Vakhtangov's pedagogical and directing methods. Educational theater of the B. Shchukin Theater Institute

Important discoveries

It will probably seem strange, but what can you do, it just so happened that before entering the theater school named after B.V. Shchukin, I had never been to the Vakhtangov Theater, I didn’t even know its leading actors - M.F. Astangov, N.O Gritsenko, N. S. Plotnikova, Ts. L. Mansurova, the chief director of the theater R. N. Simonov, those luminaries of the stage who would later become my teachers in work, colleagues. And of course, I had no idea about the Vakhtangov school. It was for me a completely different, completely unfamiliar, closed continent, a kind of planet on lock. I began to get acquainted with her only after entering college and getting the opportunity to attend theater performances, and then participating in them myself, in crowd scenes, and then getting independent roles. Of course, not only the Theater named after Evg attended performances. Vakhtangov, watched all the performances of all the capital's theaters and those touring in Moscow. In this way, I tried to make up for my ignorance of the theater, there was a process of accumulating impressions, knowledge about theatrical art, knowledge of the specifics, originality of various theaters and, of course, first of all, Vakhtangovsky.

The time of my apprenticeship coincided with a new revival in theatrical art. What a joy it was for everyone to appear at the Vl. Mayakovsky's "Hamlet" staged by N.P. Okhlopkov! What freshness, festivity, theatricality in the best sense of the word this performance exuded! What a revival in theatrical life was caused by the birth of the new theater-studio “Sovremennik”! This was the time of V. Rozov and A. Salynsky’s entry into drama, and the flowering of A. Arbuzov’s creativity, which largely determined the theater’s repertoire for the following decades.

In this general update process theatrical arts There was also a Theater named after Evg. Vakhtangov. The culmination of this rise will be the resumption of the famous “Princess Turandot” on its stage, but for now the process of accumulating strength to accomplish this take-off continued.

Vakhtangov School - what is it?.. What is an actor of the Vakhtangov Theater? What kind of tribe is this and where did it come from?

The origins of this phenomenon must be sought, of course, in its founders, the forefathers who laid down a new aesthetics, a new direction in theatrical art, and those who continued it in new performances and new generations of actors who came to the theater in different years, in the school that was opened even before the theater was created. And although it later gained legal independence and received a separate building at its disposal, it remained a single organism, fed by a single circulatory system, in which training was carried out according to a single methodology. And how could it be otherwise, when all the teachers of the school are actors of the Vakhtangov Theater or graduates of the same theater school. Students are still taught not only in the classrooms of the school, but also within the walls of the theater. Future actors see how theater artists rehearse and perform, watch the birth of performances, absorb the atmosphere of the theater, breathe its air mixed with sweat, dust, smells of props, backstage, and the auditorium.

Each course with which Cecilia Lvovna worked was met with surprise, delight and reverence for the inseparable teacher, actress, and amazingly beautiful woman in one person. Surprise awaited us from the first lesson, from the very first meeting with her. Imagine first-year students excitedly expecting to see a strict, sedate, knowledgeable and experienced teacher, and not just a teacher, but a famous actress who knows her worth, spoiled by fame and attention. But they saw something completely different, one that did not fit into the concept of “teacher”... Entered the audience, no, fluttered into the audience, as if weightless, young, sparkling from within, charming, legendary Turandot. Nothing from our idea of ​​the concept of “teacher”. The audience immediately seemed to be filled with an atmosphere of amazing relaxedness, openness and kindness, conducive to trust and emancipation. She told us about Vakhtangov, how the theater was created, the first performances, the actors. We listened to her spellbound, were enchanted by her charm, and fell in love. A student of Vakhtangov, she seemed to pass on to us first-hand his lessons, his aesthetics, his idea of ​​theater. During her lessons, we didn’t notice the time, everyone’s common desire was: they wouldn’t end longer. Such lessons stick with us for the rest of our lives, because they are perceived not only by the mind, but also by the heart.

The theater school was a real academy for us not only in mastering special disciplines: acting, stage writing, plastic arts classes, etc., but also general education, general cultural education, such as the history of fine arts, music, classic literature, and they were also taught by wonderful teachers, first-class specialists in their fields of knowledge.

The biography of a school is built not only on teachers, but also on students, who after some time also become teachers. This is how theater traditions are passed on, as if in a chain, from teacher to student, and from there on and on...

We also studied with senior students... Those who happened to study in the junior years of the school when Rolan Bykov graduated from it remember that for them even then he was almost a people’s artist. They remember him famous pranks, “cabbage parties”, in which they considered it a pleasure to participate. And those who did not have a chance to participate became their spectators with pleasure.

Well, meanwhile, life was going on as usual at the theater school. Both during studies and then in the theater, the name of Evgeniy Bagrationovich Vakhtangov was constantly heard: in classes, and at rehearsals, and in conversations with teachers, and in disputes among students. But what kind of Vakhtangov school this was still had to be figured out, realized, felt with all one’s being. Of course, constant communication, meetings at performances and in classrooms with actors of the Vakhtangov school and, of course, teachers who tried to convey to us the foundations of this school gave a lot in this regard. But the real, serious development of it began only with concrete work on performances. And such performances for me at school were: “The Cricket on the Stove” based on the work of Charles Dickens, “Walking through the Torment” by A. Tolstoy, “Ruy Blaz” and “Marion Delorme” by V. Hugo, well, and already in the theater, of course same, “Princess Turandot” by C. Gozzi.

We worked on an excerpt from the play “Cricket on the Stove” together with Tatyana Samoilova under the guidance of teacher Zoya Konstantinovna Bazhanova, the wife of a wonderful Soviet poet Pavel Grigorievich Antokolsky. In this excerpt I prepared the role of Tackleton - the same role that E.B. Vakhtangov himself once played. From this work, in fact, I began to seriously get acquainted with Vakhtangov’s school and with him himself, with this legendary personality, with his life, work, with his understanding of theater. Zoya Konstantinovna told us about that long-ago performance, about how the first performers played in it, and then specifically, while working on our roles, she showed us what was Vakhtangov and what had nothing to do with it. She told and showed how you can play seriously, psychologically justifying the actions of the heroes, and how, being in the image, play at the same time your attitude towards the created image, as if looking at it from the outside, approving or condemning its actions, being surprised at the behavior of your hero or knowing in advance how he will act in a given situation, and only watching how this happens.

It was a long, but exciting, interesting student work that gave us a lot. Zoya Konstantinovna did not rush us, she patiently waited until we ourselves thoroughly understood everything, understood everything, felt it in our gut. And when work on the excerpt was already nearing completion, one day I invited Pavel Grigorievich Antokolsky to a rehearsal. Then I saw him for the first time - this legendary man, the “father” of poets, as the poets themselves called him in their midst, and poets of the most different generations, different poetic levels, different creative orientations.

He entered the rehearsal hall of the school, no, he burst into it, flew in like a tornado or typhoon flies in. It was Vesuvius, spewing out avalanches of emotions, energy, movement, thoughts, ideas. Himself of a small stature, he literally filled the entire space wherever he found himself. After watching the excerpt, before we had time to finish, he flew up to me, kissed me, saying: “Wonderful, wonderful, you’re playing Tackleton wrong, amazingly wrong. I remember how Evgeniy Bagrationovich played him in the Second Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. He played correctly, but you play incorrectly, Vasya.”

Zoya Konstantinovna, seeing my confusion, tried to stop him: “Come on, Pasha, he’s still a student.” “Oh yes,” he realized, “I completely forgot. Well, forgive me, I completely forgot. I thought he was already an actor. Sorry".

And there was such openness, openness, and kindness in this man that it was simply impossible not to succumb to his charm. After I came to my senses a little after showing the excerpt and such an unusual assessment of my work, Pavel Grigorievich also made several precise comments on our performance. And this was an approach to work not as educational, student work, but at the highest level - and the view on it was that of a far from ordinary person, of an unusually talented person. Our work was already measured by the standards of high art, and this, naturally, set us up for complete seriousness in our approach to it, for maximum dedication.

The work in the third year of college on an excerpt from the play “Ruy Blaz” under the guidance of teacher and director A. I. Remizova also gave a lot in understanding the Vakhtangov school. Here I was entrusted for the first time with a comedic role - Don Cesar de Bazan.

The passage began, one might say, extravagantly and passed as if in one breath: my hero, hiding from his pursuers, jumped over the wall, climbed through a pipe and, out of breath, furious, mischievous, flew onto the stage in a cloak, with a sword, a ring in his ear, stopped to take a breath, and quickly, like a machine-gun burst, blurted out his first words:

Well, events. I'm shocked by them Like a wet dog with water that he shakes off. I barely got to Madrid, when suddenly... ...My path is blocked by a high wall, Having jumped over it in one moment, like a bird, I see a house... I decided to take refuge there...

I apparently managed to convey the feeling of a chase, a long, gigantic race after two weeks of pursuit, because when I finally pulled myself together, laughter rang through the hall. The reaction of the audience to the appearance of Don Cesar de Bazan, as if on wings, lifted me up and carried me further. I could no longer keep up with myself, with my words, I could not stop. For me, the race was still going on, although the danger had already passed, but the inertia of the race still remained.

How important it is for an actor to have the first reaction of the audience, the first support, the first approval of what you have done. Then it becomes easier and easier. But the first approval of the audience gives the actor the consciousness that you are doing everything right, continue to create. And how hard it can be when you don’t hear, don’t feel this audience response, approval. How difficult it is then to continue to act - some actors begin to curry favor with the audience, trying by any means to evoke this reaction from the audience, others - wilt, begin to feel that they are not succeeding, and this is reflected in the entire performance further, pressing with a heavy burden . For me, everything happened in the most favorable way. The role coincided perfectly with my acting abilities, with youth, mischief, and dashing. I unaccountably liked everything that my hero did, and I played him with great pleasure, which, obviously, was felt and conveyed to the audience. There was still little skill there, but there was a temperament, and it overwhelmed me and carried me further. Caught up in this wave, I recklessly rushed forward, not knowing how to slow down, but I had to slow down. The scene needed pauses and accents, but I was carried by temperament, inertia - this, in fact, was what the whole scene was based on. It was a complete patter. They shouted to me from the audience: “P-p-r-r!.. Stop!..” But it was already impossible to stop. At the end there was a burst of applause. But it was applause more for surprise at what he saw than for skill and professionalism. He was clearly missing. And if I had stopped at this gallop, I might not have been able to cope with the passage in this race, I would not have had enough professionalism. And then he dashed dashingly in front of the audience, even causing delight from his fellow students. After the show, they came up to me and said that they didn’t understand almost a single word, but it was interesting. They did not have time to really consider what happened on the stage, they were only surprised by what happened. The work was credited to me.

The teachers were also interested in me, apparently, so far only, so to speak, for the material, with good processing of which something could work out in the future. After this passage, I myself realized that the most high art- not only have a temperament, but also be able to control it, manage it wisely, be able to slow down in time, restrain oneself in order to more accurately convey the word, thought, and state of the hero. I had the first in abundance, but the second was clearly not enough, I still had to get it, and a lot of it.

They played this performance with mischief and joy. We received real pleasure from improvisation, which we were allowed to use in this work almost without restrictions. At the very first show of our work in the educational theater during the performance, I suddenly felt, my intuition suggested that one of the episodes could be played differently, and, as it seemed, better than what was envisaged during the rehearsal process. Fantasy guided me during the performance along a slightly different path. Before deciding to improvise, I somehow paused for a moment, froze in indecision, and then, deciding, “come what may,” I followed the path suggested by my inner voice. The audience liked this scene, and the teachers also accepted it. After the performance, Remizova just said: “I messed everything up, but I messed it up well, well done.”

This was my discovery, made while still a student, which was that it is never too late to look for an original solution, you should not be afraid of improvisation, you should not be afraid of breaking the canons, if, of course, your actions are justified, justified, logical. Moreover, improvisation is in the spirit of the Vakhtangov school.

At the same performance, “Ruy Blas” made another important discovery for himself - naturalism on stage is in no way acceptable. I made it after I tried to eat chicken during a performance. In order to make it natural and more appetizing to do this, I didn’t eat all day before the performance, preparing for the “chicken” scene. But then the long-awaited scene came, and what horror I felt when, having bitten off a piece of this ill-fated chicken, I could not swallow it - saliva filled my mouth, and I literally choked on it. This lesson about the extent of stage conventions was remembered for the rest of my life.

Another confirmation of the unacceptability of naturalism in art was a later incident in my practice during the filming of the film “Walking into the Storm” based on D. Granin, where I played Oleg Tulin. Actor Alexander Belyavsky and I had to play a scene of intoxication, which we couldn’t do for a long time. Then the director of the film, Sergei Mikaelyan, advised, apparently out of despair, to take a quarter and really drink it. That's what we did. After the break, we came to the set, we were carried away by the heat of the lighting equipment, and we played such a game with Sasha Belyavsky that the director, looking at us, commanded: “Stop!” Filming was stopped. The next day, already completely sober, we played this scene more believably and acceptable than the day before, and it was included in the film.

This case once again confirms another idea expressed earlier - the drunker a person is on stage or in front of a movie camera, the more sober he should actually be; the more fantastic the scene, the more calculated everything should be in it; the more emotional the part of the role, the stricter The actor must control himself, otherwise this state of the actor can lead him into a pathology from which it will be difficult to get out. And finally, the more your hero’s tears of grief and despair flow, the sweeter it should be for you, the actor, that you manage to convey the state of your hero so well, organically, without pressure. But if you don’t stop your sobs in time, you can ruin the entire stage and even ruin the performance. I think it’s stupid when they sometimes say that one of the actors got so into the role that he didn’t remember himself. If it comes to this, I think it is no longer art, but pathology. The more strongly you convey the feelings of your hero, the more sober your mind must be, controlling your actions, otherwise, having lost composure, self-control, he may portray something completely different from what is required by the performance, by the role.

“If we really experienced the feelings of our heroes,” admitted Nikolai Konstantinovich Cherkasov, “then, naturally, after one of the first performances we would not be able to bypass the psychiatric hospital. While playing the role of Ivan the Terrible in the first episode of the film of the same name, I experienced the serious illness and death of my faithful friend, Queen Anastasia, ten or twelve times (not counting rehearsals). And while playing the same role in the theater, in “The Great Sovereign,” I killed my beloved son from my marriage with Anastasia, Tsarevich Ivan, about three hundred times (also not counting rehearsals) in a fit of anger. It’s not difficult to imagine what would happen to me if I experienced these scenes with genuine feelings, in the full force of real human emotions!.. The whole point is that, being in a joyful state of the creative process, we, due to a natural inclination towards the artistic profession “, to the best of our talent and professional skill, we creatively experience these feelings, creating in the viewer the illusion of the true authenticity of our experiences.”

These words were written by a man who went through a great school of art and learned many of its secrets.

Yes, an actor must hear himself and see everything around him, he seems to split into two, leads the role and at the same time constantly controls himself: “Am I doing everything right? Am I getting carried away too much? Am I playing in the right direction, in the given key?” Becoming a character, he does not cease to be himself, because he puts his emotions, his temperament, his understanding of what he is playing into the image he creates.

Somewhat ahead of events, I would like to note that in more than forty years of acting biography, I had the opportunity to play only three comedic roles. I had to wait ten years for the next comedy role, and twenty-four years for the third, and so far the last. Exactly so many years passed from that play “Cinderella” to “Vintage Vaudevilles”, where I again met with a comedic role.

The first seven years of working in the theater I was little involved in the theater repertoire and, with a few exceptions, in one-dimensional roles, mainly romantic ones - princes, generals, knights. I played Arthur Gray in " Scarlet Sails", Fortinbras in Hamlet, Laura's Guest, and then Don Guan in The Stone Guest, and finally Prince Calaf in Princess Turandot. And I wanted to try myself in other roles. The directors used mainly the external qualities of the actors, not particularly taking into account my desire to break out of this circle of “blue” heroes. At this time, S. V. Dzhimbinova, under the direction of R. N. Simonov, began staging children's performance“Cinderella” by E. Schwartz, in which I was again offered to play... the Prince. At this point I couldn’t stand it, I went up to Ruben Nikolaevich and begged him to give me some other role, explaining that I could no longer play princes, that I was tired of them. “Which one, Vasya?” - he asked me in bewilderment. “Well, even though the Marquise of Pas de Troyes is a poignant, even grotesque role, let me act like a bully,” I suddenly said to myself and was surprised at my courage. Ruben Nikolaevich somehow stopped in surprise, thought about it, and after a long pause began to laugh, so much so that he could not stop for a long time. Finally, having laughed it off, he just as unexpectedly suddenly said seriously: “What?...” And there was a “What?” more agreement than rejection of my proposal. Although Ruben Nikolaevich, of course, understood better than I myself that it was difficult to imagine a more unsuitable role, a greater discrepancy between my data and what was required in this role. After the roles of young romantic heroes and suddenly - an ancient, decrepit old man!..

Of course, at first nothing worked for me. It was necessary to create a real, truthful, recognizable image of the old man. But no matter how Svetlana Borisovna Dzhimbinova and I fought, no matter what we tried, nothing worked. And Ruben Nikolaevich, seeing how I was struggling with my role to no avail, did not say anything, but just chuckled, saying, come on, come on, you asked for it, so now please work hard. I understood that he did not take me seriously in this role and treated what I did with humor. But really, apart from the dance that they helped me do (the Marquis of Pas de Troyes, in his role, is a master of ballet and always teaches everyone how to dance), nothing worked. There were high funny jumps in this dance, all kinds of ballet steps, to which Ruben Nikolaevich once remarked: “Vasya, you should go to the Bolshoi Theater to dance.”

The time was already approaching to rehearse on stage, but my role was not yet ready at all. And then something happened that Ruben Nikolaevich did not often do in his work, especially recently. He stopped the rehearsal and, turning to me, said: “Vasya, go into the hall, sit down.” Everyone immediately stopped in anticipation and anticipation of something unusual and interesting. It became clear that now Ruben Nikolaevich will show how he would play this role. And when he showed, these were moments of true miracle on stage.

He looked slyly in my direction, smiled and went backstage. Everyone began to flock to the hall: both those who were involved in the performance and those who were free from it, but were in the theater at that time, workers from the props workshops, auxiliary and technical staff came. Everyone was wondering what was going to happen. And my nerves began to shake, I knew that after he played a piece of the role, he would certainly say: “Repeat!” He always did this. It’s easy to say: “Repeat!”, but how to do it after that?.. It was almost always hopeless.

Simonov called two students to him, and a few minutes later I heard addressed to me: “Vasya, look!..” Some light dance music started playing, and he appeared... He was led from both sides, or rather, carried in the arms of two The student was carried, one might say, in parts, often stopping so as not to lose anything. The Marquis of Pas de Troyes was wearing a cloak, a long white beard hung from his chin, he was holding a stick in his hand, glasses were barely holding on to the very tip of his nose, and over the glasses, cunning, narrowed eyes looked at everyone.

The audience immediately burst into laughter, which did not stop until the end of the show. Those accompanying him brought him to the middle of the stage and wanted to leave him alone, but they could not take a step away from him - the Marquis’s leg would buckle at the knee, then his whole body would move somewhere to the side, then his hand would twitch. He sank now to the right, now to the left, tilted now in one direction, now in the other, clinging to the young people, so that they had to support him every now and then, until, finally, he froze in the optimal position of complete balance, and then only... they quietly began to move away from him, so that, God forbid, the movement of air would cause him to sway and fall again.

