Off Nevsky Prospekt

St Petersburg's theatre studios in the 1980s and 1990s 

by Elena Markova
St Petersburg State Theatre Institute, Russia
translated by Kate Cook

Off Nevsky Prospekt is the first study to be published in English of the exceptionally rich and diverse theatre studio movement which has flourished in St Petersburg during the 1980s and '90s.

Professor Markova charts the development of the theatre studios - from their beginnings as a reaction to the repressive atmosphere of the Soviet period and through the "theatre bacchanalia" of the Perestroika years. She then surveys today's vibrant scene, with analyses of key productions and interviews with many of the central figures, and describes how theatre studios have subverted.

Elena Markova is a graduate of the Leningrad State University of Theatre, Music and Cinema (now the St Petersburg State Theatre Academy) and has lectured there since 1976. She is the author of Marcel Marceau and Modern Foreign Pantomime, both published in Russia by Iskusstvo.

ISSN: 1068-8161 ISBN: 90-5702-134-X

Harwood Academic Publishers is an imprint of The Gordon and Breach Publishing Group.
Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland.

chapter
Entry by love only

In January 1986 I had this talk with the director of the Litsedei ("Play-Makers") clown-mime theatre, Vyacheslav Polunin ('This talk was published in the Leningradsky Rabochy weekly on 3 January, 1986):

"In the last two or three years Play-Makers, the theatre you run, has become incredibly popular. Not only with mime lovers, as it always has been, but with the public as a whole. The press has painstakingly recorded the progress of your success in a vast number of publications. There's a note of surprised condescension in these admiring remarks. I don't think that's quite fair, considering the long and hard work you have done with a whole team of people. So in our talk today I would like to hear how you yourself explain and evaluate your success. How did Play-Makers begin? What does it care about? How does it live?

I couldn't help being surprised, for example, during a festival that took place last summer in Moscow, that the "play-makers" (which is what people call your actors as well these days) were in a state of military preparedness constantly, tirelessly, all round the clock. I don't just mean the five or six concerts you gave every day in your so-called free time. None of the actors abandoned their roles even in their few moments of leisure. They were constantly egging each other on to act, trying to involve even accidental bystanders in the play."

"That's pretty much the way we live all the time... We don't have a strict rehearsing routine. We're always at the theatre. And a rehearsal could start at any moment, if someone suddenly gets an interesting idea. Then we all join in and have a go, trying to think up new twists. The rehearsal ends when we've exhausted the idea. And we start painting and planing and sawing and sewing again. By the way, we realised long ago that the costumes we design and make ourselves are much better than those we order from people who don't have much of a clue what makes us tick. In a nutshell, we firmly believe in the principle that everything in the theatre must be inspired by love! And love, as we know, demands constancy.

Our favourite production is never seen by an audience, because we act it just for ourselves about once a month. It is called "Vsyaki-byaki" ("Nasty-basties") for a laugh. Anyone can show anything they think is interesting in any form they like. It could be a ready-made number or just; a sketch. The main thing about this is the atmosphere of friendly interest. Any good discovery is immediately taken up by the others and developed. So the creative process really is a collective one.

When you're all friends and want to help one another, competition, is awful. Everyone's dying to get on the stage. It happens quite naturally that all the actors know all the numbers and roles, because we are all completely inter-changeable. I regard this as an additional incentive for everyone to be on form. But the main thing about our "Nasties" is that they arouse imagination and creative initiative.

"The advantages of a method of working like that are obvious. But doesn't that do away with the need for a director, which is something Play-Makers productions are occasionally criticised for?"

"Generally speaking I welcome criticism and take careful note of it. But quite honestly I just don't understand it when the critics try to apply exactly the same standards to all artistic phenomena, sometimes totally different ones. To my mind, it would be far more productive to try and understand why if there is a gate a person prefers to climb over the fence, rather than try to force him to use the gate.

There can't be any strict directing in our theatre as a matter of principle. Whole productions and individual miniatures live and change as they go along together with us. What's more, we only put on a production for as long as it continues to develop. We think it's bad if; a sketch is acted today exactly as it was yesterday. That means we haven't succeeded in making contact with the audience today. That we have simply reproduced what we were able to do before. Of course, we don't always manage to catch the spirit of the audience. But this is not a question of direction, as I see it, but of the extent to .which an actor has mastered his part, the extent to which he has mastered a new situation without harming his temperament. You could say that our little bridges are fragile and temporary. But we get over them so quickly and energetically that they don't have time to collapse. For example, the number "Nizya" ("Stop that!") was hardly rehearsed or directed at all. Lyonya Leikin and I just agreed on the bare bones of the situation: my character wants to do very simple things, like taking a ball or sitting on a chair. But his character watches me all the time and thwarts all my attempts witjh his wretched "Stop that!" We have always acted this number spontaneously. And its success, I think, lies in the fact that my partner never knows exactly what I will come up with next, although we have to be very finely tuned to each other."

