- For almost a year you have been the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater. Compared to the “Practice” theater, it seems that you have radically changed the course of creative activity. How do you manage to combine innovative approaches and traditions at the Moscow Art Theater?

- In the Moscow Art Theater is not difficult. In any case, it is not difficult to set such tasks. Implementing, of course, is difficult. And in a year we did not manage to do everything. In general, we did not set ourselves the task, because the theater has an organic cycle. A theater cannot be built or reformatted in a year.

On the one hand, we very sincerely say that for us the traditions that were laid down by the founders of the theater Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko and continued by our great predecessors Khmelev, Moskvin, other actors, leaders and Tatyana Vasilyevna Doronina, who led the theater for thirty years, - it is holy.

But in the very nature of the Moscow Art Theater lies the gene for radical revolutionary reformatting, change. The Moscow Art Theater was not conceived as a continuation of some traditions, but as the organic space of breaking some kind of hardened system.

Stanislavsky never dismissed what was before him. It is enough to read how he talks about the Maly Theater and what he wrote about Shchepkin, for example. At the same time, he understood that by the time the Moscow Art Theater was created, there was a crisis in the Russian theater, which turned into a showcase, where there is a lot of falsehood, premiere and acting. All this is a demonstration of such qualities, either acting or literary. Here came the Moscow Art Theater.

We simply continue the work of Stanislavsky, who bequeathed to us: “As soon as you feel success, you feel that you have found and recorded an important artistic quality or even achievement, quit, leave this team, change the method.”

Stanislavsky, in the wake of the first success of the Moscow Art Theater, had already fled to the studio on Povarskaya, experimenting there with Meyerhold and Sulerzhitsky. Creating what, having returned to the Moscow Art Theater and the Moscow Art Theater, he realizes in “The Blue Bird” - a performance that we restored. This restoration is now one of the main, I am not afraid of the word, our achievements. Because we have been working with archives and sources for a very long time.

  • Scene from the play "Blue Bird"
  • © mxat-teatr.ru

We discovered that this is truly a treasure. 111 years ago, Stanislavsky made a play that has always been played - The Blue Bird, and we are the owners of this treasure. The only performance of Stanislavsky in the world repertoire.

But the big and serious question is: do we understand what we possess? Is the “Blue Bird”, which was played in the 1950-1960s and was in the Moscow Art Theater repertoire, the performance that Stanislavsky worked on? If it is monosyllabic to answer, my answer is no. Already in the 1950s, a lot of the basic qualities of the Blue Bird were violated. We tried to return to Stanislavsky. I don’t know how much we did, but I really hope that it works out. This is one of our main performances.

Our other premiere is connected with the Soviet period. Soviet literature. Valentin Rasputin is a great writer of the Soviet period, which, of course, can hardly be called Soviet. He is, first of all, Russian. The writer, who spoke with incredible pain about the disaster that befell the Russian village. About the change of way. Not just a generation, but a way of changing, the rules of life are changing, the connection with the earth is leaving, disappearing.

- Will it be clear to the modern viewer?

- This is a question of questions. Especially being in such surroundings. Perhaps the most important place of Russian urban studies (if I may say so) is this. The square, the incredible stone pillar, the Hermitage and beyond it the Neva with the Arrow with Rostral columns. As if the personification of the urban paradigm. And the theater, of course, is an urban phenomenon. They do not exist in rural areas, if this is not some kind of experimental special theater.

Can this urban urban phenomenon, very European, turn out to be connected with land, traditional values ​​and way of life, and with Orthodoxy. With that, without which Russia, I am convinced of this, will simply perish. She will not survive in this urban global digital competition. She will survive only when we understand that we are the continuers of a great tradition.

See how the Chinese economy is developing. On the one hand, it is an economy of innovation and advanced technological production. On the other hand, it is a culture that all the time speaks of the inviolability of Chinese history. The traditions of the Celestial Empire, Chinese culture has absorbed and continues. The same thing happens with India. In general, the same thing happens with the Americans and with the Anglo-Saxon culture, because they are connected.

If we want to survive as a country, culture, we must live by these rules and turn to our land. We must understand the secret of these incredible grandmothers who were born at the very beginning of the XX century. And they gave birth to our parents, our grandfathers.