There was Homeric laughter in the hall all this time. Ruben Nikolaevich improvised on the fly, so much so that it was impossible to take your eyes off. I was more and more terrified of waiting for his signature: “Repeat!” I understood that I would never repeat this, and I was already sitting all wet from cold sweat, awaiting my fate.

Then Ruben Nikolaevich began showing various dance steps to the courtiers, teaching them how to dance. He showed, and he, squinting his eyes in my direction, said: “Vasya, but you will jump like you, not me, for real.”

From the hopelessness of the situation, from anger, from despair, I rushed onto the stage, as they probably rush to the embrasure, went backstage, threw on the same robe in which Ruben Nikolaevich had just appeared, glued on the beard, put on glasses, took a stick and Accompanied by the same students, he went on stage as if to Golgotha, as if to death. I knew that nothing good awaited me, because there was nothing but horror and Ukrainian stubbornness in me then. But I firmly knew that I had to go out, no matter what the cost. With some seventh feeling I understood that now, here, at this very moment, not only the question of whether or not I would play this role of a cantankerous old man from a fairy tale was being decided, but in many ways my acting fate was being decided, my human qualities- I will endure or I will retreat, I will give up.

I tried to do exactly what Ruben Nikolaevich did, to say the same as he did, but there was deathly silence in the hall. It seemed to me that this was going on forever, that I was about to break down, I couldn’t stand it, I was waiting for at least someone, at least one person in the hall to laugh. But throughout the entire scene there was dead silence and nothing, not a single sound broke it. Having barely finished the passage, I immediately, without a pause, turned to Ruben Nikolaevich with a request to try again. To which he replied: “That’s right, Vasya, go ahead, try again.” I repeated this scene seven times in a row, without a break, without rest, no longer paying attention to how the audience reacted to my performance. I began to work out the role down to the smallest detail, down to the individual strokes, because I understood that they made up the character and the role as a whole. And when, somewhere at the end of the rehearsal, I heard laughter in the hall, this was for me the greatest reward for the courage that I decided to take when I went on stage after Simonov, for perseverance, for work, for the test that, in fact, I prepared for myself , volunteering to play this, as it turned out, very difficult role.

Then the role of the Marquis of Pas de Troyes became one of my favorite roles. In it I could improvise, found more and more new touches to the portrait, literally bathed in this role, experienced real joy from how the audience received it, how they reacted to everything I did in it, experienced pleasure from the immediate audience feedback that happens in comedy performance, in a comedic role.

The performance was staged in the same improvisational manner inherent in the Vakhtangov school of acting, bringing all the performers and, I hope, the audience a lot of joy. Well, for me it was another serious lesson in understanding it and a test of strength.

Having played these two roles, I made a conclusion for myself: what a joy it is to play in a comedy, to bring joy to the audience, to give them a good, cheerful mood and to enjoy it myself. When acting in a comedy, the actor immediately receives audience feedback. If some part of the role is played successfully or the line is delivered accurately, in a comedic manner, you immediately hear the response of the audience, you immediately see the result of your work. It’s an extraordinary, joyful feeling to hear the reaction of the audience, to hear laughter, excitement, every rustle of the audience. That’s why I look with particular envy at actors who constantly perform in comedic roles.

Any educational work, any role learned in a play or excerpt invariably gives something in the process of mastering the profession to both a young actor and one already wise with experience, and even more so to a student for whom everything is new, everything is useful in a cognitive sense, each step of which is associated with discoveries. In this regard, working at the school with such teachers as Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova, Vladimir Ivanovich Moskvin, the son of the famous Moscow Art Theater artist Ivan Mikhailovich Moskvin, and French teacher Ada Vladimirovna Briskindova on an excerpt from the play “Marion Delorme” by V. Hugo became extremely useful for me in this regard. in French.

Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova, the director of our course, is the pride of the Vakhtangov Theater, an actress unlike anyone else, bright, original. But for us she was also an indispensable teacher. In addition to many other advantages, she possessed another invaluable quality - to win over students, relieve tension, stiffness, constriction, and create a studio-like atmosphere in her course. We did not have to be opened like a tin can in order to extract the contents. We ourselves strove for her with all our doubts, discoveries, successes and failures and always found her understanding, reassurance, or, on the contrary, received such a charge of energy, self-confidence, which could be enough to solve more than one difficult task. And how important it is, especially in a profession like ours, to be able to discover the artist in a person, his abilities or talent, this is what nature has given to someone. In a creative university, learning is not just a process of cognition, but a process of identifying talent and improving it. Here, piece goods are made and work is carried out with each student individually. It is no coincidence that there are many more teachers per student at a creative university than at any other. Individual approach is necessary for every student here, because the future actor must not just answer the teacher’s question about something: if he knows, he will answer; if he doesn’t know, he will not receive a pass. In learning to be an actor, everything is more difficult. At the theater school, he not only answers the lesson, but reveals his feelings, responds emotionally to the playing conditions proposed by the teacher, and, one might say, exposes his nerve endings. Here, in addition to the common task for all universities - teaching, accumulating knowledge, educating a person, there is a revelation of the artist, his, and only his, creative individuality, the manner of execution characteristic only of him. And how important it is to raise an original actor, unlike anyone else, who has his own creative style, carrying his own theme in art. But this can only be achieved in personal contact between the teacher and the student, in an atmosphere of trust and emancipation; in such an environment, the student’s talent is more easily revealed or its absence is revealed. How this or that student will reveal himself, what percentage of return will be from him, what demon or genius resides in him - you cannot say right away, you cannot predict, and for quite a long time it is also not always possible to do this. That is why I so value the quality of a teacher - the ability to create an atmosphere of real studio spirit, which is most conducive to identifying and shaping a creative personality.

In fairness, it must be said that other teachers at the school skillfully supported this creative atmosphere in their groups. The rector of the school himself, a wonderful director and teacher, one of the oldest Vakhtangov students, Boris Evgenievich Zakhava, carefully protected her. All the students loved him, and he knew everyone not only by last name, but by sight, by name, by the roles they played in excerpts and performances. Some teachers at the school often took us to their homes and taught us there. This was done (which we only later began to guess about) sometimes deliberately, in order to feed some of us. During my student days, and even at that time, especially in low-income families, there was no income.

And how important it was for me - after the studio environment of the ZIL Palace of Culture, to fall into precisely such hands, into the same environment of complete emancipation, openness, goodwill, and tolerance. I especially focus on these pedagogical qualities, because in the absence of them (and this, unfortunately, happens quite often in life), students instantly become constrained and so much so that you can no longer force their true self out of them, no force can awaken their temperament. But Cecilia Lvovna did it simply brilliantly. She knew how to open and awaken a student’s temperament, so much so that we ourselves were sometimes surprised at ourselves, surprised at where things came from. At the same time, she did not allow mentoring and, if she saw that after the first success someone thought too much of himself, she immediately and most decisively put such a student in his place. She treated herself as an equal with all the students, but at the same time she did not stoop to our level, but pulled us to hers. Well, her height was simply dizzying. The only thing, perhaps, that she had difficulty with was, strange as it may seem, for an actor of the Vakhtangov school, the external form of the performance. The passages and performances she worked on were always impeccably structured according to the internal logic of the development of events, psychological accuracy, precision, and the delivery of the characters. When it was necessary to psychologically justify the role, to find the inner state of the hero - here she simply had no equal, but she could not always find general drawing roles, the necessary mise-en-scène and the overall form of the performance. It was in this connection that I remembered working on an excerpt from the play Marion Delorme.

Rehearsals were already coming to an end. It seemed that everything in it had already been done, built along the lines of the relationship between the characters, everything was psychologically verified, but something was missing. There was no impression of completeness or readiness for the work. No matter how much we struggled, we could not put it all into some kind of bright artistic form of the performance, we could not find the mise-en-scène for the central scene - the meeting of Didier and Marion. Cecilia Lvovna was nervous. The actors seemed to be doing everything right, internally ready to pour out everything that they had accumulated during the rehearsal process, but how to do this so that it was strong, bright, imaginative?

Knowing that she had such a weakness in form, Cecilia Lvovna invited Vladimir Ivanovich Moskvin to one of the rehearsals.

He slowly entered the rehearsal room, closed the door behind him, slowly sank down to the floor, and remained sitting in this position - this was his favorite position. He said: “Begin,” and so motionless, silently, without expressing any emotions, he sat until the end of the passage. And when we finished, he just as slowly stood up, took the box that was lying to the side and placed it in the center of the stage. Then he sat me on it with my back to the audience, spread my legs and arms wide apart, resting my palms on my knees. From the hall, one could thus see the girl, frozen in extreme tension. male figure, bound by some unknown force.

And the meaning of the scene was this... Didier was sentenced to death. Before his execution, Marion comes to him. But in order to go to him and then offer him release, as was intended, she had to submit to humiliation, to sacrifice her honor. Didier immediately understood how she managed to get to him, turns away from her and in this state, without moving, without turning his face to her, spends almost the entire scene. Marion, feeling guilty before him, walks around him, looking for mercy, leniency.

Vladimir Ivanovich, trying to arouse hatred, intransigence towards the unfaithful, to kindle passion and temperament in me, shouted at this time: “Destroy, destroy her!.. She cheated on you! Pour, pour, think about how to kill her now. Hate, hate her, the unfaithful one, don’t let her near you and keep her at a distance until the end of the scene!”

And I “destroyed” her with words, as if I were slapping her across the face with heavy slaps:

To get to this point is truly terrifying! After all, this is a shame never seen before... O woman! Well, tell me, what was your fault? The one who loved you like the most tender brother?..

Moskvin did not like to fragment scenes; he always used broad, powerful strokes, digging, as they say, to the very depths. This was our introduction to real theater, to the expression of strong human passions, great thought.

The mise-en-scène established by Vladimir Ivanovich was maintained until Didier finally forgave his beloved, until he realized that she did it for him and for his sake and that she had no other choice. Because of him, she made a terrible humiliation, such a sacrifice, in order to save him. Having realized all this and internally overcome himself, Didier slowly begins to “thaw”. The numbness gives way to sobbing. He gets up, takes Marion by the head, runs his palm over her face, kneels down in front, and his “thawing” monologue begins:

Come to me!.. Now I’ll ask you, Who could be indifferent at such a cruel hour Do not say goodbye to her, unhappy, tender, brave, Who gave herself over to him so completely?.. I was mean to you. Lord, I punish you, Sent me to you... Oh, how wrong I was... You heavenly angel, soiled by the earth, Marie, my wife, my beloved, In the name of the Lord, to whom I go, I forgive you... Darling, I’m waiting: And you will forgive me!

At the end of the excerpt, a joyful Cecilia Lvovna ran up to Vladimir Ivanovich, hugged and kissed him with the words: “I knew, I felt that just a little bit was missing here - and they would fly.” In principle, that’s how it was, it was just a little bit missing, but how much does that “a little bit” mean in art? This is what mise-en-scène is in a performance, what is the combination of form and content in it.

The passage was played in French, but no translation was required, everything was clear from its structure, from the psychological accuracy in the behavior of the characters. The excerpt was recognized as the best on the course, was shown several times on the stages of the WTO, Central House of Arts, on television and was a success everywhere.

At the screening of this excerpt, I first met Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov, a student of Yevgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov and the director of the theater named after him. After watching the excerpt, he literally jumped on stage, congratulated us, suggested two or three more strokes to me, and demanded that we immediately play as he said. This work largely contributed to the fact that I was later invited to the troupe of the Vakhtangov Theater.

So far I have only named, but have not said anything about the third teacher who helped make this excerpt - Ada Vladimirovna Briskindova. Her role at the school was not limited to teaching French. A person of great culture, high taste, she carried a great educational mission, instilled in us high taste, introduced us to the French classics, was the initiator of staging excerpts in French and did all this with great interest, love, and selflessly. All the students were drawn to her, looked for work together and, as a rule, then, after graduating from college, they maintained and continue to maintain the kindest relationships for a long time - creative and friendly.

It so happened that it was as if I was specially passed from hand to hand by very talented, unselfish, kind people. Not having the opportunity to get a good education at home (my father graduated from three grades of school, my mother is completely illiterate), I received all this in communication with very interesting people, who more than made up for my gaps in education. Preparing me for the acting profession, they formed me spiritually, instilled good taste and culture.

Another favorable aspect in my upbringing was that almost all my friends were older than me in age, and I, as a junior, constantly learned something from them. They knew more than me, had life experience and always, like true friends, willingly shared everything that they themselves knew and could do.

One of these friends, my good genius there was Yuri Vasilyevich Katin-Yartsev, also a former Zilovite, then an actor at the Drama Theater on Malaya Bronnaya and a teacher at the Shchukin School.

Throughout my studies and later, while working in the theater, he followed me in the process of mastering the profession, helped me for a long time after graduating from college. And then, during my student days, he suggested which passages were best to take and what best suited my data, helped me work on them, corrected them, encouraged me in difficult moments, when something didn’t work out for a long time. And not only in relation to me alone. It’s rare to meet a person in the theater whom everyone loves. Yuri Vasilyevich was such a rare exception. He helped many theater school students become real actors.

Yuri Vasilyevich was the director in my diploma work on the role of Roshchin in A. Tolstoy’s “Walking Through Torment”. Especially useful work This role for me was not so much in a professional sense, but in a civic sense. Roshchin is a Russian man, lost and tragically experiencing the loss of his homeland. I can’t judge how it was played, but I still remember with great excitement Roshchin’s monologue in the train car: “Ah, I didn’t lose my apartment in St. Petersburg, I didn’t lose my lawyer’s career... I lost a big person in myself, but I don’t want to be small...”

There was a wonderful moment in the play - the conversation about the Motherland. Every time while performing, long before this monologue, I was overcome by some special excitement, some incredible wave rolled over me, I took my breath away, I physically felt how the blood was draining from my face. I can still hear the silence of the auditorium ringing in my ears at that moment. It was silence of high tension - how desirable, pleasant, sweet it is for the actor, dearer and sweeter than the warmest applause.

While working on the second graduation performance - “The Eccentric” by N. Hikmet - he again met with teacher and director A. I. Remizova. It was after playing the role of Akhmet in it that she invited Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov to look at me as a candidate for the troupe of the famous Vakhtangov Theater. And it was after this role that I was accepted into it. Nazim Hikmet himself watched our student play three times, and although the same play was staged in one of the professional theaters in Moscow, he liked our play more, and he himself suggested showing it on television. Like an expensive relic, I keep his autograph on the book: “To the Best Akhmet.” For a fourth-year student, such recognition of the author of the play was great pride.

The transition of a student from college to the theater is extremely difficult and often occurs very painfully, when, like a beginner swimming, he is forced to learn to practically apply theoretical knowledge on the go: if you can swim out, that means you can ride a horse; if you can’t, all hope is in the rescue service. Young actors, when moving to the theater, often lose for some time that Anthean land that they constantly felt under them in school, and find themselves at a crossroads, in confusion, setting foot on a new continent for them, where no one insures them, but on the contrary , testing, expectantly, looking appraisingly, trying to understand what the newcomer is like, what he can do. And not everyone, finding themselves in such a position as a test subject, is able to withstand and not get lost. Therefore, I think that it is wrong to stamp “unsuitable” on a young actor after the first failure. After all, he had been taught something for four years, yes, and he showed some promise, and therefore was not talented. Otherwise, he simply would not have made it to the graduation performance. Undoubtedly, at this, perhaps the most crucial moment in the life of an actor, the attitude towards him in the theater should be more careful. After all, how many promising students have come and come to theaters, but only a few become great actors. And where are the others?.. Many others, of those who shone in school, then do not remain at the same height and fade away. Most often, they fade from this lack of faith, first in them, and then in themselves as a result of the first failures, as a result of the absence of this usual insurance for themselves, the words of the teacher encouraging and instilling confidence in the student. Having failed to pass his very first exam on the professional stage, a young actor often finds himself doomed to a long period of downtime. And without playing for a long time, he begins to degrade, to lose what he had, especially when he is young, who has not yet gained sufficient heights in his chosen profession and has not had time to consolidate in practice what he has so far learned only theoretically. He develops stage fright - this is how creative and human destinies are often broken. These are economic losses (after all, he was trained for several years, considerable funds were spent on the education of his talent), and mental trauma - at what cost can they be measured?

At the beginning of my journey, it seemed to me that I could play any role, of any complexity, perform in any role. Such arrogance is especially characteristic of students when entering the professional stage, but even the first roles in the theater often pull the rug out from under their feet, depriving them of confidence, or rather, self-confidence, and this is natural.

Our profession is not as simple and monosyllabic as it may seem at first. It is important not to get confused at this crucial moment in the life of a young actor and to realize that self-confidence really should have no place in our business; doubts can, should and will visit us all our lives. From my own experience and that of my colleagues, I can say: the further we go, the more often they will pursue us. And you hardly need to be afraid of this, because doubts are a stimulus in work, it is constant self-control: “am I doing the right thing, have I done everything to make the role really happen?” With each new role you become convinced that it becomes not easier, but more and more difficult to approach it. It would seem that everything should be the other way around, after all, over time, experience is added, knowledge about the profession accumulates, you learn its intricacies and, naturally, you expect that all this will help you in your work, that confidence should appear, but for some reason it is not there, is not coming.

Of course, the acquired experience and knowledge do not pass without a trace, everything that you have accumulated, consolidated, learned, of course, helps you move on, this is your invaluable capital, which an actor simply cannot do without, otherwise it is death for him. But moving forward is only possible when this movement is not along a well-trodden path, but into something new, opening and paving new paths, and with each new role everything begins anew. Otherwise, there will be no discoveries, there will be no search process, it will no longer be creativity, and art should always be a discovery - in itself, in a role, in life.

Over time, doubts intensify because every year, with every new role, you begin to approach it with greater responsibility, and you understand more and more that in our profession, past experience, past merits will not last long, you will not survive. Each time you have to take the same exam again as in your first role, in your first performance. And if your first works were treated with a certain degree of condescension, allowances were made for your youth, lack of professionalism, lack of experience, then over time such discounts are no longer made, but, on the contrary, the demandingness and harshness of assessments increases from role to role.

I will never forget how Mikhail Fedorovich Astangov, working on his next role, was very worried and nervous. From the outside it was strange to see how a famous actor, who seemed to know all the secrets of the profession, could not cope with the excitement before the premiere. Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova, seeing this, approached him and tried to calm him down: “Misha, why are you so nervous? How long can you worry? And he answered her: “Damned profession, every time and all over again.”

And indeed, in creativity, probably, the same fate always awaits everyone - to start all over again, from scratch - in real creativity, with a real attitude to the matter. It is in science that each new generation of scientists starts from what is already known and discovered, in order to go further and make new discoveries. It's not like that in art. In it, if you don’t start all over again, don’t rediscover the character of the hero each time, don’t look for new colors, use cliches developed in the past, it will no longer be art, but an ordinary craft, marking time.

