2021 marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding director Sergei Vladimirovich Obraztsov.
In 1931 he created a puppet theater and for more than sixty years he was at the helm of this unique "ship".
Obraztsov's performances are still in the theater's repertoire and are sold out.
And the cult "Unusual Concert" has been played more than ten thousand times and entered the Guinness Book of Records.
For the anniversary of Obraztsov, the theater has composed a real performance-holiday dedicated to Sergei Vladimirovich.
The production "I am Sergei Obraztsov" is an explanation of the theater in love to its creator: flying, joyful, but with a light taste, nagging sadness.
That is why the feeling that is generated by what is happening on the stage is akin to a desperate anticipation of a New Year's miracle in an adult - a miracle that is expected in spite of everything.
And here, in the theater, it will happen.
Theater historian Boris Goldovsky and director Yekaterina Obraztsova wrote a play based on the memoirs of Sergei Vladimirovich's contemporaries and his own books and diaries.
The great puppeteer witnessed revolutions, several wars, upheavals, transformations, crimes that befell our country and people in the last century.
And how many discoveries have taken place over the entire XX century!
“It's amazing how many things were born with me,” Obraztsov wrote.
Therefore, the genre of the production is precisely and voluminously defined by the authors as “a portrait against the background of an era”.
It is fundamentally important that this is not a biography of Obraztsov, but rather an entry into the puppeteer's territory with its atmosphere, climate, people, events.
One of the key elements of the play's scenography is the “stairs of memory” (“On the stairs of memory” - this is the name of the famous book of the founder of the theater), through which the events of Obraztsov's life are rapidly sweeping: from carefree childhood to the legendary meeting with the audience in the Ostankino concert studio "In 1981.
© Alexander Ivanishin
Here appears an image of a wooden house in Sokolniki (the play uses original, absolutely living drawings by Obraztsov) with a dovecote near a fire tower.
It takes the viewer to the beginning of the last century.
A flock of pigeons soars noisily over the stage, and the policeman drives away the wandering musician: "Beggars and puppeteers are not allowed in the courtyards!"
Happy childhood.
These are the mother's hands, soft and wet with tears, swinging little Seryozha; this is the main “event for life” - the purchase of the first glove doll in a Japanese store.
Childhood, as a solid foundation for the fulfillment of a life-long dream, a century long.
This is what the whole performance is filled with - light, tenderness, a presentiment of a miracle.
Life itself.
Despite the presence of tragic "steps of memory" along which the protagonist walks (repression, loss of friends, early death of his beloved wife).
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Charlie Chaplin, Lydia Ruslanova, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Vertinsky, Fedor Chaliapin, Solomon Mikhoels, Lyubov Orlova - everyone will find a place in the cache of the past.
The puppets in the play are from Alexei Alimov, a tall master with his recognizable and unique puppet handwriting, who has worked as the chief artist in a puppet theater for twenty years (Alimov died in 2017).
"Pope Lion Boniface" - so he was often called in narrow circles.
Affectionately, with gratitude for the creation of the hero of the famous animated film.
The play includes glove puppets, reed puppets, and puppet puppets.
Obraztsov himself will tell the audience what their differences and distinctive features are.
We will see that behind each doll there is a talented creation by puppeteers of an authentic, flexible image: whether it be the formidable couplets of Mephistopheles performed by Chaliapin or the playful manner of the legendary director Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Now - about the most important and indisputable success of this production.
In the puppet theater there is a concept of "living plan": it is the play of dramatic actors on a par with puppets.
Evgeny Tsyganov is an actor of polyphonic acting talent who recently stunned theatrical Moscow with the role of the expressive opera director Evgeny Eduardovich in the play “Mozart Don Juan.
Dress Rehearsal "in the Fomenko Workshop.
In one case, Tsyganov got a collective image, rather even a phenomenon, in the second - a specific person known to the whole world, a great puppeteer, a man-orchestra.
Comparisons end with the profession of the heroes of these two performances.
© Alexander Ivanishin
As Obraztsov himself said - "The role will work if you invent the whole person through and through."
Evgeny Tsyganov exists in the image of Sergei Obraztsov, maintaining a complex balance between “tracing” his distant relative (Evgenia’s grandmother was Sergei Vladimirovich’s cousin), without the slightest pinching imitating his intonations, demeanor, and the feeling of absolute flight in the role: free, life-like honest.
The main thing that Tsyganov succeeds in is to capture the energy of his hero through the generations, while living his absolutely personal history.
The actor easily and boldly interacts with the puppets and even is a puppeteer himself: with the simple glove puppet Bi-ba-bo, and the legendary cane puppet from the "Unusual Concert", with which he performs a "psychopathological" dance (aka tango).
And this is a truly grandiose work by Evgeny Tsyganov, in which, by the way, another facet of his talent is revealed - the comic one.
The whole performance is filled with a special sense of humor of Sergei Obraztsov, the owner of the Order of the Smile.
We boldly, albeit virtually, present this award to Evgeny Tsyganov, which, as you know, is awarded to people who bring joy to children.
In this case - not only for children, but also for children who have children.