Nikolai Pesochinsky, professor at the Department of Russian Theater at the RGISI, talks about the Moguchy Theater and why the decision of the Ministry of Culture is a mistake on the pages of Fontanka.
If we say that the abolition of Russian culture is taking place, then here it is. Mighty, of course, this has been clear for more than 10 years, – one of the very, very leading Russian theater directors. The point is not only that every year his performances are nominated for the Golden Mask National Theater Award and received them almost five or six times, but the point is how he changed the Russian theater over the many years of his work. It is, of course, completely impossible to consider him young, of course, he is, in my opinion, about 50 years old, he has been working in the theater for about 25 or 30 years – in fact, since 1989, when he organized his Formal Theater troupe, and back then it was already overwhelmingly important. What is the importance?
When we teach a course on the history of the Russian theater, it already contains a lecture about the Mighty One. After a lecture about the Moscow Art Theatre, about Meyerhold, Efros, Yuri Lyubimov, and so on. That is, among the main themes of the history of the Russian theater. Therefore, to delete this chapter from the history of the Russian theater is a crime, from my point of view.
What is its historical significance already now, by this moment (although it is clear that he has another 20-30 years of creativity ahead of him, why should we lose him?): his significance is that he has an absolutely incredible power of theatrical imagination and all his performances – incredible entertainment, and entertainment is theatrical. He thinks as an actor, he thinks in terms of space, he thinks in terms of the composition of the spectacle, in terms of light, he thinks in terms of extraordinary methods of dramaturgy of the play. Therefore, his performances are always incredibly interesting, this is such a real theater of the first class. But entertainment is not always connected with deep meanings among directors. The Mighty has it connected. For him, entertainment has always been associated – this is in his mentality – with the serious content aspects of the theater.
He staged it in a completely new way even before the Bolshoi Theater: two times Andrei Bely’s novel “Petersburg” is a complex novel, psychological and philosophical. And he was the first to surprisingly stage, tragically, absurdists – for example, The Bald Singer. His theater was always not for the sake of impression, not for the sake of spectacle, but for the sake of discovering something in a person, in the world, in society – and all this was always very serious. Why is Andrei Bely’s “Petersburg” always mentioned – because it is a Russian historical performance, a performance about different generations, about different social ideas. There’s a terrorist attack in the middle of this performance. That is, the theater of the Mighty from the very beginning deals with serious topics. He was the first in the Russian theater to discover the art that we now call performative. That is, his amazing performances, which traveled all over the world, were also awarded and appreciated here, for example, Konstantin Treplev’s play “People, Lions, Eagles and Partridges” is such a fantasy with a combination of Chekhov’s motifs in one performative space, in one performance. The main atmospheric emotional motifs, visual images that are in Chekhov’s dramaturgy – it was an amazing work. In addition, he staged novels by Sasha Sokolov – for example, School for Fools and Between a Dog and a Wolf. “Between a Dog and a Wolf” is an especially important performance for the history of Russian theater, because it is, as it were, a combination of a new national mythology. This is also in the novel. It is like a tale that takes place inside the deep Russian consciousness, various motives – ethnic, and political, and psychological, and, as it were, archetypes of the Russian consciousness … This is a huge contribution to Russian culture before the appearance of the Mighty at the Bolshoi Drama Theater.
Then there was a stage, also incredibly important and also historical – his stage at the Alexandrinsky Theater, where he completely innovatively staged, for example, Gogol’s “Ivans” based on “How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich”, an amazing performance “Happiness” based on some motives of “The Blue Bird Maeterlinck, but it was a completely modern performance, while for children – and in this performance there were the most important philosophical motives – life and death, being and non-being, attempts to save loved ones, the formation of a child’s consciousness. Moreover, the performance was specifically for children, and it was opened to these children.
If we talk about what happened before the BDT, there was an amazing performance-circus “Krakatuk”, there were performances of operas, various – modern and classical. That is, by the time of the BDT, Andrey Moguchiy had already come to be simply the largest director, one of the directors who are changing our understanding of the possibilities of the theater. He expands them, these possibilities.
Well, the BDT period. I must say that this is a global trend in general, a very important one, when directors who seemed to be absolute innovators and avant-garde artists, say, in the 1980s, when they became the leaders of the main national theaters, the best national theaters in the world. And Andrey Mighty is included in this generation. He headed one of the main, emblematic theaters of the country and immediately began completely with fundamentally meaningful performances. For example, “What to do?” based on Chernyshevsky’s novel – a very meaningful performance, a discussion and a fresh posing on the material of Chernyshevsky’s novel of the question of a change in consciousness in Russia, about new people in Russia. Moreover, the performance, of course, was absolutely new both in form (there the audience could discuss this issue) and in the visual world. It is still going on in fact, and it is going very freshly, I recently watched, our students write works about him (by the way, about students: almost every year there are final qualifying works of theater critics about Mighty, and an incredible number of term papers; that is, on it we have been teaching theatrical thought for many years now – and theater critics, and directors, and artists).
