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- And the pains here are quiet: how the Bogomolov Theater reinterpreted military classics
And the pains here are quiet: how the Bogomolov Theater reinterpreted military classics
A circus ring with concrete chips, a chromakey and a live camera - with the help of such artistic means, Boris Vasiliev's famous story "And the dawns are quiet here..." is embodied by Anton Okoneshnikov on the Melnikov Stage. The play became a modern conversation about a man trapped inside a historical catastrophe. On June 22, the Day of Remembrance and Mourning, the theater will show this production again. Izvestia tells us why the new "Dawns" should not be missed.
How Vasiliev's story appeared on the Melnikov Stage
The tragic story of five female anti-aircraft gunners and their foreman has long been a part of the country's cultural memory. Boris Vasiliev wrote the novel in 1969, based on a true story. At the age of 17, he volunteered for the front, fought near Smolensk, and was seriously concussed. The writer belonged to a generation of people for whom war had never been an abstract heroic legend. Behind every order, battle, and feat, he saw first of all a man.
Director Stanislav Rostotsky, who filmed the story in 1972, also looked at the war. Today, the picture is rightfully considered one of the main military films of Russian cinema. During the Great Patriotic War, the future director lost his leg. He was saved by a soldier, and later a nurse, Anna Chegunova, dragged him to the hospital. Almost 30 years later, Rostotsky dedicated the film "And the dawns here are quiet ..." to her.
The memory of the war is the memory not only of the dead, but also of the incredible effort of the country that managed to stand up. About the people on the front line and in the rear. About soldiers, partisans, underground fighters, workers, engineers, doctors. This feeling of living at the limit of human possibilities is invisibly present in Okoneshnikov's play. The director deliberately avoids the "bronze" intonation and does not try to talk about the war in a "monumental" language.
Directed by Anton Okoneshnikov
"And the dawns here are quiet ..." became the young director's debut on the Moscow stage. He works at the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, where Konstantin Bogomolov's Theater on Bronnaya once came on tour. Okoneshnikov told Izvestia that he admired the work of the female part of the troupe and wanted to make his own project with the actresses.
"When Konstantin Yurievich offered me cooperation, I realized that the troupe has forces capable of playing this story," Okoneshnikov confessed to Izvestia.
Who played the anti-aircraft gunners and Sergeant Vaskov?
The main artistic opening of the play is the acting ensemble. Rita Osyanina, Zhenya Komelkova, Galya Chetvertak, Lisa Brichkina, Sonya Gurvich — each girl has her own past, her own pain and her own motives. Okoneshnikov showed what they were like before the events of 1941 and what happened to them in May 1942.
Actress Yana Stavorzhinskaya, who played the role of second Lieutenant Rita Osyanina, played a woman broken by the war and the loss of her family.
— She loved and was loved. She had a husband, a family. But after his death, she became a killing machine, an avenging woman, ready to tear up for the pain that was inflicted on her," the actress told Izvestia.
Stavorzhinskaya admitted that it was enough for her to imagine how she herself, a beloved and happy woman, was suddenly deprived of her husband in order to feel the rage of her heroine.
Actress Yana Stavorzhinskaya
It is this contrast — between a happy pre—war life and the trauma of war - that becomes the central emotion of the production. He is especially acutely felt in the image of Gali Chetvertak, played by Maria Dudnik. Her character is almost a child, a pupil of an orphanage, living in a fantasy world. For quite a long time, everything seems like a game to her, a scary adventure. And only the encounter with death destroys this illusion.
One of the semantic images of the play is foreman Fedot Vaskov, played by Dinis Gromakov. The actor admitted that his own military training helped him work on the character.
— The material is actually very dangerous, because it's easy to get vulgar there. But Anton Okoneshnikov has built certain boundaries for us, beyond which we do not cross," Gromakov said.
Actors Maria Dudnik and Denis Gromakov
The creators of the play approached the material as a study. They worked with archives, studied documents, military codes, Boris Vasiliev's biography, the history of SS units and the real details of front-line life.
Playpen, chromakey, and movie camera
Okoneshnikov creates not just dramatic action, but a complex system of visual and sound images, where documentaries collide with theatrical conventions. There is a live camera on the stage that literally follows the characters. Thanks to the instant image output on a giant screen, the viewer sees emotions in close-up.
— My team has been working with such technologies for a long time. We constantly use video, we specially build the image. In this performance, for example, we work with chromakey: the actresses literally exist inside a green cloth, and on the screen the viewer sees a real river, water, and movement. It would seem that this is a convention, almost a theatrical game, but in the frame everything becomes absolutely real," says Okoneshnikov.
Set designer Mikhail Gerber turned the stage into a spherical space resembling a circus ring, and covered it with concrete crumbs, which turn out to be ruins, forest grass, and a swamp. He was inspired by monumental memorial complexes, from the Motherland to Yad Vashem in Israel.
— I wanted the audience to feel the horror of what was happening. We specifically used brutal, rigid textures. Perhaps someone will find the space uncomfortable. That's how it should be," Gerber said in an interview with Izvestia.
A separate nerve of the production is the music of Nikolai Popov, head of the Center for Electroacoustic Music at the Moscow Conservatory. The performance features authentic folk songs collected and reinterpreted by the composer.
— The story itself is very deeply connected with Russian cultural and human intonation. These heroes are simple people from the people. And folklore becomes a kind of music of their soul: tragic, sometimes ironic, lively. At the same time, music does not exist in its pure form. We have a chronicle, noises, calls — all this creates the feeling of an old record player, combines into a single atmosphere of memory and chronicle," the director shared.
Thus, the creators of the play do not turn the war into either a spectacular spectacle or an edifying lecture on patriotism. "And the dawns here are quiet..." on the "Melnikov Stage" was made by young guys for a modern audience, and at the center of the production is the story of the human soul inside the catastrophe.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
