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Ekaterina Zueva
Theatre critic

I must say at once, there is no use to hope that theatre will disappear from human life, that it won’t be needed in the society. Theatre is a gigantic thing which, unlike more agile genres (such as cinema, photography and literary documentaries, day-labour literature, and literature in general, to say nothing about mass-media), turns with a creak, thinks long, walks round in circles in the labyrinths of ethics and aesthetics, but finally, having digested the epoch, produces something long-termed and of high quality.

At all times theatre has been in demand in the society. But, since the society is not homogeneous in its preferences, people choose different types of theatrical art. These types (of theatre) actually include a long line of theatre performances: drama as such, theatres for children and teenagers, opera, operetta, musical theatre, ballet shows, pantomime, puppet theatre of all kinds, song theatre, street happening, and many other borderline genres.

Generally speaking, theatre is a place where a spectator comes to watch an actor play. It is harder to answer the question “why?” Why does a human being need this rite – to go and to watch? And to watch not a recorded on a film action, but a live performance of live people which is taking place here and now? To answer this question we need a short preamble.
     
Homo ludens

Homo ludens, or “human playing”, today is approaching in its rank to homo sapiens, sometimes melting into it to form some other third quality in order to support this very human reasonableness. The question of “play” as a means of integration into society is far from being superficial. We can mention here a byword “social role”. Every one of us, resolving problems of survival, of incorporating ourselves into social life, of finding our place and realization of our aspirations, somehow comes into contact with the sphere of play.

More than that, playing is one of the most effective learning and teaching methods. From our early childhood we learn about the world playing. By the way, if somebody thinks that the actor’s profession is just based on the talent of aping, he/she is very much mistaken. Only that actor is really good who still feels him/herself an absorbed in play child. Hence the theatre slang about actors-children, and in a negative context – about “sons of bitches”. This is the characteristic of our nature that is used in different business training procedures, advanced language-teaching methods and other business role plays. Global informational intervention can be softened by a play-method of its perception. Willy-nilly one thinks about the name the famous seers brothers Strugatsky¹ gave to this new quality of the humanity – “the Ludens”. Maybe it was their joke or just my imagination that produced a palindrome ‘neluds’².     
     
Oh, it’s hard work to draw a hippo out of the bog³             

Let’s make it clear – we are talking about the Russian theatre, about the present-day theatre which is painfully changing its skin. The theatre in the trivial meaning of the word, used by people in everyday life. I mean the theatre which possesses or rents a building with a stage, a set of machines and electric equipment, with its own leader-director, and a company (whether a stock company or the one collected for a single theatre project). To cut a long story short, I mean the two slightly distinguishable forms of theatre existence: repertory and enterprise theatres.

As a synthetic art which includes many other kinds (music, choreography, decoration, fine art, theatrical architecture, performing art, and dramatics) theatre is now going through problems similar to those of an overgrown teenager: development of one group of vitals and obvious underdevelopment of the other. This leads, on the one hand, to some confusion seen with a naked eye, while, on the other hand, it is an essential condition of the future theatrical pluralism. Among other things it gives some reason to hope that the ‘ugly duckling’ phase won’t last long as a status.

As an art form which antecedes to some extent ‘the most mass of all arts,’⁴ theatre is (whether it wants it or not) a bearer of ideas, a generator and a forwarder of universal human values. The form of expression is not so important in this case. Theatre has long overlived the phase of Gogol’s “pulpit from which a lot of good things can be delivered to the people.” Transmitting their version of good, theatre performances can be compared to a slap in the face or an electric shock, to a bullet or a surgeon’s scalpel. Examples can be found among the latest much-talked-of productions which became major box office hits: The Vagina Monologues which spread over many theatres of  the country, or Fokin’s The Living Corpse in Alexandrinsky Theatre (people come here mostly because of the director’s name), or Moscow multimedia project Capital luring spectators with the name of a scandalous fiction writer Sorokin. But theatre is still a mirror for the society to look into. The last proof is the October premiere of the Riga Russian Theatre named after Chekhov Livejournal which used the innermost content of internet blogs as its dramatic basis.
     