- You set such a task for yourself - to attract attention ...

- Preserve the cultural tradition. Theater is an art that is transmitted through touch, especially Russian theater.

In the West, if you communicate with a professional, you can ask him a question, and to the question “Where did you study?” He will say: “At Yale, at Harvard or at the Sorbonne.” In Russia, when you ask: “Whose where did you study?”, The educational institution is called in the second place, and in the first - the answer: “Goncharov, Fomenko, Dodin, Karagodsky, Vasiliev. This is an indicator that the theater tradition is a living tradition, a tradition of transmission.

I must educate the next generation if I want to be successful and at the end of my life not to say that professional activity was meaningless.

- You are faced with misunderstanding, with confrontation. Are there any differences with the part of the troupe that were in the summer?

- This is a completely natural part of theatrical history. Here I do not want to hide anything, but believe me, the mood inside the Moscow Art Theater. Gorky is amazing. We are passionate about each other, inspired, we believe.

I don’t think it’s obvious that the peak of this conflict has passed. Someone will leave, someone will leave. It has always been that way. In 1920-1930 it was like that. And even the great Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko at some point stopped sitting at the same rehearsal table. And they retained great respect for each other until the end of their lives. Nevertheless, there were difficulties in the relationship.

I am not talking about such a natural process as the birth of other theaters and studios. Conflicts, disputes, grievances are the natural environment for our profession. Many hours would not be enough for us if we now remembered the most important of them. The main thing is to remain people, not to betray your business and to remain honest with yourself and with the ideals that you have.

- Tell us about your cooperation with Zakhar Prilepin, who is now your deputy and is responsible for the literary part.

- Zakhar Prilepin is the most important person in the theater. Without Zakhar, I don’t make any fuss.

I don’t communicate with him as often as, for example, with the theater director Tatyana Lvovna Yaroshevskaya. Zakhar should have time to retire and live, pee in his beautiful Kerzhensk village (where he works). He has some other activities, including those related to the social and political sphere. But the fact that he loves the Moscow Art Theater, feels, plunges into it is quite obvious.

Everything related to dramaturgy, literature, writers, poets, new texts - a huge number of proposals come from him. I redirect my main ideas to him. Just yesterday, we discussed (I will not name) the most important surname in the history of Russian rock music. We agreed to start doing something related to this great biography. To think about this rock musician, about his vibrant life.

As for poetry: Zakhar is now publishing a book with more than a thousand pages - Yesenin's biography for the series “Life of wonderful people.” This is absolutely awesome text. According to this book, we will be doing the play "Seven Women of Yesenin", which will be released next year. So Zakhar is the most important link in our team.

- Let me try to guess: is it not Boris Grebenshchikov?

“I will not tell you.”

- Do you have time for other sites? At what stage are your relationships with Practice?

- Unfortunately not. I was aware that almost all the projects, creative collaborations that I have, I had to wind down. I still have a few obligations to myself, my friends and movie-related producers. I try to fulfill them. Still, I hope that I can return to this space of discussion of film projects.

The first year at the Moscow Art Theater was very difficult, tense. We have about twenty prime ministers, besides the mentioned Yesenin. I am preparing a play based on the novel Laurel by Yevgeny Vodolazkin.

In addition to the Blue Bird, we are now restoring work on the Three Sisters by Nemirovich-Danchenko. This is the greatest performance in the Soviet history of the Moscow Art Theater (such a semi-official label, in the good sense of the word). Are you responsible? Nemirovich-Danchenko, 1940, Three Sisters. Chekhov’s first performance after, I don’t know, twenty, it seems, years. The Moscow Art Theater did not work with Chekhov in the Soviet period. In fact, Chekhov was secretly banned.

  • Scene from the play "Three Sisters"
  • © mxat-teatr.ru

In 1940, just before the war, and, alas, before his own death, Nemirovich made this performance in the scenery of Dmitriev of incredible beauty. These leaving soldiers in Chekhov's play symbolize a bygone era. 40-year-old, 50-year-old people are sitting in the hall ... These are people who remember tsarist Russia. This is the last generation that remembers, it is also leaving. How much sadness, symbolism, lyrics, rhyme in these texts and the performance.

I’m scared, honestly, but we cannot but do this, we cannot but pass it on to the next generation.