To confirm what has been said, I will refer to one more example - my collaboration with Alisa Freindlich on the film “Anna and the Commander”. The filming of the film was interesting, working with director Evgeniy Khrinyuk was easy, there was complete mutual understanding, and so did Alice and I. And that’s probably why her confession suddenly sounded so unexpectedly: “What is this being done? Every year it gets harder and harder to start a role. Previously, Varvara (daughter) helped me. I only remembered her, and she gave me an emotional mood, gave me an emotional wave, and this worked flawlessly in a number of roles, dramatic, comedic, funny, tragic. Just the memory of her gave a surge of emotional charge. But over time, this was no longer enough for me. Previously, when preparing for some dramatic part of the role, I remembered some misfortune in the house (actors often use this technique to create the necessary mood for themselves), and this helped for some time. Now this doesn't work anymore. We need new and new stimuli.” Then I seriously thought about how a variety of circumstances affect actors! Moreover, in different time, in different life situations in different ways. In one case, for example, music helps me a lot, in another - poetry or some kind of memory experienced earlier becomes a necessary dope in my work - a lot of components are included in the creative process, and you never know in advance what will help you today, what will happen today will become your irritant while working on the role. This happens differently at every performance. That is why they say (and this is true) that there are no two completely identical performances, each time they are different, although the dramatic basis for them is the same, although the text remains unchanged. Yes, in the creation of each new role the actor each time starts work from scratch, because the character is different each time, therefore, he has to be “sculpted” anew, but when creating it, the actor cannot help but use everything he accumulated in his previous life, the spiritual burden that lay on his heart before he began to create an artistic image. At the same time, I note that the actor often relies in his work not only on his own experience, not only on his own biography, but also on the biography of his generation, his time.

Here are two examples. While working on one of my first roles in the theater, the young political instructor Baklanov in B. Rymar’s play “Eternal Glory,” I surprisingly quickly saw my hero down to the smallest detail - his appearance, the expression of his eyes, his gait, his gestures. And one incident helped - annoying and at the same time happy for me. I was in a hurry to get to the theater, I was late, which made me nervous, I was afraid of not being on time for the performance. At the exit from the subway, overtaking others, in a hurry, he unexpectedly ran into a boy of about fourteen. I rushed to the side, and he went the same way, I went the other way, and he almost simultaneously repeated my movements, and we collided. I shot him down. The boy fell, and I, by inertia, took a few steps forward, then stopped, went back, helped him up, and then I saw his pale face, elongated thin neck, frightened, wide open eyes, not quite understanding what had happened. Having picked up the boy, I slowly walked away and no longer ran, I walked quietly to the theater. It somehow became indifferent to me that I would be late; everything seemed petty and vain before what had happened. This look of his, surprised, frightened, not understanding why he was shot down, like a reproach of conscience, like a thorn, remained in my memory and remained before my eyes for a long time, as if all this had just happened. This continued until Baklanov’s role in “Eternal Glory” appeared. As soon as the playwright stated it in the play, I immediately visualized it in my mind. He turned out to be surprisingly similar to the same boy I shot down, who mentally haunted me. The analogy somehow arose by itself: Baklanov was also, in fact, just a boy, not those who know life, unprepared for it, especially for what presented itself to him at the front. This role became for me a kind of atonement of conscience before the unexpected victim of my haste.

Later, while analyzing how such a coincidence could have happened, I mentally imagined how this same boy, finding himself in similar circumstances, would behave, how he would grow up, mature, how he would gradually become what he becomes at the end of the performance, dying , my political instructor Baklanov. Then I realized that they would have a lot in common.

This is how memories are sometimes transformed: what you once experienced in reality suddenly pops up later while working on a role. So you don’t know in advance what our emotional memory will give us in our work, what associations will come to the rescue, how they will later lead to artistic generalizations, how they will result in the image being created.

And how was the character of the hussar Roland later found in the vaudeville “The Hussar Girl” by F. Koni?.. And again, a decisive role was played by an incident from life, which was then provided by memory. Indeed: “A memory silently develops its long scroll in front of me...” - just like in Pushkin, a memory develops its long scroll in order to suddenly reveal some incident at the right moment, which will then play an unexpected role for you in the creation of the stage image.

This happened in the North, outside Petrozavodsk, where a small group of people close to me went hunting. Among us there was a military man who wanted to introduce us to his old good friend - a former military pilot. By the time we met, he was no longer flying, but he had an amazing military bearing, he was down-trodden, dashing, somewhat rude, and one could feel his iron character. He was such a bright, strong, memorable personality. His story contained Russian daring, mischief, recklessness and courage. With what inspiration and excitement he spoke about air battles, about how he had to ram the enemy! It was etched into my memory, it seemed, firmly.

And then, also a few years later, when I began to rehearse the role of a dashing hussar, my pilot suddenly appeared before me in all his reality and almost completely entered into Roland - a man of another era, but surprisingly close in character, temperament, and originality. My hero’s story about his military exploits was structured in much the same way as he told about his air battles former pilot. From him my hussar received the same daring, mischief, and courage. The same gestures, almost unchanged, passed on to Roland, the same manner of speaking and showing. I don’t know how much I would have had to look for the character of my hero and whether I would have found it, whether my hussar would have become the way he turned out in the play, if I had not met such a bright, colorful, memorable war veteran on my life’s path? Most likely not. Undoubtedly, it would have been different, most likely less expressive, than it actually happened. I love this role and play it with pleasure, because it is based on an exact character, because this is no longer a diagram of a person, not his model, but the person himself, taken from life, whom I see, feel and become during the performance. his role.

Here it is, the will of chance, here it is, His Majesty, a fact of life, melted into a fact of art.

"Princess Turandot"

Yes, training sessions, diploma and pre-diploma performances gave a lot in mastering the future profession and the school founded by E. B. Vakhtangov. But still main school was ahead. I was lucky again, I mastered it, continuing to study with renowned masters - Vakhtangov’s students and associates, and learning while working on performances. And in this sense, the biggest, most useful and invaluable lesson I learned was in the work on the revival of our famous play “Princess Turandot” by C. Gozzi. True, there were roles in other performances before him. At the same time, each role for a novice actor was the main one and required complete commitment to it, internal dedication, since nothing else could compensate for the missing knowledge and experience in the theater. But undoubtedly, the rehearsals and then the performances of “Princess Turandot” gave me the most in this regard, those rare, sweet moments that you remember as a great gift of fate and which do not happen very often in the life of an actor.

“Princess Turandot” is our banner, our youth, our song, similar to the one that sounded and continues to sound to this day in the Moscow Art Theater “The Blue Bird” by M. Maeterlinck. And every generation of actors (in both theaters) dreams of singing it. It was only later that I realized what a blessing it was to be part of the group preparing this performance. It’s fortunate that the time has come to resume it, that Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov saw me among those whom he considered necessary to “pass” through “Turandot.”

Yes, Kalaf is not my first role in the theater, but it was the role that became the most expensive, the most necessary and irreplaceable for anything in mastering the Vakhtangov school. It was this role that truly made me a Vakhtangovite. This performance becomes a real test of the creative capabilities of our theater actors. On it, young actors for the first time seriously and deeply learn what Vakhtangov’s lessons and his school are.

True, the theater could not decide for a long time to revive “Princess Turandot”. The responsibility of those who dared to touch what was a legend for everyone, what was sacred, was too high. And the attitude towards this tempting and frightening idea was different in the theater. Not everyone believed in the success of the business; they were afraid that they would certainly compare it with that first performance and this comparison would not be in our favor. But the temptation was too great to try to restore what was told as a legend, to restore the supreme creation of Yevgeny Bagrationovich in all its reality, clarity, and not just from books and memories of happy eyewitnesses of that miracle of the twenties.

They were afraid that the actors would no longer be able to play as well as Ts. L. Mansurova, Yu. A. Zavadsky, B. V. Shchukin, R. N. Simonov, B. E. Zakhava did in their time. The scales wavered for a long time between “should” and “shouldn’t.” Finally they decided that it was “necessary” after all. They reasoned like this: “How can it be, the Vakhtangov Theater - and without its best performance?” In addition, an essential point in the positive solution to this issue was the concern for educating new generations of actors of this school. After all, “Princess Turandot” is a performance on which the first generations of actors were brought up. From 1921 to 1940, almost all theater actors attended this school. All the more necessary for us, who had not seen this performance.

Rehearsals began in 1962, and the premiere took almost a year.

We started with a careful study of Vakhtangov’s performance, reconstructing it from memory, from literary materials, from sketches, artists’ drawings, and photographs. We tried to go step by step through the entire path of its creation by the director. They learned to easily pronounce the text, ease of movement, the combination of seriousness and irony allowed in this performance, and found a measure of reality and convention in it. When starting to work on the play, we immediately asked ourselves the question: “How would Vakhtangov himself look at this play today and invite the actors to play in it?” Obviously, there would be no literal repetition of what was created more than forty years ago. It is no coincidence that Evgeniy Bagrationovich himself, already during the rehearsals of the play, asked the actors if they were tired of playing in the same picture and if they could change anything in it. That’s why we least of all looked at that performance as a memorial one, in which nothing can be changed, nothing can be touched.

In theater practice there has not been and cannot be an exact repetition of one performance. Any of them, even the most carefully adjusted by the director in terms of timing and mise-en-scène, will be at least a little different each time, but still different. Moreover, “Princess Turandot”, the very form of which not only allows, but presupposes, provides for something new every time, even new lines and reprises. So, if other performances are carried out with the exact text of the play invariably observed, then here the text can change depending on the game that the masks are playing, or rather, depending on the time, the situation, the place of action, dictating to them the utterance of this or that text. Thus, the interlude text was specially written for the new production, adjustments were made to the design of the performance and, of course, to the actors’ performance of their roles. When resuming the performance, based on its general concept, “from the general stage design developed by Vakhtangov, the main, now classic mise-en-scenes and, naturally, the preservation of the canonical plot, it was decided not to copy the first performance with all scrupulousness, but to introduce new, consonant ones within the framework of its general decision.” time motifs, especially regarding masks. In creating the images, they were now based not on Mansurova, but on Yulia Borisova, not on Zavadsky, who played the role of Kalaf, but on Lanovoy. What was organic and natural for Yuri Aleksandrovich Zavadsky and Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova could simply be alien to us. Therefore, despite the fact that in our performance we took a lot from our predecessors and teachers, we had to bring even more into the role of our own, inherent only to us. It was exactly the same with other performers who came to play our roles later. They, too, without disturbing the general pattern of the performance, using something from what other actors have found before them, look for their own paths to the image, their own colors in its creation.

Yuri Alexandrovich Zavadsky, as they say, was a prince in the role of Calaf, as they say, from head to toe. A prince by blood, so majestic, somewhat picturesque, his gestures were slightly slow, majestic, his poses were beautiful, his speech was refined, somewhat pompous. This was a prince who cared very much about how he looked, how others perceived him, how he stood, how he moved, how he spoke.

According to my data, temperament, and character, I am completely different. In addition to the difference in acting skills, it was also very important that the performance was resumed at a different time - other life rhythms dictated other stage rhythms, our view of the hero, our aesthetic views- this also could not be ignored. Both Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov and Joseph Moiseevich Tolchanov warned me against copying the former Kalaf, constantly reminding me that I must definitely go from myself and only from myself, even if I have before my eyes such an example of Kalaf’s brilliant performance as Zavadsky. And when I did follow him in some way, I immediately heard reminders that today we must love more courageously, more energetically, that in our time that refinement of manners will no longer be perceived as before.

When working on Kalaf, Tolchanov, as opposed to masks, insisted that I behave completely seriously on stage and demanded that I truly experience the especially dramatic moments of the role. And, trying to conscientiously follow the director’s instructions, my Kalaf, in fits of despair, came to tears, and the director demanded more and more dramatization of the hero, and I beat myself in the chest, sobbed over my unhappy love:

Cruel, you're sorry That he didn't die Who loved you so much. But I want you to conquer my life too. Here he is at your feet, that Calaf, The one you know you hate Who despises the earth, the sky And before your eyes he dies of grief.

And I thought to myself: “But this is not true. How can you pronounce this text in all seriousness?” Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore and asked: “Perhaps we should use irony here?” But in response I heard the same thing: “No irony! Everything is in all seriousness. The more serious the better."

Next to the play of the masks, you involuntarily succumb to their mood, you begin to get carried away and indulge in humor, but here again all the same reminders, now to Cecilia Lvovna: “More serious, more serious... Humor is the privilege of masks, and the heroes lead their party seriously.” And I continued to appeal to the heartless Turandot with even greater passion and seriousness.

And indeed, “overwhelming seriousness” turns into funny. This is what R. N. Simonov wanted from me. And I was convinced of this with my own eyes at the very first performance in front of an audience. The more bitterly the tears flowed down my face, the stronger the sobs, the more lively the reaction of the audience was, the more it exploded with laughter. The approach, so to speak, is the opposite. This is Vakhtangov’s exact technique in this performance.

In the scene when Calaf picks up the princess’s card, he looks at her image with delight, tenderness, love and says the text in all seriousness:

Can't be, So that this wondrous heavenly face, Radiant meek gaze and gentle features They would belong to a monster, without a heart, without a soul... Heavenly face, calling lips, Eyes like those of the love goddess herself...

But after I said all this, I unfolded the portrait of the princess into the hall, and the audience saw, instead of the “heavenly face”, “radiant, gentle gaze” of the princess, some kind of ridiculous drawing, as children who are just starting to draw depict mothers and fathers. It was, looking at such a drawing, that I just uttered tender, enthusiastic words of recognition of my feelings for the princess. This was the basis of the performance - Calaf’s complete seriousness in his confessions to the absurd portrait of Turandot. This combination of seriousness and irony, real experiences and convention gave the necessary mood to the performance and revealed the exact technique on which it was built.

He used exactly the same technique in the night scene with Adelma, when Calaf learns that the princess betrayed him. At this moment, he has a shoe in his hand that he did not have time to put on. And in despair, Kalaf beats himself in the chest with this shoe, in all seriousness, in a tragic voice, he says:

Sorry, oh life! It is impossible to fight an inexorable fate. Your gaze, cruel one, will drink in my blood. Life, fly away, you cannot escape death...

Again the same technique. Complete seriousness, tragedy in his voice and an absurd gesture: Kalaf hits himself in the chest with his shoe. Moreover, the more seriously I did this, the more clearly the technique was revealed. It was not me, not my attitude to the events depicted on stage that removed the seriousness and gave an ironic sound to the performance, but the very drawing on a piece of paper that the audience saw after my confession, that shoe with which I beat myself in the chest. Our play - Calaf, Turandot, Adelma - had to be built on sincere feelings, on real tears.

Once, already during one of the performances, an incident occurred that finally convinced me how accurate the technique was, how flawlessly it worked even in unforeseen circumstances not foreseen by the creators of the performance.

It so happened that at one of the performances the actor who carried out the portrait of the princess did not have this portrait. I saw how he put his hand under his vest to get it out, and how he then turned completely white. There was a small pause, but, fortunately, he was soon found and made it look as if he had a portrait. The game with the supposed object began. He seemed to take it out and put it on the floor. I had no choice but to accept his terms of the game. I pretended to see the portrait, picked it up and, looking at it (at my own palm), uttered the already familiar words of surprise at the beauty of Turandot. Then I turn my palm towards the audience, show it to the audience, and, to my surprise, the audience reacted in exactly the same way as if I had that painted portrait on my palm. This case showed in the best possible way that the viewer will perceive any convention correctly if the theater clearly states the reception, if the conditions of the game are clear to him. Even after this incident, we had the idea to play subsequent performances this way, “with the palm of our hand,” and not with a portrait. But they still decided not to abandon the picture; it was perceived by the audience more vividly and clearly.

In parallel with my work on Calaf, Yulia Borisova created her own image of Princess Turandot. Cecilia Lvovna, the first performer of this role, not only told us about that performance, but also played out certain moments of it. With her display, brightness, and temperament of performance, she gave the clearest idea of ​​how one can act in this performance. But at the same time, she not only did not insist on repeating what and how she did, but demanded an independent approach to the role and was very happy with every discovery of the actress, unexpected decision one scene or another.

The very fact of Vakhtangov’s choice of Mansurova for the role of Turandot is curious in itself. Evgeniy Bagrationovich himself explained his choice by the fact that if he knew and could say in advance how other actresses would play this role, then about Mansurova he said that he did not know how she would open up in this role, and he was interested in it. The performance, built largely on improvisation, required elements of surprise in the actors' performances.

The surprise of every new step - this is what Cecilia Lvovna expected from us, the new performers in “Princess Turandot”.

One example of how, through the efforts of an actress, special exercises, and repeated repetitions, one can achieve not only perfect performance of a role, but at the same time turn one’s physical shortcomings into advantages... Cecilia Lvovna knew that she had naturally ugly hands - short, inflexible, unplastic fingers, was embarrassed by this and was painfully worried about her acting deficiency. During rehearsals, I didn’t know where to put my hands, and thereby paid even more attention to them. Vakhtangov saw this and in front of everyone, without sparing her pride, mercilessly beat her on the hands, which made her cry further. And he did this on purpose to force her to do arm gymnastics, and he achieved his goal. The future Turandot did special exercises for her arms every day for a long time, to the point of physical pain, to the point of self-torture. And after she played this role, she proudly said that for her the most pleasant reviews from viewers and colleagues on stage were those that expressed admiration for her hands, their plasticity, and beauty. In these cases, she gratefully recalled Vakhtangov, who forced her to bring what was naturally imperfect in herself to perfection, to virtuosity.

“Princess Turandot” was our first collaboration with Yulia Konstantinovna Borisova. Rehearsing with her and then acting in performances is a great happiness, both as an actor and as a person. I saw how she worked on her role, how worried she was, and there was a reason for it - to appear in the role of Turandot after Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova, a legend in this role, is not at all easy, incredibly responsible and risky.

Communication with Yulia Konstantinovna gave me a lot, not so much, perhaps, in mastering the techniques of the craft, the technology of creativity, but in the very attitude towards the theater, towards partners on stage, in the ethics of an actor, in inner dedication, in selfless service to the theater, devotion to it, constant mood for creativity, readiness to get involved in work at any moment and continue it until the seventh sweat, until exhaustion, and this is the highest degree of professionalism. How she takes care of her relationships with her partners, how active she is, how ready she is on stage for any improvisation, how accurately she senses her partner’s current state!..

To make this clear, for clarity, I will give only two examples from joint work.

During one of the rehearsals, she and I had an argument over the construction of the mise-en-scène. It seemed to me that the mise-en-scène was unsuccessful, that I was uncomfortable in it, that something needed to be changed in it. Julia did not agree with me, but I was ready to defend my position. Everything was going to the point that our argument was about to escalate, but... I saw how she suddenly became wary, made a “stop” and somehow softly made concessions. Then the director came, and all the problems disappeared by themselves. But that argument we had and how easily and quickly she made concessions - then all this surprised and puzzled me. As you might think, the young actor disagrees with something! But then, years later, when I reminded Yulia Konstantinovna of that long-ago incident during the rehearsal of “Turandot,” she told me: “Vasya, it was more important for me to maintain a relationship with my partner than to insist on my own.” For her, this is the main thing - to maintain good relations with her partners, not to disrupt the creative process, to prevent personal grievances, hostility, and disagreements that interfere with creativity into her work. And there was never a time in her life, at least I don’t remember, that she allowed herself disrespect or the slightest tactlessness towards anyone. Over the course of many years, as long as we have been playing with her, and there have been various quite difficult situations, acute moments in our work, we have never had (and this is thanks to her) complications that could at least to some extent affect the performance . It is impossible to do otherwise in our business. It's very difficult to play with a partner you don't like; it gets in the way.

Based on personal experience I can say with all certainty that in the theater (and in general in creativity and in life) one must avoid, simply eliminate, conflicts, especially with the actors with whom he is involved in performances. This will definitely affect your work later. I came to this conclusion later and, again, not without the help of Yulia Borisova. Yes, theater is a collective creativity, and your success or failure depends on how your partner lives on stage with you in one role or another. That’s why I don’t understand actors who don’t protect their relationships with their stage comrades. To do bad things to anyone (this is true in life, but especially on stage) means to do bad things to yourself first of all. It is no coincidence that great actors, in addition to trying to maintain relationships with their stage comrades, during rehearsals pay great attention not only to their roles, but also to the roles of their partners, especially if the partner is a young actor, realizing that you still can’t act without a partner, and if he plays poorly, then you won't have much success either. This is how everything is connected.