No right for an error

By the way, the reason of theatre’s sluggishness lies in its ‘mass’ nature and the dearness of idea implementation. Solo art forms need, besides their followers’ desire to have their say, just some certain tools. Cinema being a mass art form nevertheless has managed to ‘jump on the bandwagon’, as every stage of creation is fixed for centuries and ‘the master’s last stroke’ is cutting and sound recording. With theatre everything is much more difficult. Having formed in the director’s mind, the play’s image goes through long stages of rehearsals demanding extraordinary coordination of all the process participants (from space design and run-throughs for words to the final full-dress dry run). Now add here the work of all ancillary services, such as stage-property makers, light and sound script arrangers, and you will understand that any show is piece-work. It is not an assembly line. If we compare theatre to its younger brother cinema, we’ll see that the latter can easily transport and reproduce its product. While a play, together with the troupe, stage scenery, live sound and light, strict requirements to the venue, is a large-scale thing. Only because it is live, true and genuine it is valued so highly.

What if, say, the director made a mistake and the implemented idea turned out to be short-lived, if in fact it became obsolete already at the stage of its implementation? What if the thoughts that disturb the director find response in the hearts of very few people? What if the creator, who is as human as you and I and is far from being a vessel of sacred knowledge, missed his/her target audience, misinterpreted the trends or just looked another way? And we can count quite a big number of these ‘ifs’, but theatre’s self-preservation instinct works, there is a kind of a safety valve which saves theatre form ruinous ventures. And since almost all theatres in Russia are now non-subsidy organizations they know very well the price of mistakes. Search for a ‘no-regret’ strategy demands from theatre leaders not only great powers of creative intuition, but also a thorough insight into processes developing in the society. The gigantic theatre mechanism has to move slowly, carefully, by feel.

The traditional tardiness of theatre at the stage of response to events hides evident indifference from the part of those who try to form cultural policy in our total ideological vacuum. Well, they just don’t need theatre as a mastermind with its unhandiness and heavy minds. Therefore they don’t want either to spend money on its support, or to include it into their set of agitation and propaganda means, for there’s a big variety of other high-speed cultural (and some not quite cultural) vehicles. They seem not to have the heart to shoot it dead (it is a living soul after all), so they have put it in cold storage, because theatre is no good in brainwashing. If it survives, they think, maybe we’ll make use of it. If it doesn’t – no big deal.

However, theatre survives and gives birth to new phenomena, uses new means of expression and finds new ideas on how to minimize expenses and to shorten its way to the audience. Sometimes theatre is nourished with fresh blood from the inside (side-projects of actors and small groups who create a product not associated directly with the source-brand) and sometimes from the outside. The inside initiative is first and foremost connected with the name of Evgeny Grishkovets and his one-man theatre where he is a playwright, a director, an actor, and a mastermind doing also many other not connected with histrionics things. The Grishkovets phenomenon has deep historic roots (although there are many jokes about one-man shows), but what is especially important about it is the fact that a theatre is born outside of the classical theatre context. In this sense Grishkovets as a ‘homo ludens’ is only the top of the iceberg which is a synthetic, self-sufficient, Vitruvian human being with an individual way of self-realization. And there will be others, you can be sure of that.
     
The track of it, though trodden by the people, shall not become overgrown⁵                     

As for the ability to attract big audiences, theatre lags behind as well: it doesn’t gather stadiums, doesn’t bring any money to the national treasury. According to current standards it is a small-scale non-profitable art. However, from the point of view of the world culture integration, it is prestigious. Theatre’s importance for the people is measured by the numbers of those interested in the theatre product. Today the society takes a quite vivid interest in theatre: spectators go to theatres against all odds. They have different motivation though, and the quality of the consumed ‘intellectual food’ is also different.

Speaking about the two capitals, theatres are practically flourishing there. They don’t live in clover of course, except for the most widely promoted theatre brands, but still. Speaking about big towns’ theatres, they are surviving. Speaking about the upcountry theatres, of the so-called ‘district level’ (in towns with not more than 200 thousand people), theatres there are almost dead. Very quickly died those who had been refused any state financial support; those who get some dribs and drabs are dying now.