"Being tuned to your partner" is something the "play-makers" are very good at indeed. But this kind of mutual understanding does riot arise just like that. It takes time to develop surely?"

"Yes, it does. We began way back at the end of the sixties and, it must be said, rather traditionally. Like many others, we started by imitating Marcel Marceau, who had been touring here just before that. Mime proved to be very infectious and Marceau's authority even more so.

We were prepared to "walk on the spot" and "pull on the rope" day and night. And when we got our act together, we used to perform wherever we were invited, with hardly any thought to what, how and why we were acting. This was the period of blind and all-consuming love."

"I think you are being too hard on your early days. I remember that period very well. For all the naivete in the subjects of your first sketches, they were like a revelation to the audience. It was probably not so much the sketches themselves, but the fact that you managed to convey your love of mime to the audience. And the audience was glad to find out about what was for it a new art at that time. The trouble is that love alone won't get you very far."

"You're so right. There were some big changes just round the corner for us. The new era began when we met Modris Tennison. He started before us and by the mid-sixties he was in charge of one of the first mime troupes in the country, which subsequently went to work at the Kaunas Music and Drama Theatre. We were amateurs, but they were professionals. We had sketches, but they had productions. Our friendship began with terrible arguments about mime. We each Kad our own ideas about it. But we were very impressed by Tennison's belief that you shouldn't take up the theatre for ypur own amusement, that a person doesn't have the right to go on the stage until he knows why he is doing it. In other words, he convinced us that the stage should be a pulpit."

"And what effect did this new idea have in practice?"

"Our repertoire remained the same for a while. But things began to change even in our old sketches things. And we ourselves were changing quickly too. We started reading a lot, watched all the old cinema classics again, and got clued up on artistic trends in the theatre... A whole avalanche of impressions! We stopped trying to imitate and selected only what really appealed to us. We were most attracted by folk art and crazy about commedia dell'arte. We were encouraged to start our own quest by Marceau's remark that Chaplin became a genius when he found the right character. Which is true of Marceau himself, when he created his Bip."

I remember that we were constantly (probably even in our sleep) tormented by such questions as "What is a folk hero?", "Why do millions of people love Petrushka, Ivanushka the Fool and Pierrot?" and "Why do people need these characters and what is so attractive about them?"

So we embarked on the task of searching for our own characters. Characters became the central idea of our theatre. Characters that concentrated a whole world inside them and were in tune with the present day.

Each person has his own idea about what is the most important thing in life, so we created all sorts of characters. And the clearer they became, the more we realised that the plot is not the main thing. The main thing is to sustain the logic of the character you have created, but subjects arise naturally out of a dash of characters, the clash of their standpoints.

"And what is your standpoint, the Play-Makers' creed, so to say?"

"A joyful heart! These words contain the essence of our attitude to the world. They define the personality of our collective. I think it is this more than anything else that attracts audiences to us. We inspire them with a thirst for life.

There are at least two more features that our characters have in common. We aim to create them so that they will produce an emotional response. First we tried them out on ourselves. We liked children, so we asked ourselves why it is that any small child, regardless of its character, arouses love, a smile and the desire to communicate with it in those around. Because children are naive and trusting, of course. They are still capable of being surprised and lack stereotypes, boring reactions. And they enjoy finding out about things.

Then another shared feature appeared in our characters, persistence. It appealed to us as well. And, as you can see, it helped us to gradually win respect even from people who didn't understand us. We remembered another saying of Marcel Marceau's: "People's actions outlive them only when the people remain true to their dream."

"Our characters did not take shape straightaway, but as they did we grew more and more popular."

"In other words, your work on creating the characters which are present in all your theatre's productions was carried on together with the audience, is that it?"

"Yes, exactly. With the active participation of the audience, who by their reactions≈not only by laughing, but also by remaining silent≈ always conveyed very precisely how moving they found this or that feature in the characters. And depending on the audience reaction we reinforced and developed some things and rejected others."

"I seem to remember that your theatre's dramatic repertoire developed just as gradually, through trial and error, didn't it?"