And one more example to confirm what was said, which became another lesson taught to me by Yulia Konstantinovna on the same “Princess Turandot”, only many years later.

We have such a tradition in the theater - to open and end the season with “Princess Turandot”, in any case, this has been the case for many years in a row. The season was coming to an end. There was a day left before it closed, and something was wrong with my throat - my voice was gone, so much so that I couldn’t pronounce words normally. I tried to be treated, but everything was unsuccessful. The second performer, Kalaf V. Zozulin, was on a trip abroad at that time. It was impossible to reschedule the performance, it was impossible to replace it, and there was nothing else to do but play, no matter what.

I went to the performance as if I were going to a slaughter, not knowing how it would all end, but it was clear that I couldn’t expect anything good. And so the performance began... On it, I was once again convinced of what Borisova is, what real professionalism on stage is (and unprofessionalism too). I saw how Yulia, having heard that her partner had no voice, immediately put out her voice, switched to a whisper, I saw how she began to single me out, turn me towards the audience, and change the mise-en-scène on the go. She herself stood with her back to the audience, only to turn me to face them so that they could hear me. She did everything to help me without caring in this case about yourself, just to save, help out your partner.

But right there, at the same performance, I saw other actors who, not noticing anything or not wanting to notice, seeing my helplessness, nevertheless continued to act on stage, broadcast at the full power of their voices, and they were not bad actors, but not feeling a partner.

This example simply amazed me and became a good lesson for the future. And then later, when something similar happened to other actors, I, remembering the lesson taught to me by Yulia Konstantinovna, also tried with all my might to help them. I learned this from her, I owe it to her. In general, being her partner is a great joy for any actor. No matter what happens at home, no matter what troubles there are, as soon as she enters the theater, she leaves her previous state at the threshold and is always ready, always in shape. This is what, in addition to talent, the ability to deeply analyze a role, to live truthfully on stage, constitutes true professionalism, this is real acting and human wisdom.

Returning to those distant days of “Turandot” rehearsals, I would like to say how difficult they were, but also what bright moments in the life of the theater - festive, joyful, life-affirming. But this was just work to resume the performance. From here you can imagine what kind of atmosphere reigned during the production of “Turandot” by Vakhtangov, at its birth! Evgeniy Bagrationovich himself, when starting work on the play, told the actors: “We will show the audience our ingenuity. Let our inspired art captivate the viewer and let him experience the festive evening with us. Let relaxed fun, youth, laughter, and improvisation burst into the theater.”

It is difficult to imagine that these words were uttered by a terminally ill person, who had not many days left by fate. Probably, anticipating this, he was in a hurry to create a kind of hymn to life, joy, and happiness. He wanted to put everything bright, kind, and life-affirming into this his last performance. “In our fairy tale, we will show the vicissitudes of people’s struggle for the victory of good over evil, for their future,” Evgeniy Bagrationovich urged the actors, obsessed with thoughts about the future.

We tried to bring all this - a joyful feeling of life, youth, faith in the victory of good over evil - into our performance, to recreate the same atmosphere of festivity, ease, bright joy.

During the work on the performance, there was an atmosphere of general elation and goodwill. Everyone was overwhelmed by some special feeling of elation, unity in work, a high awareness of the responsibility that fell on us, the responsibility for continuing the good traditions of the theater. It was also the joy of touching the bright hours of the Vakhtangov Theater, our admiration for its founder and the first performers in this performance.

Work on “Turandot” was a time of real studio theatre, its youth. We rehearsed with great dedication, regardless of personal busyness, without being distracted by anything else. The actors themselves approached the directors and asked them to work with them as much as possible, especially if something didn’t work out. In this work, everyone tried to help each other, everything personal faded into the background. When the actors went to a rehearsal or then to a performance, everything that was unpleasant in life went somewhere into oblivion and only the pure, kind, bright that is in people remained. These are the miracles “Turandot” worked for us, the participants in the performance. She revealed a lot in the actors both on a purely human level and in a new way, revealing them professionally.

The stage luminaries were especially attentive to us, young actors. Sparing no time and effort, they patiently explained, told and showed how it was in that Vakhtangov “Turandot” and how it can be performed today. Amazing unity and understanding reigned in the theater in those days. Here it is, continuity in action, in a concrete case, in an example, also quite concrete.

Naturally, all this could not but affect the result of the work, the performance. Its very form implied the constant introduction of something new into the performance, improvisation, fantasy. And what happiness for an actor when, during rehearsals or at a performance on the go, he brings something of his own into it, sometimes unexpected not only for the audience, but also for his partners.

And it was at this performance, and more than once. I saw with what ease, mischief, invention and wit the masks (Pantalone - Yakovlev, Tartaglia - Gritsenko, Brighella - Ulyanov) performed entire performances during the performance, literally basking in their element. There are scenes in the play where Kalaf finds himself in the role of a spectator and watches the masks, their competition in wit, resourcefulness, and play. And I have more than once witnessed these greatest moments of genuine creativity, real, first-class improvisation of such wonderful artists and stage partners as Nikolai Gritsenko, Mikhail Ulyanov, Yuri Yakovlev. Knowing that something unplanned and not predicted in advance could happen in the performance, they waited for this moment, tuned in to this wave of improvisation, and as soon as they noticed something new in someone’s performance - in facial expressions, gestures, voice intonation, a new line, - so they immediately reacted to this, picked up the element of improvisation, and then it was difficult to stop them. Yes, there was no need for this. On the contrary, these were desired, unique moments of genuine imagination and inspiration for the artists. And among the artists involved in the play, no one could predict in advance that today they would present masks to each other, and therefore each time they waited with interest for their improvisations.

These were amazing moments; when Gritsenko, Ulyanov, Yakovlev, to them I would add A.G. Kuznetsov - the second performer of the role of Pantalone, competed in who would outplay whom, who would improvise more wittily: such a cascade of discoveries poured in, more and more new proposals to partners, that this was already turned into an amazingly fascinating micro-performance within the whole performance. And this was not just a competition of actors, but a competition of masks provided for by the play. In this peculiar game of masks, they tried to somehow influence the development of events in it, somehow help the heroes in their fate, coming up with something of their own on the go, asking each other riddles, turning to the audience with questions, remarks, involving such way and them into stage action.

But I also had the opportunity to observe how differently and sometimes very difficult, even excruciatingly difficult, these great actors mastered their masks, how differently my stage partners played, how clearly the acting style of each of them was visible. This was also a great school for young actors who watched the process of their work on roles, how they searched for the specificity of their characters.

It was very interesting to observe how slowly, very difficultly, strainedly Mikhail Aleksandrovich Ulyanov’s work proceeded. How carefully he felt his way to his Brighella. Not having the same character as Gritsenko or Yakovlev, being, as we say, a bright social hero by role, he spent a painfully long time searching for a form of existence in his mask. Gradually, through individual movements, gestures, and intonations of his voice, he indicated the main supporting points in his performance; in small steps, stepping carefully, he moved closer and closer to his mask, but with almost imperceptible touches he drew its main contours more and more clearly. First, he wanted to see at least the general outlines of the character he was about to play, and only then filled it with blood and flesh, poured his temperament into it. Gradually, carefully, he pulled himself towards the intended picture, tried to justify the form of his existence in the image, and already when he felt the grain of the role, saw, felt his hero, then it was no longer possible to knock him out of the imagery he had found, to lead him astray from the path that he was step by step measured it out, and now could walk with my eyes closed. It was already a meteor, sweeping away everything and everyone in its path.

Nikolai Olimpievich Gritsenko approached the creation of his Tartaglia mask in a completely different way. He had the rare gift of very quickly finding the general outline of a role. And having found it, he boldly, like into a pool, threw himself into the already found form of the hero’s existence, knew how to live superbly in a certain role pattern and did simply miracles in instantly transforming into the created image, so much so that sometimes it was difficult to recognize him, and this with minimal makeup. Gritsenko had amazing courage - he worked, as a rule, at maximum height and walked along the very edge of the support, when, it seemed, step just a little wrong and you would fall. But he boldly walked along this edge, avoiding a breakdown. He was always on the verge of going too far, but happily avoided it, thus working to the very maximum, giving his best. Nikolai Olympievich possessed this ability to transform himself into the found stage form to perfection. If Ulyanov more often pulled the character towards himself, to his clearly expressed characteristics, then Gritsenko subordinated his individuality to a certain pattern, merging into the form he found. But even in this form, the external design of the role, he almost never repeated himself. It seemed that from some bottomless piggy bank he was taking out more and more faces, and with incomprehensible generosity he was giving up what he had already found.

And, of course, Yuri Vasilyevich Yakovlev went his own way to creating the role of Pantalone. He, too, did not immediately find the appearance and form of behavior of his mask, improvisation. But he did not rush things, but slowly, without visible tension and confidently gained strength, reaching the heights of performance, completeness, lightness, harmony. Intelligent, witty, cheerful, slightly ironic and condescending - this is how he saw his Pantalone. And as soon as he found this characteristic and firmly established himself in it, then after that he already created real miracles on stage. His improvisation could be called simply divine given the high taste of the actor's inventions in this image. Sometimes some actors improvise so much that you want to cover your ears and close your eyes so as not to hear or see what is being offered to the audience. This happens when people lack taste and sense of proportion. Yuri Vasilyevich’s improvisation, in taste and sense of proportion, was always at the highest level, it was always wonderful. He did it easily, without pressure, intelligently. And we always looked forward to his improvisation at performances, knowing that it would be interesting, masterly, witty and there would always be something new. True, over time, especially when they went on tour somewhere, the play “Princess Turandot” was especially actively exploited, it was played almost every day, the actors got tired of it, and it was difficult with such a rhythm of work to find something new every time, unexpected. And then one day, it was on tour in Leningrad, we had already played “Turandot” more than ten times in a row, and at the next performance Yuri Vasilyevich proposed such an improvisation in the mask scene...

At the side of the stage (we played at the Palace of Culture of Promkooperatsiya) for some reason a thick cable was lowered from the very top. Someone apparently forgot to remove it. And during the performance, having played his scene, Yakovlev-Pantalone turned his back to everyone with the words: “Leave me alone, Tartaglia, I’m tired of playing so many plays. So many. I'm leaving, goodbye! After that, he approached the rope and began to climb up it, saying: “I won’t play Turandot anymore, I’m tired of it...”

How unexpected, funny and accurate it was for everyone. Not only the audience laughed, but we, the actors, laughed even more. I think that Yuri Vasilyevich had one of his best acting works in the theater.

He also has a special ability for language. He has an excellent ear for music, picking up dialects of the language. Therefore, abroad he always passed with a bang. In Austria, he spoke German with some kind of “Austrian” accent, which delighted the Austrians. In Romania, it suddenly became apparent that his pronunciation contained local dialects. In Poland they said that he pronounced the text in purely Polish.

This artist has amazing acting skills and seemingly unlimited possibilities.

All the actors playing the roles of masks in this performance were very different in temperament, in the manner in which each played their part. Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov very accurately arranged them in the performance according to the principle of contrast: one is all exquisite, tall, calm, sophisticated, the other is small, swift, assertive, with a terrible spring inside that set him in motion, the third is thick like a duck , swaying from foot to foot, walking on the verge of the grotesque, knowing no fear, surrendering to the elements of the game to the point of self-forgetfulness, a sort of actor on stage.

Over the eighteen years of the performance of “Turandot,” none of the actors who were later introduced into certain roles played better than the first cast of performers. This is not my opinion, this is recognized by everyone. Some new colors were introduced into the performance, some things, perhaps, turned out to be more interesting, but overall not a single role became better. There is probably a pattern to this. It was necessary to go through the entire path of preparing the performance from scratch, which we all went through, in order to stand on par with everyone else. During those rehearsals, there was a process of grinding the actors one to another according to the principle of compatibility, contrast, internal filling of each piece of the role, passage, scene. Just as, when creating an artistic canvas, a painter applies first one stroke, then another, achieving a unique combination of colors, color, where not a single stroke stands out or disturbs the harmony of color, its unique combinations, so in the theater a single, cohesive ensemble was rallied, in which everything was in harmonious unity and each stroke complemented the other, creating a solid multi-colored, but not at all motley, canvas. Yes, it was necessary to go through that long rehearsal and pre-rehearsal preparatory period in order to integrate so organically into the performance, which was almost impossible for those who were introduced to the performance later. Replacements, as a rule, were unequal.

That is why the theater came to the decision that it was necessary not to introduce new performers into the performance, and when one generation of actors had performed their “Turandot”, to stop the performances for a while until another cast of new performers prepared it again, until the same rather long period had passed. the process of comprehending his “Princess Turandot”. It is necessary that every generation of actors go through the same great school of Vakhtangov, and not from hearsay, not from someone’s words, but in practice, in specific work. It is necessary that each cast of performers begin work on the performance by preparing the primer for the future picture, applying the first test strokes to the final touch that gives completeness to the entire work, and finally play it from beginning to end.

Playing Turandot is a great happiness for an actor. In addition to the school and acting skills that he undergoes while working on the play, he also receives unspeakable pleasure from participating in it, from the game itself, from the priceless feeling of communication with the audience, from their tune-in to your wavelength and instant reactions to your actions in the play and everything that happens on stage. It is no coincidence that every actor in the theater dreams of playing some role in it, and not only young actors, but also the older generation, including those who have already shone in their time in this performance, they also willingly, with great joy and excitedly participate in it as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

I will never forget that moment when, at the theater’s half-century anniversary, during the performance of “Princess Turandot,” Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova appeared on stage and played a small piece of the role. She asked me a riddle, the first riddle of the first performer of Turandot. How wonderful it was, what lightness she had, despite her age, what mischief she radiated, what slyness was in her eyes! She was asking a riddle, and at that time, it seemed, thousands of thoughts, feelings, states of her soul were turned to Calaf: love, pride, inaccessibility, and the desire to help Calaf overcome the obstacles she erected in his path, and pretense, and sincerity, and absurdity of character, and femininity. She simply stunned me with her riddle alone, that is, not with the riddle, but with the way she riddled it, with the way she played this small piece of the role. After this short fragment I thought: how did she play this role before!

On the sixtieth anniversary of the theater, we performed the play for the 2000th time. Another generation of actors played it. Borisova and I came to the roles as very young actors. It was a little sad to part with my favorite roles, but time passes. Other, young actors have come, and now we are passing the baton to a new generation of actors, so that the glory of “Turandot” does not fade away over the years, so that it continues and delights new viewers.

The peculiarity of the audience's perception of the performance is directly dependent on the originality of the performance itself - light, ironic, musical, with its special plasticity, a special measure of the conventionality of the play-game, the play-fairy tale, the play-fest. Wherever we played it, this performance had the shortest path to the hearts of the audience, when literally from the first musical introductions, from the first lines, sometimes from the introduction of the characters and participants in the performance, the viewer found himself in our element, in the element of the performance, included in our game and watched with pleasure what was happening on stage. It is well known that the less prepared the audience is theatrically, the more difficult it is to establish contact with them, especially at such an unconventional performance as “Princess Turandot”. The viewer, accustomed to following only the plot and melodramatic situations, will, of course, not be satisfied with what is presented to him at this performance. He will not accept the conventions of design, the conventions of costumes, makeup, or acting style. He’ll ask (and this really was the case), couldn’t they really have made real decorations, glued real beards instead of washcloths.

The performance is based on something completely different. The plot in it is only an excuse to invite the viewer to dream up their imaginations together with the theater, to captivate them with the play of theatre, with irony, the brilliance of wit, and theatricality. “Who cares whether Turandot will love Calaf or not? - Yevgeny Bagrationovich said to the actors at the rehearsal of the play, explaining that it is not in the plot of the play that one should look for the grain. “Their modern attitude to the fairy tale, their irony, their smile at the “tragic” content of the fairy tale - that’s what the actors had to play.” The performance, according to the director's plan, was supposed to combine the seemingly incompatible - fantastic fabulousness and everyday everyday life, the distant fairy-tale past and signs of modernity, psychological implausibility in the behavior of the characters and real tears. “The improbability of fairy-tale constructions became a method of creating a performance,” wrote the famous theater critic L. A. Markov about the first performance of “Turandot”. - This is how tailcoats appeared in combination with a variety of decorating rags, tennis rackets instead of sceptres, mufflers instead of beards, ordinary chairs instead of a throne and against the backdrop of constructivist structures, lids of candy boxes instead of portraits, an orchestra of scallops, improvisation on a modern theme, breaking experiences, changing feelings , transitions and changes in positions, states, techniques - this is how the unusual and joyful outfit that clothed “Princess Turandot” was explained.”

That's why real beards and carefully painted scenery are for another performance, but not for Turandot. Fortunately, the theater almost never had to enter into such explanations about the performance. Usually, mutual understanding between the theater and the audience at performances arose already in the first moments of the actors’ appearance on stage, with a wide variety of spectators, including foreign ones, almost instantly sweeping away everything language barriers, prejudices, differences in temperaments, differences in cultures. But again, I note that the higher the theatrical culture of the people of the country where we performed, the faster and easier the contact with the audience was established.

“Princess Turandot” abroad is a special page in the life of the theater and this performance, a brilliant page in the history of the Vakhtangov Theater. With this performance we traveled to almost all former socialist countries, as well as to Greece, Austria, and everywhere “Turandot” had the shortest run-up and the most rapid takeoff towards the audience’s perception of it, when already in the first minutes of the performance the most unfamiliar, most difficult viewer “ gave up."

Why do I pay special attention to how Turandot was received abroad? Yes, because she is a theatrical legend among us, about which many have heard and go to the performance, already knowing something about it. And abroad, only a very narrow circle of theatergoers are familiar with Turandot, with its brilliant history, and therefore the audience is not yet ready to perceive it, not prepared with interest in this performance. And therefore, every time upon arrival abroad, I had to start, as they say, from scratch, to win the hearts of the audience with what I had, what the performance really was, without having any advance payment.

The very first time “Princess Turandot” traveled to Greece in 1964 - a country with centuries-old, even thousand-year-old traditions, the birthplace of dramatic art, which gave the world Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes and the first theorist of dramatic art - Aristotle. These tours were timed to celebrate two and a half thousand years of the theater. We prepared for them especially seriously and responsibly, and even took up studying the Greek language. This, according to our calculations, should have revealed the specifics of our performance faster and more clearly; we thereby simultaneously paid our tribute to the homeland of the theater, the country, the language of the people to whom we brought our art. And the technique of self-distance of actors from the role, used in the play, made it possible to make such insertions and addresses in Greek to the audience.

True, when the actors learned that some excerpts from “Turandot” would be performed in Greek, some of the actors were seriously alarmed by this message. The masks had to learn a lot of text especially. Therefore, Gritsenko probably received this news most dramatically. Having learned about this, he literally turned pale, laughed nervously and prayed: “Lord, I can hardly remember in Russian, and then in Greek, horror!” And he started cramming.

In those days, in the theater one could often meet actors with notebooks in their hands, cramming the text, rolling their eyes at the ceiling, loudly reciting: “Apocalypsis akolopaposos...”