There are examples of more or less successful attempts to transform amateur companies into professional ones. One of them is the students’ theatre Mannequin, known today as Theater+Cinema (in the city of Chelyabinsk). But upon closer examination we see that any success is connected with the support from local authorities. Recently a Chelyabinsk centre that positioned itself as an open public art theatre has been refused any municipal funding. Reasoning – a small number of theatre-goers in the city: just 8% (Russian average is 6%). Theatres’ commercial success depends considerably on the good will of the autocrats: it will be enough to mention the scandal in Yekaterinburg when the building occupied by Nikolay Kolyada’s unique theatre was smashed. The authorities don’t consider theatre needs their first priority, so we can’t expect any comprehensive programme of our country’s theatre heritage preservation to appear.

I should say that four years ago Herman Greff, the minister for economic development who has recently left the government, let the cat out of the bag speaking about the theatre network existence in Russia in a peremptory tone: the state should support only state theatres in big cities. Because the state can’t afford more. Full-stop. It must be said that the number of the privileged state theatres is not big. According to the “Theatrical Russia” reference book, the list of federal importance theatres includes 26 institutions. 18 of them are situated in Moscow, one in Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Yaroslavl each, the rest are in St. Petersburg. 418 theatres are considered to be state ones but under regional control. 94 belong to the category ‘departmental’ and 27 – private. Out of all ‘generation NEXT’-oriented theatres we have 107 puppet theatres, 35 Theatres for Young Spectators, 75 children’s and young people’s theatres. Among the latter not all theatres can be called classical, because this category includes Ice Show and Fashion Theatres. Nevertheless, almost one third of all existing theatres are young audience-oriented, and only three of them are of federal subordination (1 young people’s, 1 puppet’s, 1 musical theatre, and all three are in Moscow).

I haven’t heard of a federal subordination theatre which would not complain about disregard from the authorities and poor financial support. Each of the survived theatres receives financial support from three sources: sponsor’s means, state budget funds, and its own earnings. Since the dawn of perestroika when homeland theatrical art was given Western direction of development where there is a fully formed system of enterprise and amateur theatres, unique Russian situation (existence of repertory theatres) has been seriously challenged. But strangely enough it still is a reality. Financial support, though weak and scarce, offered by budgets of different levels shows that theatre is not absolutely forgotten. But in the line of cultural and ideological priorities it stands on a sidetrack. Such attitude to formation of cultural environment definitely lowered the artistic standards having redirected most theatrical products to pure staginess and entertainment. It is seen from the theatres’ tour policy. Director Yuri Lyubimov called such situation “censorship through financial support”.

Today even the country’s best theatres have to sit on two chairs at once. For example, Moscow Art Theatre gives free performances for students of Moscow universities with one aim – to help in educating future spectators, to encourage their interest in theatre. But to be able to give free performances, they must do something to cover inevitable losses. Alexandrinsky theatre has developed a joint programme with universities providing a laboratory ground for young artists, designers, journalists. Theatre management bends over backwards to obtain funds and to cover the expenses. Hence the restaurants, billiard halls, saunas, night clubs, VIP-parties, famous actors selling their media faces in light entertaining and often vulgar shows. Theatre has sacrificed and continues to sacrifice parts of its body, figuratively speaking, to please and cater for consumers’ contingent in order to keep an opportunity to independently transmit the truth the way it perceives it.

Our Melpomene has to follow the way of lowered artistic standards on demand of a certain type of the public to gain some maneuver space and be able to create really worthy and high-quality plays. This free space becomes an elite product, which is not for everyone but for the inquisitive minds. Of course, this elitism isn’t a bed of roses; though such icon directors as Oleg Tabakov say to their less successful colleagues (not word-for-word): first try to build such an entertainment complex, make good money, keep the repertory of high artistic merit, and only then judge me for venality.

So, this is the way they live: “spit to eternity” (according to Faina Ranevskaya⁶) and create this eternity at the same time.
     
Who is the boss in the theatre?

Whose thoughts, whose feelings and whose pain is being transmitted by the theatre mechanism? The director’s. Of course, some people can make an objection and say that the basis is certainly a dramatic work. It is true. But what happens to this dramatic work after it goes through the demiurge’s creative mind is what the audience will ultimately see. And the audience will in the long run accept this interpretation or not.