Doronina, who was restoring this performance, had an amazing cast. But these "sisters" are 45-50 years old. In the theater, gender-specific accuracy is also important. And, if Chekhov’s heroines are more than twenty, then we should see modern girls who live in the 21st century, use those gadgets that weren’t, eat different food and have a different idea of ​​their own accessibility, if we talk about women.

Therefore, we totally update casting, distribution. And young people will play in this performance. This is a huge responsibility, a huge challenge for them.

- At what stage is recovery?

- We are starting rehearsals. More truly, we continue rehearsals, I would say so.

Being engaged in the Blue Bird, we suspended rehearsals, but gave assignments to all actors. And now the production begins. In late March, we plan to play the premiere of Andrei Sergeyevich Konchalovsky.

The most important name for the history of the Moscow Art Theater is Gorky, “At the Bottom”. It’s not even that our theater bears the name of Gorky for 90 years, but that, probably, the Moscow Art Theater became the Moscow Art Theater exactly when Gorky appeared, “At the Bottom”. Not when Chekhov arose (yes, the "Seagull" Chekhov on our curtain).

Before Gorky, the Moscow Art Theater was the theater of a certain aesthetics of the subtle psychological theater, which is associated with the subtext. With Chekhov, in other words.

And the production of the play “At the Bottom” in 1902, of course, immediately brought the Moscow Art Theater to a new level. Moscow and Russia, and Russian culture, realized that we were dealing with a national theater. With the same status that was, at that time, only at the Imperial theaters: at the Bolshoi, Mariinsky, Maly, Alexandrinsky. And now there is also the Moscow Art Theater, which immediately entered this, so to speak, league. Just because Gorky was very different from Chekhov. Because the method that Stanislavsky used was very different from the method that he used in rehearsals of Chekhov texts. Because there was a lot of documentary in this work.

  • Eduard Boyakov
  • RIA News
  • © Nina Zotina

Stanislavsky is so natural in his aristocracy that working with Chekhov’s drama was something simple and natural for him.

Andrei Sergeevich Konchalovsky puts this play, this text. I just saw his absolutely outstanding, in my opinion, work about the life of Michelangelo - “Sin”. I hope he will do a great show. It will be held after the premiere of "Three Sisters." We have a completely wild pace, but we decided so.

- Despite the fact that you are reducing the work with other projects, this summer you taught at the Film Laboratory as part of the international festival in Zheleznovodsk in the place with Zakhar Prilepin again. How important and interesting is working with regions for you?

- Today it is the only regional project that we, with Zakhar Prilepin, Sergey Puskepalis, agreed not to abandon. Zakhar has a huge number of cases related to literature, not only with the theater.

Puskepalis has a new appointment: a few months ago he headed the Volkovsky Theater - the most important theater for Russian history.

But we decided to do the Hero and Time festival in the Caucasus, in Zheleznovodsk. Of course, for us it is also a recharge. This understanding that our projects in Crimea, in the Olympic village near Sochi, which we did, Petersburg (in the end, this is also one of the Russian regions) are as important as the capital's. To break away from Russia is probably the worst thing that can happen to a Russian artist.

- You have directorial experience. Now, perhaps, this is not at all before, but you have plans for the future, a desire to develop ...

- Yes, I will set, I will work as a director. You need to wait a bit, work in a different capacity - as a producer. For many years I have been trying to combine these competencies.

I know for sure that one feeds the other. It becomes more interesting for me to work as a producer, after the experience that I had with large performances where Alisa Khazanova and Veniamin Smekhov played, for example, and with my poetic works.

And vice versa, when I come to the rehearsal space, I see and feel that my production experience helps me understand another person, a person of a different specialty.

I am aware that the art director of the Moscow Art Theater is, of course, a producer. I have to think about others, I have to create opportunities for other directors. I have no contradiction inside.

I love other people's art as much as I like being in a narrow acting space, where we rehearse for four to five hours every evening. We must learn to avoid stupid oppositions such as what is more important - family or work. Or ask a child: “Who do you love more — mom or dad?” Both mom and dad must be loved. If you feel in yourself the right to work as a director, and I feel that right, then you should love and value this as well as your production business, which is incredibly important to me.

See the full version of the interview on the RTD website.