Nikolai Olimpievich Gritsenko really had the most difficulty mastering the Greek language, he did not have time to memorize the text, and time was already running out, and then one day he came to the theater joyful and announced that he had found a way out of the situation: he wrote down the reprises of the first act on one cuff of his sleeve; the second on the other, on the tie, on the lapels of the jacket. And like a student taking an exam, he then looked at his cheat sheets.

The attention to our tour was enormous. Before the first performance, I saw how nervous Gritsenko was, looking at his cheat sheets, and worried. Two acts were successful, but in the third he began to stumble, was silent for a long time before he uttered a phrase in Greek, and came closer to the prompters, who were located on both sides of the stage wings. They told him a phrase, he, joyful, returned to the center of the stage, said it, and then again forgot and went back to the wings. The audience understood what was going on, reacted very kindly to it, and laughed. We also tried to give him hints, and he, brushing aside the hints, quietly said: “I myself, I myself...” And one day, when the pause was too long, we whispered to him: “Switch to Russian, Nikolai Olympievich, switch to Russian.” And then they saw how his face suddenly changed and helplessly, quietly answered: “Guys, how about in Russian?” It was already with great difficulty that we could restrain ourselves from laughing. There was also laughter in the hall. The spectators themselves tried to tell him in Greek, and he answered them: “No, not like that, not like that.” And all this was perceived in a playful, relaxed manner, cheerfully and with humor.

The audience immediately understood the terms of the game we proposed and accepted them with delight. They liked this form of open communication between the actors and the audience, addressing the stalls, and accepted this measure of convention, irony. And the Greek spectators, having heard individual remarks in their language, accepted this with such enthusiasm that they immediately demolished and crushed the wall between the stage and the hall that had existed before the start of the performance with an avalanche of audience feedback. At the very first familiar phrases we heard, the audience gasped, seemed to move towards us, burst into applause and immediately joined in this cheerful, festive performance.

When we saw how we were received, all fears instantly dissipated. And they were - after all, for the first time they took the performance to a completely unfamiliar audience. There were concerns: would they accept such a performance, unusual in form? The play captivated the audience, they felt like participants in this game and reacted very lively, in a southern temperamental way, to everything that was happening on stage. The masks communicated directly with the audience and bathed in waves of audience response. This response from the audience lifted us up, as if on waves, filling our hearts with joy, pride in human capabilities to create such miracles. It was truly a celebration of art, its limitless possibilities, uniting different people of different social structures, ages, positions, giving amazing human freedom. Yes, it was a celebration of art, its triumph, its miraculous power to influence people.

It is not often that you witness how for twenty to thirty minutes the audience stood, did not disperse, and did not stop applauding. I will never forget those moments when, after the performance, during the ovation from the audience, Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov appeared on stage. There was so much dignity in his words and demeanor, so much pride in our art, in our talented people. Before us stood a man who knew the value of the miracle that Russian actors brought to Greek audiences. It was the national pride of a man behind whom stands a great people, a great state. He accepted the delight of the audience with great dignity, as a matter of course, as something completely natural, natural, and ordinary. How pleasant and joyful it was for all of us to experience all this there, far from Russia, from our country. How we miss this high sense of pride today...

Not a single performance with which we traveled abroad turned foreign audiences in our favor the way that happened with Turandot, or did so much politically as this performance did. The people who brought him were not just plenipotentiaries of our art, but also political plenipotentiaries, plenipotentiaries in establishing understanding between people. The audience's love for these people naturally transferred to the love for the country, for the people who gave them these moments of happiness.

It is probably no coincidence that after the first performance we were surrounded by Greek youth, and not only young people; numerous questions began about the theater, about life in our country, about the people. It was a conversation like old good friends - this is what art is, this is its strength and attractiveness.

It is also impossible to forget how, after the performance, we spent almost the entire night on the Plaka under the Acropolis and how then we went to Iroduatika - the theater under open air- and at the Pericles stone they read poems by Pushkin and Lermontov at night. This evening will remain with everyone who was there for the rest of their lives. How he united us all - people of different nationalities who had never known each other before. For them, we were people from Russia, about whom they wanted to know as much as possible. And then... the police whistles sounded, and we saw how the Greek youth, in order to prevent the police from reaching us, set up a human barrier and escorted us all the way to the hotel.

And the performance in Australia began completely differently. If the Greeks, by their temperament, flared up instantly at the first spark, then it was not at all easy to ignite a respectable audience. But you should have seen how “Turandot” literally melted them too. After a few minutes of shock, we already heard and saw how there, in auditorium, having forgotten about their primness, importance, pompousness, this same audience in expensive outfits, in diamonds, dressed in “furs and beads”, fragrant with expensive perfumes, was already throwing off expensive furs and waving them, jumping up from their seats, exploded loudly, with a booming, unrestrained laugh that was already difficult to stop.

And how different was the reaction of the Warsaw audience to the performance... They also very soon accepted our “Turandot”, on the very first lines, and not even the masks, but Calaf, on my first stage. They immediately understood and accepted the ironic key that we used when reading Gozzi's tale.

In other countries - in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia - the performance was also perceived differently, in its own way, with varying degrees and forms of manifestation of temperament, but it was just as interested, passionate and performed everywhere with huge success. And although at each of the performances, as the curtain closed, masks came out to the audience to once again announce that “the performance of Carlo Gozzi’s fairy tale “Princess Turandot” is over,” the vaults of the auditoriums were still deafened with applause for a long time.

I think the play “Princess Turandot” can rightfully be called international. He was received everywhere we played, and everywhere he aroused good, international feelings in the audience.

How amazing it still happens in life that the work of human hands, done many years ago, decades and centuries, later comes to life for new generations of people. We sometimes talk about great people who have accomplished something great in life: “His work will live on in others...” But these words came true before our eyes and, in some way, with our participation. At the play “Princess Turandot”, spectators in many cities of our country, like Athens and Belgrade, Prague, Vienna, Sofia and Warsaw, Berlin and Budapest, touched with their hearts what was created by the great Vakhtangov more than half a century ago, and no one like in our country and abroad, nothing in this performance seemed outdated. Quite the contrary: we discovered that many of the “innovations” that some Western and even Russian directors flaunt today, it turns out, had long been implemented in the practical work of one of Stanislavsky’s students. What an impulse was given to this performance, what vitality, what foundations were laid in it, that even after half a century it not only has not become outdated, but opens up new means of stage expression for many, expanding their arsenal. Here is an example of form and content. None of the avant-garde theaters, in fact, said more than what was used in this performance; none of them overshadowed it or belittled its significance.

That is why, probably, while performing abroad with “Turandot” and attending discussions and conferences in connection with the arrival of the theater, in which leading world-famous directors and critics took part, we often heard their words about Evgeniy Bagrationovich Vakhtangov as one of the first directors who had the greatest influence on the development of world theater. Back in 1923, Pavel Aleksandrovich Markov wrote: “The past winter, at the end of which Vakhtangov staged Turandot, will remain a very significant time for the Russian theater - its consequences and promises cannot yet be taken into account; they will affect our theater for years.” Surprisingly accurate definition. And moreover, not for years, but, as time shows, for decades. And how can one not admire his talent and ability to anticipate the searches of many generations of subsequent directors. He died when he was thirty-nine years old. In his searches, he was based on the teachings of Stanislavsky, his teaching about the truth of art, while simultaneously moving towards a bright, colorful artistic form, to the festivity of the theater, looking for new and new means of stage expression. This search for theater continues today in new performances, in new directorial and acting works, the foundation of which was laid by Evgeniy Bagrationovich Vakhtangov, his great school.

Great constellation

A theater school is not only a school, not only performances and roles performed in its vein. These are, first of all, people who profess it, continue, develop, and enrich its traditions. Arriving at the theater, I immediately found myself surrounded by a whole constellation of celebrities, looking at whose performances were breathtaking, and it became obvious that you still don’t know how to do anything, that school is only one, the first step in moving towards a profession, and in order to to move on, you need to continuously watch, learn, adopt the secrets of mastery from those who are at the highest level of creativity. And we, young people, coming to the theater, looked at them as gods, magicians, wizards and learned from them. And there was someone and something to learn from and adopt in the theater. Mikhail Fedorovich Astangov, Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov, Nikolai Sergeevich Plotnikov, Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova, Nikolai Olimpievich Gritsenko, Elizaveta Georgievna Alekseeva, Vladimir Ivanovich Osenev, Elena Dmitrievna Ponsova - what a variety and wealth of original talents! Watching them play was a great learning experience, not to mention how much it gave each of us to participate in the same performances with them.

It must be said that the attitude towards the actor's type does not remain unchanged. It changes over time. When I came to the Theater named after Evg. after the Shchukin School. Vakhtangov, the ideal was actors of maximum transformation. The ability to become completely different, unrecognizable, different from myself was for me the height of acting. I still admire this. But now I think the most valuable thing is something else - the personality of the actor himself. In the first case, one was struck by the virtuoso skill of how the actor does it, in the second - the main thing is that, and behind this is the human depth, uniqueness and spiritual richness of the actor's personality: Of course, one does not exclude the other. Actors who are interesting as human personalities also use transformation; we cannot do without it in our business. But at the same time, in every image they create there is a piece of their personality. Cherkasov was excellent at transformation. For me, his most significant role is Dronov, where the depth and meaningfulness of Dronov’s personality was multiplied by the depth and meaningfulness of Cherkasov’s personality. And the result is a piercing cry from the soul of a person summing up his life, a cry from the soul about how to live so that the memory of you is preserved in people’s hearts.

Increased interest in the actor-personality is a sign of the times. Nowadays, for many actors, a role is only as valuable as it allows his individuality and his theme to stand out.

The desire to convey through a role a thought that excites you is the main thing, it seems to me, in the art of acting. And this in no way detracts from the emotional side of acting. I find the ideal in the harmony of both. L. Pashkova in the play “Children of the Sun” lived at the utmost intensity of feelings. But this intensity was determined by those thoughts that worry both Lisa and the performer of the role - L. Pashkova. Simply worrying, worrying for show is completely contraindicated. Temperament of thought is what determines today's actor in cinema and theater.

I learned a lot in this regard from the wonderful actor Mikhail Fedorovich Astangov. For the first time I went out to play with him in the play “Before Sunset” by G. Hauptmann. At first, in this performance, I was entrusted with a very small cameo role- Advisor, through whom almost all young actors who joined the troupe of the Evg Theater passed. Vakhtangov. Each time, after playing in my episode, I went backstage and from there I watched Astangov play. It was a great school for the young actor.

Mikhail Fedorovich was a unique actor, with a bright personality, very personal, and unlike anyone else. In general, I think that an actor should not be like anyone else, and if all this is not so, if he is not independent in his work, follows someone, copying the game, gestures, facial expressions, manner of speaking, moving - this will already be a secondary art . Identity in the theater is a necessary condition for success.

main feature Astangov's performance was that on stage he always remained a large, colorful personality. For him, every role was precisely, logically clearly structured down to the details, every movement was verified, meaningful, and brought to perfection. An analytical actor who thinks in broad categories, he never allowed his emotions to obscure the main idea that he tried to express and convey to the audience in the role. But when, based on dramatic material, he was faced with global, universal human problems, great deep thoughts, his temperament seemed to know no limits. A gigantic thought aroused in him a gigantic temperament. If he defended some idea, the position of a hero, he defended it passionately, temperamentally, and with inspiration.

Before going on stage, Mikhail Fedorovich always spent a very long time preparing for the role, sat on stage for a long time, preparing himself for the entrance, and usually appeared before the audience having already lived some part of his hero’s life, already internally overwhelmed, ready to throw out his condition into the audience. For comparison, I will say that Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova, for example, loved to jump onto the stage and play the entire scene on this emotional wave.

Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov appeared on stage at the very last moment, he even liked to be a little late so that they would already be waiting for his entrance, and then only he would appear. Each had their own weaknesses, their own techniques, which, however, expressed the characteristics of these actors, their individuality.

For the rest of my life I remembered one phrase from Astangov, which essentially revealed the methodology of his work on the role and the performance as a whole. He said: “We must first lay the rails, and then, whether I’m in the mood or not, the rails will lead me in the right direction.” So, when working on the role, the first thing he did was lay the rails that would then lead his hero in the right direction. He believed that the role should be done accurately, so as not to depend on the mood - today it is there, the actor is in the mood, which means he will play well, not in the mood - well, then he will have to wait for the next performance, wait for the mood to visit him . Astangov excluded this moment of dependence on external reasons, on the actor’s mood or non-mood in his work. The viewer and stage partners should not depend on the mood of one of the performers. An ordinary spectator comes to a performance, as a rule, once and, naturally, wants to see the performance in its best form. And if the role is well done, if the “rails are laid,” the actor will always play it well enough artistic level, in any case, exactly. The level of his performance in this case is already largely predetermined by the level of execution of the role, its precision, and the degree of readiness. In this sense, working together with Astangov was extremely useful and necessary for me.

Playing next to Nikolai Sergeevich Plotnikov was the same school. In the play “The Great Sovereign” by V. Solovyov, where he played the role of Shuisky, I appeared as an extra and then stayed until the end of the performance and watched him play. I also watched Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov play many times.

More recently, it was a study, so far only more closely. We watched the great masters of the stage play, and we had to become their partners. And these lessons were very useful, you had to go through this, so that later, when you had a chance to play with them in the same performances, you wouldn’t get confused, get into tune, and really become their partners on stage. And these were already lessons in work, in practice, in communicating with the luminaries of the stage. What can replace such lessons?..

After playing the Counselor in several productions of Before Sunset, I finally got the role of Egmont. Playing with Astangov in the same performance, for the first time I truly felt what a stage partner is and what it means to be the partner of such an actor. I felt these eyes of Mikhail Fedorovich piercing right through you. He shone through like an X-ray, drilled his gaze, demanded from you all the time real life on stage, reciprocal feeling, participation, empathy. He never just contemplated his partner. He invariably included you in the field of his attention, so much so that before his gaze you could no longer be distracted for a moment, speak, and not live the entire scene from beginning to end. It was simply impossible to afford this with him. I saw how his attitude towards my character changed during the performance. Then he looked at me warily, waiting to see how his son would behave in a difficult situation for him - would he not betray him, would he not become cowardly? And I almost physically felt his searching gaze, his excitement, his concern for his son. Either he admired his son when he learned that he had refused to sign a libelous paper against him, and joyfully shouted: “Ah, a breath of fresh air!” Egmont gave him this breath of fresh air. And here it was impossible not to answer his silent questions, to his state of mind, to his outbursts of joy, it was impossible to feel indifferent next to him. It was as if you were caught in a magnetic field of its influence.

Let’s be honest, it happens that, after performing a whole performance with another partner, you never catch his eye on you. Most often this is a glance over you or a glance in your direction, but not at you, not into your eyes with the desire to read something in them, pain or joy, with a readiness to respond to your state. And among great masters this has always been and is attention to the partner, a sacred attitude towards him. They understood, like no one else, that without a partner you won’t be able to perform the scene to its full potential.

I had exactly the same thing with Nikolai Sergeevich Plotnikov. When he was on stage, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. This was the case in “The Stone Guest,” where he played the role of Leporello’s servant, and this was the case in L. Zorin’s “Coronation.” We had a wonderful scene in this performance when the grandson comes to his grandfather, Kamshatov Sr., to persuade him to go to the anniversary celebration organized in his honor. Kamshatov refuses to do this, which causes a commotion in the house. All his relatives persuade him to go to the celebration, each having his own benefit, his own goal. And then my hero is the last to come to him. He has just graduated from college and dreams of making a career, defending his PhD thesis, and going on a business trip abroad. Therefore, he also joins in persuading the obstinate grandfather to go to the anniversary, because he understands how this rebellion of Kamshatov Sr. can affect Kamshatov Jr. and his career.

And so I went out to him. Plotnikov-Kamshatov greeted me with a sly squinting of his eyes, saying, come on, come on, what did you come with? And he offered me a children’s game that he once played with me during my childhood. He asked: “And the owner of the house?” I answered: “At home.” - “Is the accordion ready?” - “Ready.” - “Can I play?” - "Can". And then he asked: “Have you been sent?” To which I answered him: “Well, why are you doing this, grandfather?” Although I saw that my grandfather already understood everything. And he looked at me, as if asking: “Come on, come on, how are you going to persuade me?” And I waited to see what arguments I would use to force him to go to the anniversary. And I saw how his face gradually changed, reaching the point of a mental breakdown, a cry, when he was finally convinced that this careerist had grown up next to him, in whom there was nothing sacred, who did not disdain anything.

We played this scene without taking our eyes off each other. What kind of temperament erupted in Nikolai Sergeevich, how he became filled with blood, screamed, then disgustedly pulled away from me, and I almost physically felt his attitude towards me. I never cease to admire what a great school it was for the young actor - the highest school of acting.

I played a lot with Plotnikov and, of course, I am extremely grateful to fate for this. He was always like that, I would say, instantly present, like Astangov, always facing his partner. He also loved to create large characters with large, rich strokes. He didn’t split the role into details, didn’t make it small, didn’t get carried away with characterization. He always remained Plotnikov and at the same time entered into the role so much that it seemed impossible to thread a needle between him and the image he created - such was his transformation into character. He almost didn’t use makeup, he simply didn’t need it. With a minimum of external means of expression, he created completely different characters. This is the highest level of acting.

Sometimes it happens that an actor, in pursuit of character, in an effort to hide himself behind a role, comes up with a mask, complex makeup, and sometimes gets so carried away by it that behind all this you no longer see the person himself, but instead of him a pre-prepared mannequin walks around the stage. But Plotnikov’s character never overshadowed himself, his human originality, the magnitude of his personality. Outwardly, he didn’t seem to change anything about himself and at the same time he was always different: be it Shuisky in “The Great Sovereign” or Kamshatov in “Coronation”, Leporello in “The Stone Guest” or Domitian in “Lyon”. For him, the most important thing was to create an internal image, to penetrate into its essence, to grasp the main thing in it, and the means of expression were spare, but always precise, capacious, and meaningful. Creating the image of Shuisky, this terrible, predatory, treacherous, intelligent and resourceful man, outwardly, it seemed, he did not change anything about himself, but how internally he was reborn! It was such a resourceful fox, such a beast in human form, smiling slyly, seeing everything, weaving a complex thread of intrigue! And all this with minimal means of external expression. This is what true transformation into an image means!

We often hear, or even ask ourselves, the question: “What does it mean to be a person in art?” So, I think Nikolai Sergeevich gave me an exhaustive answer to this question, and not in words, but in deeds, with his attitude to work, to people, to what he himself witnessed - with his whole life.

Modern actor unthinkable without civic pathos. Today the viewer will not be surprised by the virtuosity of technical means. If the image is built only on the basis of accumulated experience and general considerations, then it will not find a good echo in the auditorium.

The entire scale of the images created by an actor is determined primarily by the scale of his very personality. It is important how he lives, how he responds to life events. In general, I think that art and indifference (to paraphrase Pushkin’s words) are “not compatible” concepts. When I see that an actor reacts indifferently or even calmly to what is happening around him, to injustice in the world, to the fact that somewhere, albeit very far away, people’s blood is being shed, as if evil, albeit temporarily, is gaining the upper hand, I understand that this actor has already finished as an artist, he will no longer create anything serious or exciting. All that remains is craft worst value this word has only been developed in the past. And art must talentedly and passionately defend this or that position, theme, idea, otherwise it does more harm than good, because even the kindest thought, expressed untalentedly, dispassionately, is more likely to be discredited than to find an echo in the hearts of the audience.