Then there were performances of completely new plays at the Bolshoi Drama Theater, which had not previously been staged on large stages for a wide audience, with great success – for example, “Drunk”. And a completely new and very deep reading of various classics. Among this, of course, is a performance based on Ostrovsky’s play The Thunderstorm. This is precisely Ostrovsky, this is precisely The Thunderstorm and understanding the depths of this play through the philosophy of this national archetype – something that Apollon Grigoriev spoke about during Ostrovsky’s life – about the fact that Ostrovsky’s plays are, of course, not external life-likeness, but penetration into the secrets of the mysticism of the Russian soul. And this secret mysticism of the Russian soul, which even during the time of Ostrovsky was understood as the depth of his work, – it is around this that the incredibly poetic, complex and very comic, very theatrical – performance of the Mighty.
And why is he a truly outstanding director? As a theater historian, I can say this with confidence: because he has more than one language in all performances. You know, there are directors who are very effective, strong in their own way, who have one language of their own and they match any material to this language of theirs. This is not about the Mighty. Mighty is just very diverse. His play based on Gogol is made in the same artistic spirit, in the same language, with one internal dramaturgy, the play, let’s say, according to Ostrovsky, in another, the play based on Yuri Olesha is a variation on the theme of the novel “Three Fat Men”. In general, Olesha is a very open writer, his texts cannot be put primitively, word by word. And the Mighty really discovered some internal, always relevant philosophical topics – the teacher and the student, responsibility, playing in society, the amazing change in people. It is difficult to define it in words, because in fact these are performances very rich in their poetic meaning. But there are stories of the strong and the weak, there is the idea of oppression and resistance. There is an idea of love, fidelity. There is certainly something about human courage – this is the deep essence of what was inside Olesha’s novel, the Soviet classics.
He also managed to stage Shukshin at the Bolshoi Drama Theater, that is, in fact, what happened at the BDT – it was such a very worthy of a large national theater, one of the main theaters of the country, a very serious program, with the introduction of very important modern philosophical conceptual motifs . In theatrical language, it is not addressed to a standard-minded person, but to a creative-minded person and a young person. The great merit of Andrei Moguchiy – a merit already clear to Russian culture – lies in the fact that he attracts to the theater and around the Bolshoi Drama Theater, he created a whole generation, a community of spectators who watch the performance not as entertainment, not as an opportunity to see movie stars alive on stage, – it’s even vulgar to compare – but as some kind of spiritual artistic transition to another reality. That is, the theater is generally needed so that our inner doubts, searches, desires, so that they turn over on the stage and so that something important for us inside happens in a completely different form, some kind of spiritual transition, and, in fact, precisely for the sake of such meaningful theatre, for the sake of the fact that this is part of life, part of spiritual experience in a surprisingly captivating form – this is exactly what the BDT became.
His performances are all sold out; I must say that I could not always get to the performances of the Mighty at the Bolshoi Theater at any time, because this theater enjoyed unconditional success with the audience, with the smart audience. Moreover, if we talk about Mighty as an artistic director, which is also important: he was absolutely not authoritarian. We also see the performances of other directors in his theater, and not only the performances of directors of his generation and that worldview, when in the 21st century a truly modern theater in terms of language and meaning began (there are such, and he invited several world-class directors from different countries, who staged these performances in his theater), but also other performances that are focused on the fact that actors of different generations of the BDT would play. For example, Svetlana Kryuchkova, for example, Oleg Basilashvili. He himself staged with Alisa Freindlich the amazing play “Alice”, which one could not see for several years – not only because this is Alisa Freindlich at the center of this performance, but also simply because of some amazing, phenomenal inner mood of this performance. Because this is the inner world of the actress, playing Alice Through the Looking Glass. And at the same time, a philosophical reflection on the path of a person, made in a unique form, that is, there is no other performance with any megastar. Because there are some complicated memories, the inner world, the acting experience of Alisa Freindlich – they appear in a completely bizarre form. It is no coincidence that this performance has been a huge success with the audience for many years.
