able to move far from your body, you are a free person. If your hands are always here, well, sort of, then here. And if the fingers are like that, yes, like those of our deputies... look at the deputies, yes, all of their fingers don’t work at all. There is no such softness in the fingers, in the limbs. Fingers do not continue in space, but for Russians they are immediately visible by these pinched cheekbones here, because the lower jaw is responsible for our emotions, because in a child it is always an open mouth, it is always some kind of happiness, knowledge of the world. He directly eats the world, absorbs it with his eyes.

And an adult then presses his jaw, because there is no point in showing us our emotions. And boys are always told: “You’re a boy, don’t cry,” “You’re a girl, you should be... don’t yell like that, show your voice.” And these are codes that since childhood... in kindergarten we all ate semolina porridge together. You haven’t eaten, you sit, you cry and, together with your tears, you finish your semolina porridge. And also note that semolina porridge is not rolled oats or oatmeal, right? Not the rolled oats that are there, but semolina, which you don’t have to chew so you don’t have teeth. And that's why people grow up without teeth.

Why am I, for example, thinking so much about these teeth now? It seems to me that every artist should have teeth, but instead he grows a tongue, as I say. That is, he licks all parts of the body with it, where something needs to be adjusted in order to make an exhibition, to find money for a performance, to find some kind of loophole. And teeth, teeth are no longer important. That's why I say that in almost all interviews I talk about the fact that I cannot forgive. I am very offended by the Russian party. Well, how can I say, I struggle with this, of course, because it interferes with my life. But when I think about it, I can understand, but I cannot forgive, as people who survived the concentration camp said, that we understand everything, but it is impossible to forgive.

When the Moscow crowd, directors, singers - they had everything. They took this money from the state there. They negotiated everything there, went to the Kremlin, and staged their performances there. And then in the interview they said: “No need for politics, no need, please, let’s do it without politics, let’s talk about the inner world of a person, about how we live, what we are. Come on, no need for politics." We've been trained to do this. Our teeth were knocked out a long time ago. And these artists, yes, this is part of society, the security alarm of society, which should always scream when something happens, when the military begins to cut off your head, yes, to open it like a tin can.

These people were saying that don’t get involved in politics, don’t, just shut up, let’s do it. They said this in all interviews and sang for Putin, for stability, when they could, they could have done something else. I lived in the Far East, it was a completely different Russia, but I don’t know how to live with it now. It seems to me that in our society even this civil war is not over yet. Well, I just left and that's it. I decided that I was leaving and leaving this Russia to these people who can do this. They can master budgets, they can not give a damn about the fact that people are being killed. It doesn't concern them. That is, they cut off part of their brain. Well, live like this. Let's see what happens to you. Well, you will be happy, I will be very happy, but I don’t want to be there anymore for this very reason.

You left with the whole theater of eight people. Do you have any fear for your team, that you will suddenly be left without money, without work in a foreign country?

- Well, of course, of course. I'm like this, mm, I'm like a train, yes, I think all the time about the people I transported here. Of course, there is, of course, fear, but it cannot be compared with the fear that I experienced there, it cannot be compared, because here you will still have some kind of small allowance. Well, something... you will find a job, you can easily wash floors, clean apartments, and so on. We weren't afraid of this work there.

I worked there as a cleaner. I worked as an entrance cleaner. She even wrote a diary, which... St. Petersburg theater magazine, when they published pieces of this diary, they were immediately closed. Well, that is, they were deprived of funding after my diary. [clears throat] Basically, I'm saying we're not afraid. We didn’t have money there either, and here, if there’s no money, we can do it too. We lived there for 37 years without government help. We lived without receiving a salary all these years, so... well, because it was, well, boring to live there. We... we liked to do it, and so we got used to it, it's our way of life.

What are you most afraid of?

“Well, I’m very afraid... I don’t know, maybe this is what you’re afraid of will happen.” I am very afraid of physical torture. This is the only thing I know, that I’ll rat everyone out right away and that I’d rather hang myself so as not to experience this. Because when we were talking with Eldar Dadin, because I interviewed him in 1917 for a play, and he talked about... he started to stutter, he started to stutter after prison, because he said: when they torture you, you just want, well, just throw yourself out the window, just so as not to feel this endless torture. And so, well, I think that no one can - no man, no woman, no one can stand it.

What are you dreaming about?

“I really want to learn to live like grass.” I want to learn to just grow, not look around, and maybe even, well, how to say, just grow, and do my best to ensure that this inner flower of mine blooms and does not wither. This is what I dream about.

And I also dream, well, that as I get older, I don’t lose this feeling of laughing at myself, yes, that I don’t take myself so seriously, because we are all bodies, we will all go back into the ground. And measuring pussies with each other there is just some kind of, well, I don’t know, it’s some kind of atavism. This is how a person has a tailbone, yes, it is such an atavism that this will not happen, will not happen. This won't happen soon.

But this, of course, I understand that this is only an idyll inside my head, because most of the world is still chaotic, the peoples are chaotic, wild and uneducated and very greedy. It seems to them that if they conquer some small territory, it will bring them happiness. Well, such confusion and ignorance.