Yes, an actor must certainly have this combination of high citizenship and skill. And if in his address to readers Nekrasov admitted that “you may not be a poet, but you must be a citizen,” then the actor must necessarily be both a poet and a citizen.

And an extraordinary personality, and to love life as Plotnikov loved it.

Nikolai Sergeevich died at eighty-two, but he was the youngest man I knew. He had so much vitality, optimism and even mischief. One day he and I went for a walk after the theater along Arbat. His gait is already uncertain, his knees are shaking, his legs do not bend, and suddenly I see: he is doing a “stand.” I ask: “What’s wrong with you, Nikolai Sergeevich?” And he: “Vasechka, look how beautiful she is!” And he squints his eyes like a mischievous cat...

Three days before his death, he told me in the theater corridor: “Vasechka, when I die, sit in my chair, at my table in the dressing room. I bequeath my place to you.” Since then I have been sitting in his chair.

Theater art is a constant training: rehearsals in the morning, performances in the evening, and so on day after day.

Unlike cinema, where the director, cameraman, and editing decide a lot for the artist, in the theater during the performance the entire burden falls on the performer, and he either ruins the production or makes a “candy” out of a mediocre play.

In general, I am lucky to have people whose communication was not only purely professional, technical training. This is always spiritual communication, an opportunity to learn to be Human. I was always amazed by Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov with his amazing spiritual and creative youth and romantic mood. I am close and understandable to the integrity and strength of modern character in Mikhail Ulyanov, the high intelligence and humanism of Yuri Yakovlev, the generosity of talent of Nikolai Olimpievich Gritsenko.

The habitat of the “great constellation” of actors, of course, is not only the theater, and especially not just the Theater named after Evg. Vakhtangov. In an infinite galaxy, we are certainly not alone. There were and are stars and constellations of no less magnitude in the Moscow Art Theater, the Maly Theater, the Bolshoi Drama Theater named after G. A. Tovstonogov, in the famous Alexandrinka - the list of them can be continued. I’m just naming those who are closer to me, with whom acting fate brought me together, with whom I had the opportunity to observe more, communicate, be friends, and from whom I had the opportunity to learn.

For example, I met Alexei Kuznetsov, an actor at the Vakhtangov Theater and an old friend of mine back in 1953 on the set of the film “Certificate of Maturity.” I was in tenth grade at the time and played a tenth-grader, and Alyosha Kuznetsov was in fifth grade and played my younger brother, a fifth-grader. On filming days, he was picked up straight from school and driven to the set. His father was then the director of a film group at Mosfilm, which is probably why he found himself in front of a movie camera at such an early age. Then, when the time came, he, like me, entered the Shchukin Theater School. Having graduated from it, after brilliantly playing the role of Water-bearer in the play “The Good Man from Szechwan” by Brecht, Alexey could, together with the course under the guidance of Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov, go to create new theater"On Taganka". But Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov persuaded him to stay in the theater, promising a good prospect. And indeed, after joining the troupe of the Vakhtangov Theater, he was busy in performances and played many roles. And yet, it seems to me that the theater could more often use his abilities as a lyrical hero and his rare comedy-vaudeville talent. And when the theater was headed by Evgeniy Rubenovich, Alexei was no longer in demand at all. Then I remembered Lyubimov’s warnings about what awaited him in academic theater. But time has passed and you can’t get back what you lost. Now Alexey teaches with me at the Shchukin School in the Department of Artistic Words, so we are already connected (this probably never happens) by fifty years of friendship. And I am grateful to fate that she gave me such friends - talented, reliable, loyal. Not everyone is so lucky in life.

I will still have the opportunity to talk about Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov in this book. Now I will only note that the foundation that he laid in me from the first days of working in the theater still helps today. True, in recent years he has already staged a few plays and was less involved in them than before. But those few meetings in joint work were invaluable.

My greatest shock from Ruben Nikolaevich’s performance is associated with his performance of the role of Cyrano de Bergerac in Rostand’s play of the same name. His words: “Do you hear the movement of the worlds and do you know what the word “eternity” means?” - I still carry in my memory down to the smallest nuances, I visually see him in all clarity and I think that this shock from his playing will remain with me for the rest of my life. It was so powerfully performed, on such a wave of emotional explosion, civic passion.

No, what penetrated so deeply into the soul, into the consciousness and subconscious at the same time, what made the heart skip a beat, can no longer be obscured by anything. Such a shock finds its shelf in a person and is stored on it in holy inviolability. For me, it’s like a tuning fork that you always want to tune in to, like a height that you strive for all your life in your creativity. It’s like an ideal that you want to achieve, stimulating your growth and not allowing you to rest on what you have achieved. How each of us needs such heights in creativity, in work, in life.

This is especially important for young actors, because if young people do not accept the traditions of the theater, they will not feel directly in their work what the real level of acting is, what “aerobatics” is, what then should they study, what should they strive for, what kind of performance should they take on? as a model for yourself? Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov understood this very well and was invariably guided by this understanding in practice. In distributing roles in new performances and introducing new performers into old performances, he always tried to place a young one next to an experienced actor, with a master, he never separated young people from the “old people,” he always “mixed” them. And it was wise. When Plotnikov is playing on your right, Mansurova on your left, Gritsenko in front, and Astangov behind, it is simply impossible to play poorly. Whether you want it or not, you fall into their aura, tune into their high voltage wave.

Evgeniy Rubenovich also came to the same conviction, although not immediately, through his own bitter experience, after he staged several performances only with young people. After some time, I myself saw how the theater began to lose the level of acting, to lose the school. Without constant replenishment, without communication with the old Vakhtangov players, the playing style began to level out, taste and sense of proportion began to be lost, tolerances began to be made that Ruben Nikolaevich had never allowed on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater.

I think that M.A. Ulyanov repeated the same mistake during his artistic leadership of the theater. Relying only on youth, without involving the “old people” is a threat to the youth itself and to the “theater” - the “connection of times” is disintegrating: this is all the more important for such a theatrical direction as Vakhtangov’s - the transfer of traditions is necessary.

After Ruben Nikolaevich, Evgeniy Rubenovich Simonov continued his father’s work in the theater. We worked with him in the theater for more than a quarter of a century, starting in 1957. Our entire creative life took place, one might say, in front of each other’s eyes. During this time, a very important feeling in joint work was established: trust in each other, mutual understanding, common views on the art of theater, on life, which, of course, was conducive to creativity. My first role in the theater - Baklanov in "Eternal Glory" - was made with him. He continued to lead me through the complex labyrinths of the theater, protecting me from failure, entrusting me with difficult, diverse roles. Almost all major acting works in the theater were prepared by me with his participation or general guidance.

In addition to the theater, music and poetry also brought us together. Evgeniy Rubenovich himself loved to read poetry and often repeated: “Vasya, after me, you read poetry better than anyone else in the theater.” This is a joke, of course, but for me it is important that the poetic theater that he professed is my theater too.

Almost all of his performances are musical. And the music in them does not just sound as an accompaniment or decoration to dramatic action, and itself is its important component, permeating it through and through, giving the general mood of the performance and individual plot, semantic, emotional lines in it.

It is very important in the relationship between the director and the actor to be able to speak on an equal footing and sometimes argue in search of the best solution for a performance, scene, or role, without enduring creative disputes in the existing relationship. With Evgeniy Rubenovich this was possible, so the actors were not afraid to enter into creative conflicts with him, knowing that any of their reasonable proposals would be listened to, if it did not contradict the general director’s concept of the play, it could be accepted - partially or completely - or a third more interesting solution. This, for example, happened to us while working on the play “Antony and Cleopatra”. The director set me and Mikhail Ulyanov the task of waging a constant, irreconcilable, global enmity between two opponents worthy of each other, enmity for life and death. The question had to be: him or me, there was no other choice. And Caesar ultimately had to defeat Antony in this battle. It’s easy to say win, but how to do it when the role of Anthony is none other than Ulyanov?! And besides, the scenes with him were initially structured in such a way that Antony always found himself in a more advantageous position in front of Caesar. How to win a fight if you constantly find yourself in the background, if you are in an unequal position with him? This makes Caesar's task of defeating his opponent even less feasible. And when I told Evgeny Rubenovich about this, asked, and then simply demanded to change the mise-en-scène in the “Triumvirate” scene, at first he flared up. And the next day, coming to the rehearsal, he came up to me, shook my hand and said: “You were right, Vasya, everything is right.” Then he sat us opposite each other, turned our opponents into irreconcilable combat, and... the scene turned out. The result was a dispute between heroes of Shakespeare's tragedy of equal strength, in which Caesar ultimately won.

Approximately the same picture was repeated here in the “Front”, and again Ulyanov was my antipode. I, in the role of Ognev, had to gain the upper hand in the argument with Gorlov, and for some reason Ulyanov always turned out to be the “master of the situation” in the center of the stage. And when the mise-en-scène was changed, again after my persistent requests to make rearrangements in the mise-en-scène of Ognev and Gorlov, everything fell into place.

I consider this a valuable quality of a director - to listen to the opinions of the actors, not to fall into ambition - this is evidence of the strength and self-confidence of the director, and not his weakness. And also to be able not to be offended by your colleagues on stage, even if they turned out to be wrong, not to harbor resentment because someone disagreed with you on something in a dispute - this contributes to the creation of truly trusting, creative situation. Everything that has been done in joint work and will be done in the future should not be obscured by any disagreements, disputes, or conflict situations. They are inevitable in any creative endeavor and, if treated correctly, are useful for both the actor and the director.

I especially highly value the director’s courage, the ability to go for an experiment without fear, which, of course, is not reckless, but justified. Any living creative endeavor is associated with some degree of risk, especially in the work of a director. After all, if he does not take risks, does not look for anything, is in constant fear of doing something wrong, he will never be able to create anything interesting, fresh, original and will never succeed as a director.

Yes, I think it takes considerable courage to decide to experiment, to make a decision and, if necessary, to insist on one’s own in a matter that does not guarantee success, which is in many ways risky and unsteady. This happened, for example, during the distribution of roles in the play “The Thirteenth Chairman” by A. Abdullin, where I was offered the main role. Many were surprised by this decision of Evgeny Rubenovich and his young colleagues - directors V. Shalevich and O. Forostenko. They were stopped, warned, advised to think, considering the role of collective farm chairman Sagadeev not mine. Moreover, the theater troupe already has a “ready-made” chairman, recognized and accepted by everyone in the film “The Chairman” - Mikhail Ulyanov. At first it seemed to me that the role did not suit my characteristics. But neither the warnings of my colleagues nor my own doubts stopped them. And the result was unexpected for everyone, including me.

Evgeniy Rubenovich trusted the actors, sometimes saw in them more than they saw in themselves, and more often won, discovered new qualities of their talent in the actors, did not allow them to stagnate, to stop in their upward movement.

The same thing happened with the role of Roland in “The Hussar Girl” by F. Koni. It seemed to many that this was not my role, that comedy was not my poetry. And he believed in me, insisted on my appointment to the role and was the happiest of all when it became clear that the role worked out. How can an actor not be grateful to the director for this, how can he not trust his intuition, insight, and ability to work with actors? It is only natural that when there is risk, failure will occur. They also visited our theater. But it is important how to treat them. In these cases, Evgeniy Rubenovich did not try to shift the blame onto the actor or anyone else, he was not afraid to admit his mistakes, he took the blame upon himself. And this also speaks of the strength of the director, that you can trust him, you can rely on him. And how much this means in any business! There is also feedback here. If the director believes in the actor, he thereby stimulates his work, his searches, gives him the opportunity to develop the role himself, and not rely only on a hint, on the help of the director.

Probably, as many directors as there are, there are as many methods of working on a play or film. Evgeniy Rubenovich (unlike his father Ruben Nikolaevich, who was more interested in working with actors, loved to do it and paid less attention to purely staging aspects) belonged to those directors who pay more attention to constructing mise-en-scenes, creating a general image of the performance, and mastering the space of the stage. It is important for him that the actor does not fall out of the general ensemble of the performance, for this he only gives him general direction at work. The rest, finishing the role, was entrusted to his assistants and left to the actors themselves. I didn’t really like to do jewelery finishing. That’s why I didn’t like actors who only “look into the director’s mouth” without bringing anything of their own to the role.

And lastly, perhaps what I personally value most in a theater director is the ability to value his past, what we inherited from older generations of actors and directors. It is no secret that it often happens in the theater - a new director comes and begins to break everything, reshape it in his own way, regardless of the actors who have given their whole lives to the stage, starting the calculation of the life of the theater from the day he came to it, guided, apparently, by the philosophy of Goethe hero: “The world did not exist before me and was created by me.”

Evgeniy Rubenovich treated the old Vakhtangov guard, one might say, with reverence, realizing that without tradition, without the past, there would be no present, that he would simply have nothing to be born from. It’s like in a family you can’t help but honor your parents and elders, you can’t be Thomases who don’t remember your kinship, because then their children will grow up just as soulless, they won’t take your old age into account, they won’t show respect for an elderly person, and they’ll grow up to be spiritual monsters. Likewise, in the theater, these ethical standards must be sacredly preserved and protected from rudeness, disrespect, and unceremoniousness.

There was such a case in our theater. The famous playwright read his new play at the troupe. Any of us, especially in creativity, are not immune from failure. They happen even among great masters, great and recognized artists. For the playwright, this was, admittedly, a creative failure. He himself, apparently, felt that not everything had worked out for him, and therefore, when the discussion of the play began, when the actors, one after another, began to “smash” the play, he sat silently, did not try to say anything in his defense, did not try to explain anything . But I remember Evgeniy Rubenovich’s face during this discussion - pale, excited, nervous, his awkwardness and shame in front of the playwright for the actors. Not on the merits, not because they spoke poorly of the play, but because of the form of conversation, because of the harshness that they allowed in the discussion, the disrespect of tone towards the author. They hit backhandedly, mercilessly, as actors know how to do, forgetting that before them was the author who had already done a lot in our drama before and could do a lot more. Yes, the play was not a success, we didn’t like it, but the form of conversation should in any case be tactful, respectful towards the interlocutor, even if something about him or his work does not suit you or even irritates you. This does not mean at all that you can allow yourself to be rude, boorish, and shameless in such cases.

After the author left the theater, Evgeniy Rubenovich spoke about this to the actors in a rare emotion for him. What a lesson he taught us all then! It is important to have a stock of culture and human decency, no matter what area human life no matter what was discussed - he made many of those present at that discussion think about this that day seriously, deeply and learn from this incident a lesson for life.

We all need to remember this always!

Unfortunately, the last years of work in the theater were not easy for Evgeniy Rubenovich. He did not feel that the theater was losing its previously won positions and was going into decline. He accepted for production certain obviously weak plays that were doomed to failure in advance, and did not allow other directors who were capable of raising the level of performances to be staged. By relying only on young actors, he actually deprived them of the opportunity to learn from the old people and gain experience. Thus, the theatre, which quite recently was buzzing with interesting productions, has experienced a noticeable decline. Ferment began in the theater, the troupe split into supporters and opponents of the course taken by the director, or rather, the lack of a course. The question of changing artistic direction naturally arose. Evgeniy Rubenovich had a hard time leaving the theater, where he had worked for many years and created more than one performance that adorned its posters, including the famous “ Irkutsk history", "Filumena Marturano", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Front". It would be more correct to say that he did not survive the departure and, not finding himself in other theaters, soon passed away. This is how the fate of this talented director turned out, but somehow lost at the end of his years. Now, years later and thinking about him, it seems to me that everything could have been different if both sides had agreed to some kind of compromise - both us and him. I think that it could have been found, but the parties resisted - and this is the result. Now I want to say that I regret that we were unable to reach an agreement then, but you cannot return what happened.

Vakhtangov school
Interview with the rector of the Shchukin Theater School Evgeny Knyazev.

- When we say Vakhtangov, some special direction appears. What's the highlight?

There are a huge number of theaters in Russia and in the world. Many of them are being created today. They live for some time and, having withered, die. And Vakhtangov created not just a theater. He created a whole direction, which is still called “Vakhtangov”. In Russia. In the West, it has not yet taken root very well, although we could switch to another wave and say that we are Stanislavsky’s system. But we say differently: “Yes, we are the Stanislavsky system, but the “Vakhtangov” direction. What it is? Critics, when they see a bright, full-fledged, full-blooded, talented performance that shines, that ignites with its energy, call it “Vakhtangov’s.” We're used to it. We are used to being proud of bright performances... And the idea of ​​the “Vakhtangov” direction is very simple - “deep form with bright content.” This bright content was instilled in us, and we continue to live with it. We really like this psychological existence in the theater. We support him. We are scolded for this, we are accused, they say: “...you are doing these Vakhtangov tricks on stage...”. But if there is no brightness in the performance, then this no longer has anything to do with us. Here is a very brief description of our direction.

- When did the Theater School appear? Shchukin?

Usually a school appears on the basis of an existing theater. Some time passes, and he needs some kind of recharge. And then a school is created. In our case, it turned out exactly the opposite: on October 23, 1914, a theater school appeared, and only 7 years later, in 1921, a theater was born from the school. In 2014, the theater school will turn 100 years old, and the theater will only be 93.

- How do you find talent?

We find talents all over Russia. The competition for admission to our institute for all the years, as long as I have been aware of myself, is approximately 3,000 people per place. Since April, our teachers have been listening to 150 - 200 people twice a week. We allow everyone who wants to do theater to come... Until last competition 40 people arrive, 25 of them remain who will study at the institute. There is only one criterion - we select truly gifted people. We sometimes have students who, under no circumstances, would ever be accepted into a course by any theater university. They cannot be called brilliant handsome men and beauties, but they are talented. And only we can afford to do such things - to enroll people on the basis of their inherent talent, and not on their participation in a beauty contest.
But if you only saw those whom we chose from these many thousands of applicants... The very best... But they also move poorly, speak poorly, cannot sing - nothing. These are the best!.. And then everyday work begins for them from 9 am to 11 pm, every day, for 3 years. Only by the third year do they become able to do little, little shows, as they say, for dads and moms. And only in the fourth year do graduation performances appear, for which we open the doors to the audience. It is almost impossible to get to the performances of our theater school in Moscow. They all sell out. From September until the end of May, students perform plays almost every evening and learn to be in the repertoire. Here it is - another advantage of the Russian repertory theater, when today they play a comedy, tomorrow - a drama, the day after tomorrow they sing and dance or read classics. Great school!

- Where can you meet your graduates after graduation?

The Vakhtangov Theater has the right of “first night”. Until a graduate appears at the Vakhtangov Theater, he cannot go to any other theater. Of course, there are exceptions, as, for example, happened with Natalya Gundareva, who was offered to stay in the theater, but she said: “What am I going to play for you? At the Mayakovsky Theater they offered me the role of Lipochka from Ostrovsky,” and did not go to the Vakhtangov Theater. In general, for a large percentage of graduates of the Shchukin School, getting into the Vakhtangov Theater is a great honor. But here another story begins. Actors' salaries are very low, and if offers arise that are interesting from a commercial point of view, for example, to star in some television series, then the young talent is not always able to resist...

- What is the reason for the short-term “tours” of the Shchukin Theater School in Geneva?

We came here at the invitation of the University Center in Geneva, which is headed by T.I. Gasanov. This is our first experience, but we agreed that every year at the end of March - beginning of April we will come to Geneva with the graduating class to show the performance and new works.

At the end of the performance “We Dance and Sing,” you announced from the stage that a drama school was enrolling at the University Center in Geneva. Did we hear right?

