About becoming an actress
Trying to look confident in herself, Volchek appeared in the eyes of the artistic director and chief director of the Lesya Ukrainka Kiev Drama Theater, People's Artist of the USSR - from only titles was dry in her mouth. Mikhail Fedorovich later recalled this visit to the Moscow Hotel: “A girl comes in - full, with a nose of potatoes. Speaks in common phrases. He answers politely, smiles to the place ... But I look at her and think: whom do you, my dear, remind me of? I understood and even gasped to myself ...
I have long dreamed of putting “Woe from Wit” fresh, unusual. I turn to my wife, who is sitting nearby, - and I’m not saying, but screaming with delight:
- This is Lisa! - We are used to seeing her with a fidgety French subretka, and Lisa is a real Russian girl, snub-nosed, strong. That's how she is.
Romanov offered her another role - the main one, in the play “The moral of Mrs. Dulskaya”, and said that he would wait for an answer ...
When Volchek, together with Efremov, silently following the course of the visit, entered Okhotny Ryad, Efremov said, as he cut off:
- You won’t go to Kiev!
- Yes, but Oleg ...
- You won’t go. If you need it here, we will begin our performance soon.
And Volchek, for whom Romanov’s proposal - two roles at once! - after months of despair, it seemed the limit of what was wanted ... did not argue. She believed Efremov ...
The unemployed actress preferred a comfortable life in a popular theater - complete uncertainty, unknown difficulties and hardships, the unpredictability of her fate in a new theater enterprise.
***
When Galina first read the play, she was horrified: the rozovsky character seemed alien to her, having no common ground. There was nothing to cling to in order to at least somehow try on the role of “on yourself”. Impudent, impudent, unceremonious, envious, vulgar, vicious, vindictive, ignorant. But something else was more embarrassing - disbelief in one's strengths. Seen: if I can’t understand the motives of Nyurka’s behavior, I will refuse the performance. And she did it. A few days later they announced that the refusal was not accepted.
“Take your time,” said Efremov. “You yourself do not yet know your possibilities.”
Efremov saw the main conflict of the "Eternally Alive" - the clash of two worldviews: people professing high citizenship, with those who live for themselves.
And Volchek embarked on a long and difficult “development” of Nyurka-bread-slicer - the role that brought her first success on the stage, and then the deafening fame in the film “Cranes are Flying”, which was based on this play by Rozov.
“What could I do if only Nyurka would go to me,” Volchek recalled. - Even secretly drank a quarter behind the screens before her exit, in order to feel cheeky and aggressive. I still don’t understand what Efremov knew about me, why he believed that something would work out on the day of the dress rehearsal ...
The same story repeated when I was offered in another performance the role of a young, fat girl from a construction site. Margarita Mikaelian, who staged the play, could not agree with such a distribution. Efremov insisted. They argued, even pledged. They wrote on pieces of paper - one: “it will play and will not fail”, the other: “it will not play and will fail,” and hid them behind the battery in the rehearsal room.
About the appearance of "Contemporary"
Contemporaries were more persistent. The difficulties of the first years, when the question of the existence of the collective was resolved by each new statement, the personal readiness of everyone to give themselves to their beloved business (and the theater always remained the business), and finally, friendship, which provoked the desire never to leave for a day, ensured this vitality.
Having become a theater, they did not abandon the principles that had developed over seven years: the collective solution of significant issues, voting when choosing plays for staging, enrolling a new actor in a troupe, etc. Nevertheless, the theater, as if remaining a home, also became a place of service. The situation of the first years was a memory.
“These were wonderful years,” Volchek says. - We all worked like that then: as artists, we performed the duties of accountants, cashiers and stage workers. I often performed the role of a cashier. Few people knew our Studio of Young Actors. Naturally, the tickets had to be distributed somehow. Therefore, we were allowed to sit in turn at a theater cashier - for example, I settled in the theater box office on October 25 (now Nikolskaya Street. - Ed.). The rules of the game were determined immediately: after the cashier offers his tickets and the person, having chosen nothing, turns to leave, we had the right to ask:
- Would you like to go to the Studio of Young Actors?
Usually a person shuddered and said:
- Where is it? And what is it?
Here we included all our charm and, if we managed to persuade him, were absolutely happy.
About the appointment as a director
The order, which soon appeared on the bulletin board of the theater, plunged her into confusion: a small piece of paper signed by Efremov abruptly changed her fate - transferred the actress to the rank of director. It looked like violence, injustice, lawlessness. In tears, she came to the main thing:
- For what? What have I done? I'm an actress! ..
And, despite the assurances of Oleg Nikolaevich that nothing would change in her life, that she would play, as before, Volchek understood that the decisive step had been taken.
And, as always happens in her life: joy followed on the heels of trouble, the conversation, perceived as tragic, was adjacent to the comic.
On the same day when the conversation took place in Efremov’s office, Volchek met Vera Petrovna Maretskaya.
- Galya, what did I hear ?! Have you become a director ?! Of course, I congratulate you, but this is terrible: now you will walk with a wide masculine step with a worn briefcase under your armpit and in a disgusting, ugly figure blue suit with the square shoulders of a weightlifter!
She laughed and demanded that Volchek swear that such a transformation would never happen. Through laughter, Galina vowed (and this humorous promise observes strictly) that she will never have a briefcase or a suit with shoulders, and for every new production there will be a new dress and such that will envy all the women who came to the premiere!
On the transfer to the position of head of Sovremennik
In September 1970, Efremov moved to the Moscow Art Theater. It is difficult to write about this event, which hit the troupe of the theater like a bolt from the blue, about this period when the theater was left without the main director, without a repertoire, without a group of leading actors. For Volchek, everything connected with the departure of her teacher’s home sounds so sharp as if it happened yesterday. She does not speak about anything far from unambiguous what happened in that disturbing September.
An orphaned theater, which entered the year of its fifteenth anniversary. The function of the head of “Sovremennik” the general meeting of the troupe decided to transfer to a college of five people, each of which was assigned a sector. For example, I. Kvasha was responsible for the repertoire, O. Tabakov was responsible for the production and administration; all artistic practice (directing, distribution of roles, control of ongoing performances) was assigned to Volchek. But, as the famous parable says, if instead of one woman about to become a mother, nine of her friends agree to monthly share her burden, the child will still not appear as a result.
The failure of the board to replace the chief director soon became apparent. Volchek was persuaded to stand at the head of the theater for a long time. And just as at one time she painfully resisted the transition from actresses to directors, so now one thought about a new appointment was terrifying. Foreboding of inevitable difficulties, the scale of which was impossible to predict, did not leave her. And only the hopelessness of the situation in which the theater found itself forced her to agree.