We can easily see from the theatres’ repertory that most of them came to standstill. A quick look through the repertory allows to see that classics serves them as a good anchor. It is mostly Russian classics: among the early authors Ostrovsky, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Sukhovo-Kobylin are the leaders. Among the later ones there are Vampilov and Shvarz. They are followed by foreign classics – Shakespeare (he is beyond comparison), Anouilh, Goldoni, De Filippo and others. Lower in rank stands staging of literary works (homeland and sometimes unfamiliar to our audience foreign ones). Foreign playwrights dominate in the commercial sector. Representatives of new drama close the list.

But theatre yields to cinema here too. The drama material taken into work by theatre directors so cautiously is much faster turned into film scripts (for different reasons) and is much faster implemented in “the most important of all arts”⁷. This happened to brothers Presnyakov’s play Playing a Victim and I. Vyrypayev’s Euphoria.   

Such tendency shows that theatre bosses are not ready to accept the new drama language and subject matter, preferring to experiment in the framework of traditional drama which has stood the test of time. And obviously they fail to find universal human features, universal tragedies or eternal topics in the new drama wave. Or maybe their cultivated taste and education prevent them from signing a draft playbill with the following text on it: “after the scandalous novel of so-and-so”?

But everything is not as bad as it seems. As it usually happens, all new things after they arise in the depths of the old threaten to get rid of it or at least to win their niche. The major theatre figure – the director – is not a crowned hostage of the theatrical serfdom system any more. Directors as idea locomotives ply between theatres and countries trying their hand at other genres, including opera and ballet performances, and they don’t overlook the opportunities that cinema offers them. A wandering freelance guest director is a sign of our time. The names of ‘fashionable’ stage directors are known to everybody – Vladimir Ageev, Yuri Butusov, Kirill Serebrennikov.
     
Nature abhors a vacuum

In the meantime people don’t stop going to the theatre. Here we have come to the question – why do people go to the theatre? They go there for the same reason as their predecessors – to recognize themselves, to think over the lives of other people. To taste a thought served on a dish of emotions. To get some soul and mind fuel which is produced right before their eyes and is decanted into the auditorium. To obtain some emotional experience that can trigger conclusions. To see the reaction of a live actor who perceives the immediate reaction of the audience. Stanislavsky was absolutely right about it. Today, just as before, people come to the theatre for allusions and underlying messages, as well as the outspoken text.

Surprisingly, this almost religious attitude of the people to the theatre art was made use of by the rescued from obscurity Orthodox Church – a new driving force in our society. If one and a half centuries ago actors were buried outside the church graveyards – so much they were unwanted by the church then, today we witness how some confessions of faith turn to the theatre. I don’t mean just the revived mystery plays or puppet-shows of the Nativity. There are now ‘ecclesiastical’ theatres that stage, apart from the classics, the plays written by the clergymen.

Theatrical behaviour, demand for play, for performance spills out into the streets through representatives of certain subcultures who wear costumes, not clothes. Examples are not far to seek. Any role subculture includes such theatrical things as costumes, props, after-game, and script. Of course, it is closer to a happening than to classical theatre. So what? Anime subculture followers rent a hall to perform a play based on the beloved (think about it!) animated films using them as drama material. History clubs members stage simple stories from history paying more attention to mediaevalist entourage than the plot and the meaning. Different types of folk and street theatre have become much more active lately – we can recall life-size puppets, all kinds of mummers and maskers who have flooded our streets and parks. Our business actively attracts into the field of advertising different types of theatrical shows, even slap-stick comedy. Elements of theatre are widely used as parts of education methods at schools and preschools. In higher education establishments KVN⁸ is very popular and gives young people an opportunity to realize their acting and creative potential (making up a joke and acting it out). TV audience loves tough, biting sketches of Comedy Club, Nasha Russia and other mischievous pranks. And finally, any politician realizes that good acting skills can help him/her to become successful, to charm the public and to hold their attention.

Thus, William Shakespeare’s phrase “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players” is still vital. And it doesn’t matter, that the biological need for playing and the traditional theatre communicate with each other as connecting vessels. This assures us that theatre will never die. While the traditional theatre accumulates forces and experience for further ‘masterpieces’, the society remains a huge laboratory for ideas generation and testing, smelting new aesthetics, new morals and new values. This entire gross social product is the basic raw material for the theatre. When everything in our life calms down a little, the theatre, having gathered a crop, will return to the playhouses and tell us about ourselves.