No, you heard right. Indeed, together with T. I. Gasanov, we are thinking through the concept of creating a department of a theater institute on the basis of the University Center in Geneva. We don’t yet know exactly what structure it will have, we are thinking about it. But the fact that there will be such a faculty is a fact.

- Switzerland and Geneva, in particular, are not recognized centers of theatrical art, like, for example, London or Paris. Why did you choose Geneva?

I was in Geneva about 15 years ago. For 10 days at the Bolshoi Theater, with translation for the Swiss public, we played the play “Guilty Without Guilt” by Ostrovsky, directed by Fomenko. We had a packed house every day. There were, of course, many Russian spectators, but the main audience consisted of the Swiss. We were received very warmly. To say that people in Switzerland do not like theater is wrong. But there is no famous theater school built on recognized traditions here. Therefore, we will try to fill the existing gap.

- Who will study at the theater department in Geneva?

Yes, anyone who wants. In addition to Russian people, who traditionally form the basis of the student population of the Theater Institute. Shchukin, I hope that both the Swiss and the Genevans, and perhaps residents of other countries, will have a desire to enroll in our faculty. For now, we are focusing on the Russian audience and will soon announce a competition in Moscow. Let's see what the reaction will be. I do not rule out that there will be people who want to study in Geneva. By the way, people from all over the world come to study with us in Moscow: from America, France, Israel, Korea, Bulgaria... But since we are a Russian school, we can accept only 5-6 foreigners for the course. Therefore, if a branch of our theater school appears in Geneva and this becomes known, then foreign students will have more opportunities to learn theater skills from Russian teachers.

Marina Timasheva: In November, the Evgeni Vakhtangov Theater celebrates its 90th anniversary. On November 13, instead of anniversary celebrations, the theater gave the premiere of the play “Pier”, in which all the luminaries of the Vakhtangov Theater are involved. We have already talked about this on the daytime broadcasts of Radio Liberty, and we will return to talking about this amazing work. And now I invite you to listen to the story of actor, theater teacher and TV presenter Pavel Lyubimtsev. He is a graduate of the Shchukin school, a patriot and historian of the Vakhtangov Theater. My colleague Valentin Baryshnikov spoke with Pavel Lyubimtsev.

Pavel Lyubimtsev: The history of the Vakhtangov Theater is unusual. This is one of the very rare examples of how theater was born from drama school. It usually happens - usually the theater appears first, and then a school is born with it. And Vakhtangov began by mastering the elements of acting. This happened in 1914. First, he and young studio members, members of the so-called Student Studio, staged the play “The Larins’ Estate” based on the play by Boris Zaitsev. This performance failed, which did not discourage the young studio members or Vakhtangov at all. He came to them backstage after the performance and said: “Well, we failed. If you want, we can continue, but we will start not with a performance, but with serious study. And on October 23, 1914, Vakhtangov conducted the first lesson using the Stanislavsky system. This is the date of birth of the Vakhtangov Theater School, now the Shchukin Theater Institute. And the theater arose later. On November 13, 1921, when the Vakhtangov Studio acquired the brand of the Art Theater, it began to be called the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. And it was a discovery - then there was already something to show. There was a gala concert in which Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky took part, they played “The Miracle of St. Anthony,” a play by Maurice Maeterlinck - this is one of Vakhtangov’s directorial works, which was created after the first student, still educational, excerpts. This, it seems to me, determines the originality of the Vakhtangov Theater. That is, it began as a school, and Evgeniy Bagrationovich would like to consider his performances as performances for the school, and not vice versa. Vakhtangov lived a very short life, only 39 years old, Vakhtangov staged few performances and, nevertheless, turned out to be a bright light in the history of Russian theater of the twentieth century and gave his students a powerful charge for long years forward. The charge is not only aesthetic - they accepted his professional lessons, but also an ethical charge - for a very long time they retained this very studio spirit, collectivity, “swarm” existence. A rare fact! After the death of Vakhtangov (he died in 1922) they were left without a leader, although with a very bright performance “Princess Turandot”, which Vakhtangov did not even see as a performance, he saw a dress rehearsal at night, he was mortally ill when he released this play. But being left without a leader, they, firstly, retained their independence, and, secondly, from 1922 to 1939 they did not have a single leader, that is, they collectively managed the theater. Moreover, the theater was brilliant, extremely popular, with a special troupe, unlike anything in the then brilliant theatrical Moscow. Only in 1939 Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov became the director of the theater. They somehow carried the studio spirit through all these years.

Valentin Baryshnikov: These people, as far as I know, were not professionals; Vakhtangov worked with non-professionals, which, as far as I understand, even earned him criticism at the Moscow Art Theater. The people who produced the play ''The Miracle of St. Anthony'', then ''Turandot'', did this in 1921 and early 1922. During the devastation, in the difficult post-war times. Who are these people who decided to engage in theater?

Pavel Lyubimtsev: Everyone has their own destiny. They were young, they were students, they were representatives Russian intelligentsia, and Vakhtangov made these young people professionals. And, most importantly, they were very special individuals. It is extremely pleasant to name the most glorious names. Let's say Boris Vasilyevich Shchukin, an absolutely amazing character actor. He was very young when he played a priest, curé in “The Miracle of St. Anthony”, then in “The Wedding” he played Father Zhigalov, and in “Turandot” he played Tartaglia. Shchukin became a great artist and this is evident from his roles, which are recorded in films. For example, ''Lenin in October'' and ''Lenin in 1918'', films by Roma. They are, of course, so mythical, but Shchukin plays there amazingly, brilliantly from the point of view of acute characterization - he not only looks like Lenin, he creates a wonderful artistic image.

Or, say, Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov, an individuality unlike anyone else: a strange combination of sharp-characteristic external data and romantic, spiritualized talent. Ruben Simonov was a man of very bright Caucasian appearance, he was Armenian by nationality and, as Alla Aleksandrovna Kazanskaya, a wonderful artist and teacher at the Shchukin School, joked, “in our time, young Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov would not be accepted into any theater institute.” He was dark-skinned, dark-eyed, black-haired, he was small in stature, he had a strange voice, a peculiar diction, and at the same time he played not only character roles, but romantic roles - he played Don Quixote, Cyrano de Bergerac and was sparkling, unusually talented . There are no such individuals as Ruben Simonov. Or, say, Cecilia Lvovna Mansurova - completely unique, irregular, with an unforgettable voice, red-haired, fragile, strange. One could even say that all the best Vakhtangov actresses tried to imitate Mansurova in some way. And the originality of the voices of Vakhtangov’s actresses comes from Cecilia Lvovna. And her voice can be heard, performances with her participation have been recorded, including “Filumena Marturana,” where she played with Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov.

Tragic actress Anna Alekseevna Orochko, who played few roles, but apparently amazed with her dramatic temperament. God-given comedian Anatoly Iosifovich Goryunov. Such a wise character artist Joseph Moiseevich Tolchanov. A beauty, the unforgettable Marya Davydovna Sinelnikova, just a black rose - I had the opportunity to work with her a little at the Shchukin School, she was a beauty until her old age. In a word, the troupe was somehow unique, consisting of amazing individuals. Yuri Aleksandrovich Zavadsky left and returned, who also does not need much introduction cultured people, because Zavadsky later became an outstanding Soviet director, retained his unearthly beauty. The lines of Marina Tsvetaeva are dedicated to Zavadsky:

You are as forgetful as you are unforgettable.
- Oh, you look like your smile! –
Should I say more? - Golden morning is more beautiful!
Should I say more? - Alone in the entire universe!
Love itself, a young prisoner of war,
Sculpted bowl by Cellini's hand.

Friend, allow me to speak in an old way
To say the most tender love in the world.
I love you.- The wind howls in the fireplace.
Leaning on his elbows - staring into the heat of the fireplace -
I love you. My love is innocent.
I speak like little children.

Friend! All will pass! Temples are clenched in the palms,
Life will unclench! - Young prisoner of war,
Love will let you go, but - inspired -
My winged voice prophesies to everyone -
About what once lived on earth
You are as forgetful as you are unforgettable!

Wow! This is how Tsvetaeva writes about Zavadsky. That is, it was an extraordinary troupe. And they were all raised by Yevgeny Bagrationovich. Well, I still found some of his direct students. For example, Vera Konstantinovna Lvova taught at the Shchukin School. She was a modest actress, but she was a passionately devoted person to the theater and a wonderful teacher, and she perfectly mastered the elements of skill and taught. Alexandra Isaakovna Remizova became an excellent director, she is the youngest of Vakhtangov’s students. Tolchanov came to our courses and gave lectures. In the late 70s they were still alive.
Boris Zakhava. What a figure! A powerful teacher, an amazing theater figure, the creator of the Shchukin School, director of “Egor Bulychev,” an unforgettable performance with Shchukin and Mansurova in the leading roles. Today we can see him in the film “War and Peace” by Sergei Bondarchuk, where he plays Kutuzov, and we can fully judge the scale of his personality and what a serious artist he was, a keeper of the hearth. He was the creator of the theory Vakhtangov School— having taken all the lessons from Vakhtangov, he then formulated them coherently, created, in my opinion, a wonderful method of educating young actors, which is still alive. The system he proposed was very simple and surprisingly practical, very deep, very natural, he had incredible patience. I can talk about the old Vakhtangovites for a very long time; this is an extremely dear topic for me.

Valentin Baryshnikov: The main success of the Vakhtangov Theater, the loudest, is the play “Princess Turandot” based on the play by Carlo Gozzi. It has always been difficult for me to understand how in that Moscow, at that time, such a play unexpectedly found success?

Pavel Lyubimtsev: The success of “Princess Turandot” is precisely due to the fact that it was precisely guessed, precisely chosen in Moscow in the early 20s. 1921 is the time when the NEP began, when hopes arose that the hungry, cold, scary, bloody time was over and normal life was beginning. And in this sense, the sparkling, light, playful tale of Carlo Gozzi turned out to be just right. If we talk about what “Turandot” represents theatrically, in it Vakhtangov creates what Mikhail Chekhov later called “the truth of the theater” - that is, it is theatrical, and, at the same time, unusually sincere and deep. Mikhail Chekhov writes: “Stanislavsky had a wonderful truth of life in his performances, but sometimes this was to the detriment of the theater. Meyerhold had sparkling theatricality, but there was often little truth in life in his performances. Vakhtangov combined in his works both the truth of life and theatricality, and the truth of the theater arose. What did Vakhtangov say to his students when he was working on ''Princess Turandot''? He said: “You must cry with different tears and carry your tears to the ramp.” The thing is, where is ''Turandot'', where the artists do not forget for a second that they are artists, that they are playing, that they are communicating with the audience (there was no ''fourth wall''), and then they should moments of absolutely authentic living life arise - real tears, real love and real joy. This, it seems to me, is the key to a correct understanding of Gozzi’s work, because Gozzi wrote quite aesthetic plays. That is, in the 18th century, he used the techniques of the old Italian Comedy of Masks, but created his very refined, very aristocratic works so that they were not just a game of the mind, but touching and exciting. To achieve this, the artists had to combine sharp, vibrant theatricality and striking sincerity. What actually happened in ''Princess Turandot''. But if we talk about whether the traditions of Gozzi are alive today, which continue from Vakhtangov, I can name the performance of the Satyricon Theater “The Blue Monster”, where all this is present. Konstantin Raikin, he is a Vakhtangovite, and he staged a Vakhtangov play, because there is an endlessly whimsical game, but in the end you begin to worry so much about how it will all end, whether the heroes will be saved or they will die, and you cry so many happy tears in the finale that this is exactly what Vakhtangov bequeathed. And this is a very special work, it turned out to be Vakhtangov’s swan song. Another thing is that Evgeniy Bagrationovich cannot be reduced to ''Turandot''. He is very different. He also staged (at about the same time as Turandot) “Gadibuk” by Ansky in the Jewish studio “Gabima” - a tragic, mystical, cabalistic performance. Or Vakhtangov, who staged “Eric XIV” at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater with Mikhail Chekhov in the title role. Or Vakhtangov, who staged Berger’s “The Flood,” such a cruel psychological drama. Vakhtangov cannot be reduced only to “Turandot”, this is one of his incarnations. Another thing is that this performance turned out to be extremely durable, although “Turandot” was performed before the war, until 1941, because in July 1941 a bomb hit the theater building and all the scenery was destroyed. After the war, ''Turandot'' was no longer performed, and then, in 1963, Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov resumed ''Princess Turandot'', as they say, ''according to Vakhtangov's drawing'', but it was a different performance, because the performance Vakhtangov was a poor studio, and the artists who played there were young and unknown to anyone. And in 1963, brilliant masters played who were nationally famous - Yulia Borisova, Mikhail Ulyanov, Vasily Lanovoy, Yuri Yakovlev, Nikolai Gritsenko, and many others. Lyudmila Vasilievna Maksakova was very young; perhaps she was not famous then. But this is fundamentally different.

It was a performance by famous performers in a brilliant, glorious theater. In general, it must be said that the period that is consecrated in the name of Ruben Simonov - from 1939 to 1968, is a very glorious period for the Vakhtangov Theater, when a large group of amazing actors was formed. Many of them are alive today and play, some are no longer there, Gritsenko is gone, Ulyanov is gone, but Borisova works, Yakovlev works, Etush works, Lanovoy works, Maksakova works, Shalevich - these are all wonderful masters who were formed by Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov, and this period, too, it seems to me, should not be hushed up.

Valentin Baryshnikov: I always imagined that the Vakhtangov Theater and its tradition were something easy, and it was always unclear to me what, for example, Stanislavsky found in Turandot, who, according to stories, went to the terminally ill Vakhtangov to congratulate him. What was this for the Moscow Art Theater with its traditions of psychological theater?

Pavel Lyubimtsev: Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky assessed “Turandot” impartially - he saw the freshness and youth of this performance and really appreciated the consistency that Vakhtangov showed precisely as Stanislavsky’s student. Stanislavsky should not be reduced only to everyday theater. This was everyday theater in the practice of the Art Theatre, but Stanislavsky should not be considered only an everyday realist. Well, read something about how Stanislavsky staged ''Army Heart'' in 1926. It was a highly theatrical, grotesque performance. Or 'The Marriage of Figaro'. So he, too, was looking for a way to an acute form and to real theatricality. When today they say that the Moscow Art Theater is only about “playing yourself,” this is not true. Even look at the photographs of old Moscow Art Theater artists, how they create images, how they change from role to role. Stanislavsky in different roles, if we talk about photographs (and there are many of them), these are simply different people. So Stanislavsky needed the roots of theatricality, so he welcomed Turandot, seeing in it a worthy continuation, the development of the traditions of the Art Theater. But the Vakhtangov Theater is also not reducible to light and cheerful. Yes, of course, they played "The Straw Hat", yes, of course, they played "Mademoiselle Nitouche", yes, of course, "Turandot" always carried its originality and charm, but alongside this they also played tragic performances, and very realistic, truthful. I have already mentioned ''Egor Bulychev''. If we talk about more recent practice, for example, in my adolescence, in 1971 (I was just a boy), I watched, say, Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” staged Alexandra Isaakovna Remizova with the unforgettable Nikolai Olimpievich Gritsenko in the role of Prince Myshkin. It was so piercing, it was so exciting, there was such tragic power in it! Borisova (Nastasya Filippovna) seemed skinless, all made up of kinks, nerves, sharp corners, and Ulyanov in the role of Rogozhin - these are also Vakhtangovites. Don’t think that the Vakhtangov Theater is necessarily only vaudeville, operetta or “Princess Turandot”. No, the Vakhtangov Theater is an endless variety. But in any genre, the Vakhtangov Theater is a holiday in its best manifestations - a holiday in tragedy, a holiday in everyday drama, a holiday in comedy, a holiday in a fairy tale. In all this there is a holiday. And one more very important circumstance. The Vakhtangov Theater, in its classical form, has always been an acting theater. Evgeniy Bagrationovich, of course, was a powerful director, a brilliant director, but, above all, he was a teacher. And his students, the best Vakhtangov directors, were all teachers: Boris Zakhava, and Ruben Simonov, and Alexandra Remizova, and Joseph Rapoport - they are all teachers. And the performances were, first of all, acting performances. It so happened that if we talk about major directors who worked at the Vakhtangov Theater, the name of Alexei Dmitrievich Popov appears, who worked at the Vakhtangov Theater until, in my opinion, 1930. But he was also an outstanding teacher, which he proved with his subsequent life both at GITIS and at the Army Theater. This, it seems to me, is very important, and this is what the Vakhtangov Theater needs today, namely, attention to the actor, the implementation of creative ideas through the actor. This in the Vakhtangov Theater, it seems to me, comes from the roots, from the Vakhtangov tradition.

Marina Timasheva: Valentin Baryshnikov spoke with Pavel Lyubimtsev about the history of the Vakhtangov Theater, which just turned 90 years old. And I would like to note that the current director of the theater, Rimas Tuminas, who is also an excellent teacher, composed a new play “The Marina” in full accordance with the traditions of the Vakhtangov Theater - this is a celebration of tragedy and the implementation of all ideas through the outstanding artists of this theater.

