School of Dramatic Art
Moscow, Russia
Don Juan, or the Stone Guest
A.Pushkin
Anatoly Vasiliev
Director
Anatoly Vasiliev graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Rostov. After several years spent working as a chemist, he joined A.Popova's and M.Knebel's class at the Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. Among his productions are A Solo for a Clock with Chimes by O.Zagradnik (1973) with the old-generation actors of the Moscow Art Theatre, the first version of Vassa Zheleznova by Maxim Gorky at the Stanislavsky Drama Theatre (1978), The Grown-up Daughter of a Young Man by V.Slavkin (1979), and his A Hoopla Ring at the Taganka Theatre (1985). In 1987 Vasiliev opened his own theatre, called 'School of Dramatic Art', with a performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello. His theatre's most recent productions have been Don Juan, or The Stone Guest, and Other Poems after Pushkin, and Homer's Iliad (1997). Vasiliev's collaboration with foreign companies has resulted in several production, including The Masquerade at the Comedie Francaise (1992), Uncle's Dream by Dostoyevsky in Budapest (1994) and Chaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades in Weimar (1996). Anatoly Vasiliev is a winner of several prizes and awards, including the Stanislavsky Award (1988), the French Order of Arts and Literature, the 'New European Theatre' award of the European theatre critics' jury (1990), the Pirandello Award (1992) and several others. His production of The Lamentations of Jeremiah received the 1997 Russia's National Theatre Award, the 'Golden Mask', for best production and best scenography. Vasiliev does not encase Pushkin's play into any pre-conceived pattern of interpretation. He 'dismantles' it first and then manipulates its separate fragments as if they were bits in a puzzle. What immediately strikes the spectator in the performance is the actors' blankly aloof faces and the amazing manner in which they recite poetry: almost without expression and nearly without any individual touch. The founders of the Moscow Art Theatre had been preoccupied with the difficult task of reconciling poetry with psychology. Vasiliev starts with eliminating psychology altogether and leaving poetry on its own. His production brings together two different approaches to theatrical performance - that which sees it as a kind of permanent training session for the actors, and that, according to which it is an aesthetically complete and self-contained event in its own right. The fragments of the play are interspersed with Pushkin's various lyrical poems and fragments from Gavriliada and Egyptian Nights. At first these manipulations seem rather nonsensical, but as the performance moves on, the theme, the plot and the characters gradually emerge through the poetic texture, bringing out the key motif - the issue of compatibility of hedonism and Christianity, of spiritual and worldly life. In the programme printed for the performance there is a quotation from Gogol's Selected Fragments from Correspondence with Friends, referring to Pushkin. Why "publicly declare a man 'unchristian' simply because he has a taste for social life", asks Gogol. Why stigmatize Don Juan simply because he has a taste for women, asks Vasiliev. Celestial love and earthly love are given equal rights in his production, and that is why the Stone Guest will never come to take his revenge, and Don Juan will not be consumed by infernal fire. Marina Davydova
Lessons of Anatoly Vasiliev
An actors' laboratory. A. Anurov, L.Drebneva, N. Kolyakanova, V.Lavrov, I.Yatsko
¥ 29, 30, 31 May Povarskaya, 20