"It is still basically dependent on the audience or, rather, on the interconnection between the actors and the audience. For the basis of our very existence on the stage is improvisation. The theatre which we preach is a free structure theatre. A "voluntary" theatre, if you like. A character should not have any limitations or it will die, lose its essential spontaneity. Drama should not prevent the actor from improvising. It is on this fine balance between character and drama that we stand. We try to act upon the audience with the help of ideas, but the ideas relate to character, not to the subject. Let me give an example. The subject of the sketch when Asisyai is talking on the phone is not of any intrinsic interest. Two not very young people, each hungry for love, are simply talking. But here not even the words are important (for the most part I make up their dialogue out of gobbledygook). The important thing here is the reaction, the way each of them reacts to the other one's remarks and prepares their own. In order to convey this profound, non-external and non-verbal dialogue, the actor must be fairly free, inter alia, free of drama."

"So each time you go on to the stage you are consciously taking a risk. You are putting yourself in a position where success cannot be guaranteed by previously fixed forms. On the contrary, it is generated literally in accordance with Stanislavsky's formula "the today, here and now", that is, as a result of very close contact between the actors themselves and between the actors and the audience."

"After beginning with a strong interest in classical mime, where much depends on strictness of form and virtuoso technique of movement and in no way doubting these great possibilities, we arrived at the idea of a theatre of the visual image, in which a person can express himself or herself with the utmost freedom and emotion. Our actors do not need the language of words, not because they speak in the special plastic language of mime, but because they express themselves so clearly and honestly that there is no need for words. Their acting rests on strong, direct, powerful emotions.

"But surely this is very close to clownery?"

"That's why the name of our theatre now contains these two words "clown-mime."

"And how do you think your theatre will develop in the future?"

"Firstly, we do not propose to select any particular form as a standard for our theatre. Our motto is "Only forwards!" This interest in clownery and eccentricity has brought us success, but in fact it is not the only direction in our work. We have many productions in different genres: Mimprovizy, Small Olympiada and Pictures from an Exhibition based on Mussorgsky's music. Little Boy Kibalchish, Petmshka and others. As soon as we feel that our flexible forms are beginning to grow rigid, and our devices and means of expression are getting repetitive (i.e., that our main -principle of "everything for love" is being violated), we immediately abandon the gate we have opened and start jumping over the fence again in search of new forms and new content.

But our greatest endurance test will come this spring. As soon as the weather gets warmer, we shall set off round the villages and towns of the Baltic with our tent. It's not the town dweller's nostalgia for the countryside, although I myself was born in the country and love it. We want to have a go at "street theatre", where everything depends on goodwill, on love, and the spectator watches the performer as long as he finds him or her interesting...

That was seven years ago.

And how everything has changed since then. Reading this interview today, you can't help wondering where it has all gone. How could it happen that the Play-Makers clown-mime theatre no longer exists? Surely they did not lose their "joyful heart"? It was all going so well...

Of the theatre studios that grew up in the eighties the Play-Makers were perhaps the only ones who managed to win not only public recognition, but almost universal affection. Adults were always imitating Lyonya Leikin's special way of saying "Stop that!", while kids at kindergarten played at being Asisyaichik's clown, and teenagers sang "Blue canaries", the song in the sketch that made Valera Keft famous (the audience even knew that his nickname was "Dandelion"). In general, the Play-Makers repertoire at that time was a household word with the members of their adoring audiences.

Unlike most theatre studios the Play-Makers never experienced financial difficulties. They began to tour abroad before the others and more frequently, thus ensuring a healthy budget. The usual language barrier did not exist for them≈they did without words on the stage.

Success accompanied them abroad as well, as tan be seen not only from the reviews, but also from the countless contacts which they made, personal as well as professional. With the help of their numerous new friends, the Play-Makers were able to organise in 1989 what was an unprecedented enterprise for those days, a Caravan of Peace, with street theatres from all over the world taking part. After a presentation in Moscow, the Caravan travelled round several towns in the Soviet Union and then nearly all the countries of Central Europe. Its composition changed from time to time (depending on the concrete plans of the different theatres), but the Play-Makers stayed with it from beginning to end. Their .theatrical journey round the world lasted about two years, because they kept making more and more new contacts "on the way".

The price they had to pay for this apparently unconditional success was too high. The theatre broke up.

It broke up into a small group that continued to support Polunin and those who now call themselves Play-Makers minus 4.

When asked why this happened the Play-Makers' former artistic director prefers to keep silent. The team who left him offers an answer which one finds it hard to believe, however. "Slava decided to make money by organising all sorts of international festivals. But we got tired of running round the ministeries to get papers signed and pleading with people to give permission. We're actors and we want to act, to go out on the stage and talk to the audience. Asisyai Revue is an old programme, but we went on churning it out, travelling from one country to the next. You can make a living like that, of course, but why bother? It's so boring!"