Radio Liberty

Posted on Friday, November 18, 2011: 19:49 in the category , . You can subscribe to comments on this post via the comments feed. You can

Childhood, youth and student years of Evgeny Vakhtangov Evgeny Vakhtangov was born on February 13, 1883 in Vladikavkaz into a Russian-Armenian merchant family. His father was a large tobacco manufacturer and hoped that his son would continue his business. The customs in the house were harsh, the father was a cruel man, Eugene was constantly afraid of him. Vakhtangov became interested in theater during his high school years and decided to devote his whole life to it. Despite his father’s prohibitions, Evgeniy performed extensively and successfully on amateur stages in Vladikavkaz during his high school years. After graduating from high school, Evgeny Vakhtangov entered Moscow University in the physics and mathematics department and immediately joined the student theater group. In his second year, Vakhtangov transferred to the Faculty of Law and in the same year made his debut as a director, staging the student play “Teachers” based on the play by O. Ernst. The performance took place on January 12, 1905 and was given to benefit those in need. In 1904-1905, Vakhtangov participated in illegal youth gatherings. In factories and factories, together with revolutionaries, he distributes revolutionary proclamations and leaflets. On the day of the December uprising of 1905, Vakhtangov built barricades in one of the Moscow alleys and participated in the creation of sanitary aid for the wounded. In the summer of 1909, Evgeny Vakhtangov led the Vladikavkaz artistic and dramatic circle and staged plays in it "Uncle Ivan" A.P. Chekhov and "At the Gates of the Kingdom" K. Hamsun. Vakhtangov’s father was again furious, believing that the posters for performances with the name Vakhtangov being posted around the city dishonored him and caused moral damage to the factory. Vakhtangov again spent the summer of 1910 in Vladikavkaz, together with his wife and little son Seryozha. Evgeny Bagrationovich staged here an operetta by local author M. Popov, which was successful in Vladikavkaz and Grozny. Vakhtangov left the Faculty of Law and entered the A. Adashev School of Drama in Moscow, after which in 1911 he was accepted into the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater. Vakhtangov’s acquaintance with Stanislavsky and “fantastic realism” Soon K.S. drew attention to the young actor. Stanislavsky. He instructed Vakhtangov to conduct practical classes using his method of acting at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. It was in this studio that Vakhtangov’s talent was fully revealed. And as an actor, he became famous in the role of Fraser in Berger's The Deluge. On the stage of the studio, Vakhtangov created several chamber performances in which he also acted as an actor. In the First Studio, Evgeniy Bagrationovich was constantly looking for new image techniques psychological state hero. Over time, the rigid framework of Stanislavsky’s recommendations began to seem cramped to Vakhtangov. He got carried away theatrical ideas Vsevolod Meyerhold, but soon rejected them. Yevgeny Vakhtangov formed his own understanding of theater, quite different from Stanislavsky, which he formulated in one short slogan - “fantastic realism”. On the basis of this “fantastic realism” Vakhtangov built the theory of his own theater. Like Stanislavsky, he believed that the main thing in a theatrical performance is, naturally, the actor. But Vakhtangov proposed to strictly separate the performer’s personality from the image that he embodies on stage. Vakhtangov began to stage performances in his own way. The decorations in them consisted of the most ordinary household items. Based on them, with the help of light and draperies, artists created fantastic views of fairy-tale cities, as, for example, this was done in Vakhtangov’s last and most beloved performance “Princess Turandot”. Vakhtangov also proposed making changes to the actors’ costumes. For example, an unusual theatrical robe, embroidered and decorated, was put on a modern costume. To further emphasize the conventionality of what was happening on stage, the actors put on costumes right in front of the audience, thus transforming from an actor into a character in a play in a matter of seconds. For the first time in the history of theater, a boundary arose between character and artist. Vakhtangov himself, who enthusiastically accepted the revolution of 1917, believed that such a manner acting is quite consistent with the new times, since the revolution sharply separated new world from the old, passing away. Evgeny Vakhtangov’s attempts to create a “people’s” theater Vakhtangov tried to create a new, non-elite, but “people’s” theater. From morning to evening he was on his feet - rehearsals took place in three studios: the Moscow Art Theater, the Jewish studio "Habima" and in the troupe People's Theater, lessons, preparing a performance for the anniversary of the revolution. Vakhtangov dreamed of staging Byron’s “Cain” and the Bible, but death prevented these plans. Just a year before his death, he founded the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, which later became the State Theater named after E.B. Vakhtangov. At the very beginning of 1921, Vakhtangov’s rehearsals in the Third Studio temporarily stopped. Evgeniy Bagrationovich devoted all his time to the Habima studio, where he completed work on “Gadibuk” (1922). After the delivery of the Gadibuk, Vakhtangov went to a sanatorium for 10 days. In 1921, on the stage of his studio, he staged M. Maeterlinck’s play “The Miracle of St. Anthony” (second edition). In this production, Vakhtangov has already tried to realize his innovative ideas. It was a very bright spectacle, in which both the director and the actors formed a single creative ensemble. The performance managed to convey to the audience the complex symbolism of the play and the metaphorical thinking of the playwright. Vakhtangov’s production of “Princess Turandot” Based on the fairy tale by Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi, Vakhtangov, shortly before his death, staged “Princess Turandot”. With this performance he opened a new direction in theater directing. Using masked characters and techniques Italian comedy del arte, Vakhtangov filled the fairy tale with modern problems and topical issues. The heroes of the fairy tale immediately discussed everything that happened in post-revolutionary Russia from the stage as the action progressed. However, Vakhtangov proposed to present modern issues not directly, but in the form of a kind of game - polemics, disputes or dialogues of heroes with each other. Thus, the actors not only recited the memorized text of the play, but also gave characteristics, often very ironic and evil, to all the events taking place in the country. On the night of February 23-24, 1922, the last rehearsal in Vakhtangov’s life took place. The rehearsal began with the installation of lights. Vakhtangov was very ill; he had a temperature of 39 degrees. He rehearsed in a fur coat, with a wet towel wrapped around his head. Returning home after the rehearsal, Vakhtangov lay down and never got up again. After the first rehearsal run "Princess Turandot" Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky told his brilliant student, who no longer got out of bed, that he could fall asleep as a winner. On May 29, Vakhtangov’s wife Nadezhda Mikhailovna called the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater and said: “Come quickly!” Before his death, Vakhtangov lost consciousness at times. In delirium I waited for the arrival of Leo Tolstoy. He imagined himself as a statesman, gave instructions to his students, asked what had been done in the fight against fires in Petrograd. Then he started talking about art again. Evgeniy Bagrationovich died, surrounded by his students. Just before his death, consciousness returned to him. He sat down, looked at the students for a long time and said very calmly: - Goodbye. “Princess Turandot” was Vakhtangov’s last work; he did not live only a few weeks before the premiere. Vakhtangov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery. The principles of “moving theatre” embedded in “Turandot”, dynamic, changing, and therefore ageless with time, were forever preserved in the traditions of the future theater named after E.B. Vakhtangov, into which the Moscow Art Theater studio grew. And “Princess Turandot” remained the calling card of the Vakhtangov Theater. Over the years, Princess Turandot herself was played by wonderful actresses of this theater - Cecilia Mansurova and Yulia Borisova, Prince Calaf - Yuri Zavadsky, Ruben Simonov and Vasily Lanovoy. Fifty years after the premiere, the theater resumed this Vakhtangov production; “Princess Turandot” continues on the stage of the theater today. To summarize: 1. The action must be extremely active 2. Fantastic realism (the relationship between content and form) The theater seeks its own forms, requires other forms, each play gives birth to its own form. There are so many performances, so many forms. The means can be learned, but the form must be created, imagined. Hood. The face of the performance is the play itself with all its features; - time and modernity; - the theater group, its level; - Synthesis of the art of experience and performance (the main thing on stage is experience, and performance is a form of revealing this experience); - each performance is a celebration BASIS SCHOOLS: interaction of a sense of truth and a sense of form, a synthesis of experience and representation, internal and external playing techniques. Theater of bright form and deep content.

Vakhtangov had a wonderful rule: his own productions, his own pedagogical work in various studio groups it is necessary to “hand over”, as he put it, to Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, and the team of the Art Theater. He often mentions this in his diaries, rightly believing that in this way an organic connection is established between his directorial and teaching activities and the teachings of Stanislavsky and creative life MHT.

The first performance that Vakhtangov staged at the Moscow Art Theater Studio was Hauptmann’s “Feast of Peace.” The premiere took place in 1913. This performance was the first passionate embodiment of Vakhtangov’s passion for the principles of the new “school of experience” that Stanislavsky proclaimed. As the famous theater critic P.A. wrote. Markov, already in the “Festival of Peace” a young student of Sulerzhitsky discovered own goals and individual directing techniques. Vakhtangov enlarges the play and events, makes them more global, reveals the most complex borderline situations, where everyone’s monologue is the last confession containing some kind of tragic beginning. The heroes of Vakhtangov’s play are simply burned with a passion for analyzing life. The elders of the Moscow Art Theater, led by Stanislavsky, did not accept the performance: they found the actors’ performance neurasthenic. And it is not surprising that Vakhtangov’s teachers, seeing their principles brought to their most extreme expression, stopped in bewilderment in front of such an irreconcilable consistency of their student, not recognizing the fruits of their own teaching in his work. But, above all, this performance was an extremely passionate expression of the painful search for those paths that lead to moral ideal kindness, love and humanity. The director of this performance was equally ardently devoted to both one and the other: the principles of ethical theater and the teachings of Stanislavsky. For him these were two sides of the same coin. He himself was, as it were, at the intersection of these two influences. They merged in his consciousness into one whole, having first passed, of course, through the unique originality of his own human and creative personality and, as a result, turning into something third - specifically Vakhtangov.

Vakhtangov staged the second play, “The Flood,” by the writer Berger, within the framework of the tasks of the ethical theater and the Moscow Art Theater Studio. For Vakhtangov, this play says: as long as the capitalist system and the associated exploitation of man by man exists, as long as there is social inequality, the pursuit of the dollar, the stock exchange, it is useless to dream of love and unity of hearts. The objective conditions of the capitalist system are such that they kill any possibility of the triumph of “good” feelings. But at the Art Theater Studio, “The Flood” is interpreted differently. “Everyone is sweet and warm-hearted,” says Sulerzhitsky about the heroes of “The Flood,” “everyone has excellent opportunities to be kind, but the street, the dollars and the stock exchange have taken them away. Open their kind heart, and let them reach the point of ecstasy in their rapture from new, revealed feelings, and you will see how the viewer’s heart will open. And the viewer needs this, because he has a street, gold, a stock exchange... For this alone, it’s worth staging “The Flood.” Vakhtangov wanted to stage the play not in order to open the hearts of the audience with feelings of love and forgiveness, but in order to awaken hatred and a thirst for struggle in their hearts - this would be a task worthy of the high and truthful art needed at that time. In this performance, the views of Vakhtangov and Sulerzhitsky collided, and in his person the views of the entire Art Theater did not go in the direction in which Vakhtangov wanted to move.

Vakhtangov had a difficult time experiencing the revolution. But she became the catalyst for his ideas and aspirations; after the revolution, he makes a series of entries in his diary in order to summarize, theoretically comprehend and justify the work already done. Vakhtangov wrote in his diary: “To the new people... we must show the good that was, and preserve this good only for this people, and in the new conditions of life, where the main condition is the new people, we must listen just as talentedly as in old life to create something new, valuable, great. Only the people create, only they carry and creative power and the grain of future creation, writes Vakhtangov. - If an artist wants to create “new things”, to create after the Revolution came, then he must create “together” with the people. Not for him, not for his sake, not outside of him, but with him.” Vakhtangov develops a new idea of ​​the theater; after analyzing his experience and combining it with reality, he draws new conclusions about what kind of art should be in the theater in his own understanding. So, the conclusions drawn by Vakhtangov:

1. “The more persistently time demands from the artist, so that he not only deeply understands and appreciates reality, but also helps the people decisively rebuild it, the more hostile to art is the wingless philosophy of naturalism. It becomes an obvious obstacle to the development of new art, which should be born of the revolution”;

2. “We must more definitely express all our feelings, all our thoughts, all our criticism of the old world from new (this is the main thing!) positions that were given by the revolution, on which stand the victorious people, the people creating the revolution.”

3. “A new viewer came to the theater. For the theater to become effective, active, it needs to use all means to influence the consciousness of the viewer, it is necessary to return theatricality to the theater, it is necessary to use the entire arsenal of its weapons - not only experience, thought, word, but also movement, colors, rhythm, expressiveness of gesture, intonation, visual power of decoration and music. It is necessary to find in each performance a clear, clearly and sharply expressed form, subordinate to the single goal of the performance.”

Requirement for theatricality? A retreat from psychological realism? From the teachings of Stanislavsky? Not at all. Before the start of the new season (1920/1921), Vakhtangov writes a letter to Stanislavsky:

“Dear Konstantin Sergeevich, I ask you to forgive me for disturbing you with letters, but it’s so hard for me now, so difficult that I can’t help but turn to you. I will write about things that I have never told you out loud. I know that my earthly days are short. I calmly know that I will not live long, and I need you to finally know my attitude towards you, towards the art of the Theater and towards myself.

From the moment I got to know you, you became what I loved to the end, who I completely believed, who I began to live with and who I began to measure life by. With this love and admiration for you, I infected, both voluntarily and involuntarily, everyone who was deprived of knowing you directly. I thank life for giving me the opportunity to see you closely and allowing me to at least occasionally communicate with a world-class artist. It is with this love for you that I will die, even if you turn away from me. I don’t know anyone or anything higher than you.

In art, I love only the Truth that you talk about and that you teach. This Truth penetrates not only into that part of me, the modest part, which manifests itself in the theater, but also into the part that is defined by the word “man”. This Truth breaks me day after day, and if I don’t manage to become better, it’s only because I have to conquer a lot in myself. Day after day, this Truth aligns my attitude towards people, my demands on myself, my path in life, and my attitude towards art. Thanks to this Truth received from you, I believe that Art is service to the Highest in everything. Art cannot and should not be the property of a group, the property of individuals, it is the property of the people. Serving art is serving the people. An artist is not the value of a group - he is the value of a people. You once said: “The Art Theater is my civil service to Russia.” This is what fascinates me, me, a little person. It captivates me even if I am given nothing to do and if I do nothing. This phrase of yours is a symbol of faith for every artist...

I ask you to give me 2 years to create the face of my group. Let me bring you not excerpts, not a diary, but a performance in which the spiritual and artistic organism of the group will be revealed. I ask for these two years, if I am able to work, to prove to you my true love for you, my true worship of you, my boundless devotion to you.”

Almost at the same time, within two years, he creates productions of “The Miracle of St. Anthony”, “The Wedding”, “Eric XIV”, “Gadibuk” and “Princess Turandot”.

The first work carried out on the basis of new principles was the second version of the production of “The Miracle of St. Anthony”. The world that needed to be depicted on stage - the stupid and inert world of the hypocritical, greedy bourgeoisie - now evoked in Vakhtangov an island-hostile and mercilessly mocking attitude towards itself. The former “smile” turned into sarcasm, affectionate irony turned into scourging laughter, everyday comedy began to sound like evil social satire, the satirical attitude towards the person portrayed, which previously seemed “terrible” to Vakhtangov, was now the basis of the performance.

Chekhov's "Wedding", which was first shown to the audience of the small hall of the Vakhtangov Studio on Mansurovsky Lane in the fall of 1920 in the "performing evening" of Chekhov's dramatizations, became the second performance. Vakhtangov planned to show “A Feast in the Time of Plague” by A.S. in completely new stage techniques on the same evening as “The Wedding.” Pushkin. In “The Wedding” there are plague-ridden inhabitants who have succumbed to the Plague, its servants, its slaves. And in Pushkin dramatic poem a challenge to proud people, affirmation of the power of free human will, glorification of life and its joys, which no Plague can break. Man triumphs. Strength of spirit brings people out of slavery. That's why there are two feasts in one evening. In “The Wedding,” Vakhtangov requires the actors to find, first of all, the “grain” of each role, from which, according to Stanislavsky’s teaching, everything else will grow.

In "Eric XIV" and "Gadibuk" Vakhtangov shows that any techniques - expressionistic, impressionistic, conventional, grotesque, whatever, can be successfully put at the service of Stanislavsky's genuine realism. It's all about the end goal. He managed to achieve the unity of deep content with the sharpest form. Vakhtangov demanded that actors not do anything “so-so” on stage; he demanded that nothing on stage be accidental. In order to achieve the concentration of the viewer's attention on one object common to all, Vakhtangov made the requirement that no one has the right to move on stage while another is speaking. This freezing in immobility will not seem deliberate, artificial to the viewer if each actor participating in a given scene justifies for himself the reason that should naturally and inevitably cause this stop. Using the technique from inside justified stops physical action With the continuity of the internal line of each actor, Vakhtangov achieved sculptural expressiveness of the mise-en-scenes and groupings. Every gesture, every intonation, every movement, every step, pose, grouping of masses, every stage and acting detail in its amazing skill is brought to technical perfection. Every stage and acting moment can be recorded as a frozen sculptural image. This sculpture, which, being the most characteristic feature his performances determines his theatrical form. Vakhtangov defined this theatrical form with the word “grotesque”. Many researchers put forward a theory about the divergence of views of Stanislavsky and Vakhtangov at this time. But a careful analysis of the correspondence and a conscientious study of Vakhtangov’s creative practice gives every reason to speak more about unanimity with Stanislavsky than about any disagreements between them. Stanislavsky's concern was obvious; he was afraid that his beloved student, in his passion for the grotesque, would slip onto the vicious path of “external exaggeration without internal justification,” in which the form turns out to be “larger and stronger than the content.” Vakhtangov's grotesque is deeply truthful, rich in ideological content of realistic art, possessing enormous power of artistic generalization. And it came very close to the ideal that Stanislavsky so clearly and strongly defined when speaking about the grotesque. Subsequently, having watched the performances staged by Vakhtangov, Stanislavsky admitted this and thereby finally buried the legend of the ideological break with his best student. Stanislavsky proclaimed Vakhtangov “the only successor,” prophetically calling him “the hope of Russian art, the future leader of the Russian theater.”

The theme of two worlds - the living and the dead - runs through Vakhtangov's last four performances. In “Eric” and “Gadibuk” the artist finds the most complete expression of the main theme that torments him - the correlation of the living and the dead with movement: he is looking not only for contrast, but is trying to discover interpenetration.

But Vakhtangov’s last work - “Princess Turandot” - breaks out of the circle outlined by a tragic theme, and is entirely devoted to a joyful, jubilant life; Death, which had come close to Vakhtangov’s life, has now left his work. Life with its joy, with its happiness, love and sunshine celebrates its victory over death in this last creation of Vakhtangov. In creating this performance, Vakhtangov proceeds from his idea of ​​commedia dell`arte. Vakhtangov, with the help of modern means of theatrical expression, wants to resurrect not external forms, but the essence, inner nature, spirit of ancient Italian comedy. The content of the fairy tale itself is presented in this performance as if “not seriously.” Soft, affectionate irony permeates the entire performance. But to present the naive content of Gozzi’s tale to the Soviet audience of those times with a serious face would be an unbearable falsehood. The viewer would feel the untruth in this, and the content of the tale would not captivate him at all. In Vakhtangov’s interpretation, the fairy tale captivated the viewer. For what happened on stage appeared as truth, as the fabulous truth of the theater, and the audience “believed” this truth.

There were a number of moments in “Princess Turandot” when the actors deliberately emphasized that on stage there was no life, but only a game, and thus, as it were, they exposed the illusory nature of the theater to the viewer. Why did Vakhtangov need these moments? Only so that next to them the moments of the actor’s sincere feeling would sound even stronger and thus the power of the theater, its ability to evoke in the viewer “faith” in the truth of stage life, would be demonstrated with the greatest completeness and strength. In other words, Vakhtangov in this performance sometimes deliberately destroyed the viewer’s “faith” only in order to show how easily and simply he could immediately restore it. “Grain” “Turandot” - transformation into your stage hero on stage, in front of the viewer. This is the artistic technique of the stage version of Gozzi's tale. On February 27, 1922, the young team of Vakhtangovites was in a state of indescribable excitement. The first performance of “Princess Turandot”! And what a crowd! In a small auditorium there are all the groups of the Art Theater: the main group led by K. S. Stanislavsky, First Studio, Second Studio, Habima Studio. No strangers. Just actors. The third studio of the Art Theater rents out its work to the Art Theater. Is it possible to forget this extraordinary evening? Is it possible to forget this sea of ​​laughter, these incessant applause, these endless applause at the end of the performance, these happy faces extraordinary spectators whom Vakhtangov, with the power of his art, turned into children for several hours!

Already after the first act, such a success was determined that no one in the studio expected. At the end, the “Bravo to Vakhtangov!” proclaimed in the hall. causes a storm of applause. Konstantin Sergeevich addresses the studio with a speech: “Over the twenty-three years of the existence of the Art Theater there have been few such victories. You have found what many theaters have been looking for in vain for so long!”

The creative path that Vakhtangov went through in a fairly short way cannot be called easy. It had its ups and downs. Vakhtangov went through experiments and experiments on the form of the performance, on the actor’s understanding of the image. He always tried not to change his feelings and attitude towards modernity, even if this somewhere contradicted the rules of the Art Theater. He did not reject modern theatrical experience, therefore Vakhtangov is mistakenly classified as a theatrical figure of formal or chamber theater. But this is not true. Vakhtangov is a student of Stanislavsky. And in order to be faithful to his teacher and preserve his legacy for future generations, the student must not only protect this inheritance, but also increase it, develop it, supplement it, and if necessary, then change it in some way, correct it, improve it - in a word, go further than your teacher. Vakhtangov did just that. For Vakhtangov, the system became the very foundation on which he was able to build his unique form of performance, which he himself called “fantastic realism.”