Mighty is a good leader, he is an excellent leader of the BDT, very democratic, because there were performances of different types, none of them was below the level that a performance should have been in such a theater as the BDT. Of the completely different first-class directors, I can also name, for example, Veniamin Filshtinsky, who staged the play “Baptized with the Crosses” based on the book by Eduard Kochergin – also the archetypes of the BDT, in a different style, in a psychological style. In general, if we look at the poster of the Mighty BDT, we will see here, apparently, about 15-20 performances that are constantly on. That is, this is a complete repertoire, it’s not just three performances, but the rest is ballast, as happens in very large theaters, and these are 20 performances of the highest level. Therefore, Mighty certainly has a theater management program, he is an outstanding leader of a large national theater, one of the main theaters of the country.
I must say that there are different eras for different theaters – for the Moscow Art Theater, and for the Alexandrinsky Theater, and for the Mayakovsky Theater – for any major theater in the country: better – worse. And Mighty managed to maintain this very high artistic semantic level and demanded by the viewer during all the years of his leadership. This is a very even level, not falling anywhere, without dips and, I would say, without errors.
What else characterizes Mighty as a truly outstanding artistic director: he thinks about the future. He not only educates a new generation of directors – now he is studying the second set of his students in the director’s workshop inside the Bolshoi Theater, but the performances of these young guys are in the theater. And this is tomorrow, this is the future of the theater. The future is not only BDT, but this is the future of our Russian drama theater, these guys. That is, these are individuals, very accurately selected, surprisingly complexly educated, according to completely original methods that the Mighty One owns, and the fact that he accepts them at some stage of their formation already as young experimental masters and builds a whole program from their performances – one of these programs is called “Kursovaya” – that is, these are several graduation performances or performances by independent directors that are on the stage of the BDT.
I can also say that characterizes Mighty as a major and correct acting director from the point of view of the development of the theater – the fact that it was at first forced, that the theater opened a second stage in the Kamennoostrovsky Theater during the repair of the main stage – but later it was possible to extract from this semantic perspective. Kamennoostrovsky, the second stage, has its own program, its own aesthetics, the main stage has its own aesthetics, and the small one has its own. That is, this large national theater has three different theaters inside, which have their own directions and their own guidelines. And there is always a spectator who, at the same time, frantically goes to the Kamennoostrovsky theater, which is not so geographically accessible. That is, in a sense, Moguchy repeats what Tovstonogov used to do in the BDT, when in the BDT, before Tovstonogov’s arrival in the mid-1950s, it was believed that the audience did not go to the theater at all, because it was very inconvenient to get there from – for transport, and until a tram line is built there, to Lomonosov Square, the viewer will not go there. As soon as Tovstonogov came there, we understand, right? It was impossible to get to these performances, and the tram line no longer needed to be carried out. The same thing is happening with the BDT now, which you can’t get into, and you can’t get into Kamennoostrovsky, and so on.
He preserved all the generations of the troupe. He takes Alisa Freindlich, Georgy Shtil in his performances, but in general the troupe is in very good condition, and many actors are not some new ones … he shuts up the entire tradition of the theatre, he is not interested in it, the actors who are former, deserved ones vegetate, and at the same time he puts on performances for some small troupe brought in from outside – there is nothing of this in the BDT. If we look at who is involved in the performances, these are people of different generations who are beautifully manifesting themselves in a new way, he saved the troupe. Those whom he brings in are also very interesting actors, and in this respect everything is in order with the troupe.
But I can also say about the preservation of traditions: it seems that Moguchy is a completely different director than Tovstonogov. It is clear that we give lectures about both Tovstonogov and Mighty. But at the same time, with great respect for what Moguchy does, I can say that he treats the memory of Tovstonogov, his ideas, the past of the BDT with incredible attention – there is a whole program inside that is carried out by theater employees, for example, Irina Shimbarevich , who worked as an assistant for Tovstonogov for many years, and just whole excursions, memory programs, conferences. The memory of Tovstonogov is absolutely alive in the theatre, and he always refers to the experience the theater has with Tovstonogov and those performances that were before. That is, he does not reject this tradition, but, on the contrary, preserves it.
Finally, what is characteristic of modern theater, significant, the theater of the 21st century, is that it is not only a show of performances. Around the performances there are very interesting forms of communication with the audience and education of the audience. Discussions, discussions, projects with the opportunity to get behind the scenes, communicate with the director and with the artists – this is the life of the theater, which is not limited to what you came, saw – everything, and nothing connects this theater with the audience. This theater connects with the audience just a lot. We can say that this is a theatrical center for thought, discussion with a wide audience who comes there. The theater is very interactive, very open, very communicative. Therefore, the era of the Mighty in the BDT, of course, must continue.
I can personally perceive the non-renewal of the contract with Andrei Moguchiy only as a technical error of the Ministry of Culture, which it will correct in a couple of days.