No matter how earnestly the Play-Makers minus 4 faction explained their version to me, I couldn't help thinking that there was a different reason. Neither of the parties was to blame for their "divorce":

not the petitioner nor the defendant. If anyone is to blame it is all of us, that is to say, what has been happening to us over the last few years.

The Play-Makers became successful when things were relatively stable in our country. The dubious foundations of this stability did not suit a lot of people, the Play-Makers included, but the clown masks which appeared in their theatre reflected this "stability". During the Play-Makers's absence, i.e., their two years of travelling round Europe, the life of their fellow-countrymen changed to such an extent that their old masks are now out of date. They no longer produce a response from the audience. Quite different tactics are needed now.

Perhaps it was because he understood this that the Play-Makers' former director, Polunin, decided to change his profession from actor to impresario, so as to sit out the carve-up, gain time and get used to the new situation. On his return to St Petersburg he proceeded with enviable energy to set up the Academy of Fools, which was opened in the autumn of 1992. But this is all words. As for deeds...

There was the pre-Christmas carnival (December 1992), and the Silly Woman Festival (March 1993) which took place under the aegis of the Academy and were a complete flop, in spite of the fact that they were advertised all over the mass media. Polunin's two solemnly declaimed appeals for everyone to relax and enjoy themselves were not well received by the audience, which had long since lost the capacity to be light-hearted.

Play-Makers minus 4 seem to have chosen a different path. For the presentation of their "new" theatre, which took place on the stage of the House of Actors on 6 May, 1993, they prepared a new production, as is the custom. It was called Bezsolnitsa. In this somewhat clumsy word one can easily detect the intention to link two things: the state of a person on whom the sun is not shining ("bez solntsa") and who has insomnia ("bessonnitsa"). Not the most pleasant of conditions, to be sure!

Each of the clown interludes which made up the Play-Makers minus 4's first production was full of black humour, which incidentally had a rather strange quality: it was as flat as tasteless distilled water which can never quench your thirst... The atmosphere produced by their acting was very different from that which each member of the audience experienced in his or her everyday life. A communing of spirits did not take place.

Nor did it take place in the film Iron Women, the aim of which, as the Play-Makers minus 4 themselves said, was to talk about elderly Russian women who had lived through many political regimes and were now struggling through the present one.

The appearance of this film caused some surprise, to put it mildly. The Play-Makers' old women bore a strange resemblance to Tom and Jerry in Walt Disney's famous cartoon series, a kind of horror film in which one of them, for example, starts to plaster the other on the wall, then they both get up and start chasing each other as if nothing had happened. And it's very funny!

The old women who appear in the Play-Makers' film Iron Women also look funny when they run, but why they are running and what all this has to do with the poor old women who can barely survive today is almost impossible to understand however hard you try.

Lyonya Leikin in Bezsolnitsa. Photo; P. Lebedev.

There was some no-trained applaude after the first showing of Iron Women in the St Prtersburg House of Actors and a barely concealed feeling of disappointment in the audience, when suddenly onto the stage came Lyonya Leikin and proceeded to show his latest "Nastics" sketch.

He came on, sat down on a chair, pulled up his legs and put his clenched fists on his knees. And just sat there, keeping himself to himself. Just went on sitting,

Suddenly a command rang out which made not only Lyonya but the whole audience shudder. A harsh voice over the loudspeaker barked in a tone which allon'ed no anlmyient: "Work!"

Lyonya jumped up and began to dig like fury. When there were no more shouts, he sat down on the chair again.

Then another command rang out:

"Rest!" He froze to the chair, as if he was resting.
"Stand up!" "Sit down!" "Work!" "Sleep!" "Walk!"

The commands came faster and faster, more and more senseless.

And before our eyes Lyonya turned into a non-person and the audience recognised themselves in his character, worn out by the endless and meaningless changes of commands which have been barked at all of us for so many years now, like the "voice" from the loudspeaker.

And you couldn't help thinking that everything must be all right. That our Play-Makers are still alive, even though they are minus four.

True, a few weeks later their small team, which now consists of only five (Lyonya Leikin, Valery Keft, Viktor Solovyov, Anvar Libabov and Anna Orlova) went touring abroad again to carry out previously concluded contracts and sign new ones.

Their earnings are nice and healthy now, but don't get too envious of them. The actors of the Play-Makers minus 4 theatre, like most theatre studios, do not always get their pay and when they do it's not very much, because the team have decided jointly to put the lion's share of their huge earnings into building a Theatre Centre, which is scheduled to go up shortly not far from Chernyshevsky Metro Station. They are not alone in this endeavour. The Tree actors are also taking part in this project together with the Play-Makers.

Both teams have embarked on this venture in the hope of acquiring a roof over their heads in their native land.

  

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