Evgeny Knyazev - interview Vakhtangov school. Educational theater of the B. Shchukin Theater Institute

History of the Vakhtangov school

The history of the Vakhtangov school - the Higher Theater School, and now the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute - goes back almost nine decades.

In November 1913, a group of Moscow students organized an amateur theater studio and invited young actor Moscow Art Theater, a student of Stanislavsky, the future great Russian director Evgeniy Bagrationovich Vakhtangov.

The studios offered Vakhtangov a production of a play based on B. Zaitsev’s play “The Lanins’ Estate.” The premiere took place in the spring of 1914 and ended in failure. "Now let's study!" - said Vakhtangov. And on October 23, 1914, Vakhtangov conducted the first lesson with students using the Stanislavsky system. This day is considered the School's birthday.

The studio has always been both a school and an experimental laboratory.

In the spring of 1917, after a successful exhibition of student works, the "Mansurovskaya" (named after one of the Moscow alleys on Arbat, where it was located) the studio received its first name - "Moscow Drama Studio of E.B. Vakhtangov." In 1920 it was renamed the III Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, and in 1926 - the Theater named after. Evgeniy Vakhtangov with his permanent assistant drama school. In 1932, the school became a special secondary theater educational institution. In 1939, she was given the name of the great Russian actor, Vakhtangov’s favorite student Boris Shchukin, and in 1945 she was given the status of the highest educational institution. Since that time it has been known as the Higher Theater School (since 2002 - Theatre Institute named after Boris Shchukin) at the State Academic Theater them. Evgenia Vakhtangova.

The Vakhtangov School is not just one of the theater institutes, but the bearer and custodian of theatrical culture, its best achievements and traditions.

Our graduates teach acting in many theater schools in Russia. Professors and teachers of the Institute constantly travel for consultations, conduct seminars and master classes in large and small theater centers countries, and in last years- and abroad.

The teaching staff of the Institute is formed only from our graduates, who pass on Vakhtangov’s precepts from generation to generation, and the principles of the school from hand to hand. The permanent head of the school from 1922 to 1976 was Vakhtangov’s student, student of the first intake, the outstanding Russian actor and director Boris Zakhava. The current Artistic Director of the Institute is People's Artist of the USSR, Vakhtangovite, famous actor theater and cinema, Professor V.A. Etush served as rector for 16 years (from 1986 to 2002). Since June 2002, the rector of the institute is People's Artist of the Russian Federation, leading actor of the Evg. Vakhtangov Theater, professor E.V. Knyazev.

The school is rightfully proud of its graduates. Among them are many outstanding actors Russian theater and cinema, whose work has already become history. These are B. Shchukin, Ts. Mansurova, R. Simonov, B. Zakhava, A. Orochko, I. Tolchanov, V. Kuza, O. Basov, V. Yakhontov, A. Goryunov, V. Maretskaya, A. Gribov, A .Stepanova, D. Zhuravlev, N. Gritsenko and many others. On the modern Russian stage there are M. Ulyanov, Y. Borisova, Y. Yakovlev, V. Etush, V. Lanovoi, A. Demidova, A. Vertinskaya, O. Yakovleva, K. Raikin, A. Kalyagin, A. Shirvindt, L .Maksakova, I.Kupchenko, M.Derzhavin, V.Shalevich, E.Knyazev, S.Makovetsky, M.Sukhanov, E.Simonova, O.Barnet, I.Ulyanova, N.Usatova... This list is constantly updated. There are theaters whose cast is almost entirely made up of Vakhtangovites. This is primarily the Theater named after. Evg. Vakhtangov, as well as the Taganka Theater under the direction of Yu. Lyubimov. There are many graduates of the School in the troupe of the Lenkom Theater under the direction of M. Zakharov, in the Satire Theater and in Sovremennik.

Without Vakhtangov actors it is impossible to imagine the work of such outstanding masters of Russian cinema as I. Pyryev, G. Alexandrov, Y. Raizman, M. Kalatozov and others. Among the most famous actors of Russian cinema are the “Shchukinites” O. Strizhenov, T. Samoilova, R. Bykov, V. Livanov, A. Mironov, A. Kaidanovsky, L. Filatov, N. Gundareva, L. Chursina, Yu. Nazarov, L. Zaitseva, N. Ruslanova, N. Varley, A. Zbruev, N. Burlyaev, I. Metlitskaya, Y. Bogatyrev, N. Volkov, L. Yarmolnik, V. Proskurin, L. Borisov, E. Koreneva, A. Tashkov, Y. Belyaev, A. Belyavsky, A. Porokhovshchikov, E. Gerasimov, A. Sokolov, S. Zhigunov and others.

Many graduates of the institute became widely known thanks to television - A. Lysenkov, P. Lyubimtsev, A. Gordon, M. Borisov, K. Strizh, A. Goldanskaya, D. Maryanov, S. Ursulyak, M. Shirvindt, Y. Arlozorov, A Semchev, O. Budina, E. Lanskaya, L. Velezheva, M. Poroshina and many others.

The Vakhtangov school gave the Russian stage famous directors - N. Gorchakov, E. Simonov, Y. Lyubimov, A. Remizova, V. Fokin, A. Vilkin, L. Trushkin, A. Zhitinkin. The famous Yuri Zavadsky made his first directing and teaching experiments within its walls. She raised the great Ruben Simonov, to whom the Evg. Vakhtanogov Theater owes the most brilliant era of its existence.

The school helped and is helping the birth of new theater studios and groups. This is primarily the theater of Yuri Lyubimov on Taganka, which arose from the graduation performance " a kind person from Sezuan" by B. Brecht; Moldovan youth theater "Luchaferul" in Chisinau; theater-studio named after R.N. Simonov in Moscow; Sovremennik theater in Ingushetia; studio "Scientific Monkey" in Moscow and others.

History of the Vakhtangov school
The history of the Vakhtangov school - the Higher Theater School, and now the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute - goes back almost nine decades.
In November 1913, a group of Moscow students organized an amateur theater studio and invited as its director a young actor of the Moscow Art Theater, a student of Stanislavsky, the future great Russian director Evgeniy Bagrationovich Vakhtangov.
The studios offered Vakhtangov a production of a play based on B. Zaitsev’s play “The Lanins’ Estate.” The premiere took place in the spring of 1914 and ended in failure. "Now let's study!" - said Vakhtangov. And on October 23, 1914, Vakhtangov conducted the first lesson with students using the Stanislavsky system. This day is considered the School's birthday.
The studio has always been both a school and an experimental laboratory.
In the spring of 1917, after a successful exhibition of student works, the "Mansurovskaya" (named after one of the Moscow alleys on Arbat, where it was located) the studio received its first name - "Moscow Drama Studio of E.B. Vakhtangov." In 1920 it was renamed the III Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, and in 1926 - the Theater named after. Evgeniy Vakhtangov with his permanent theater school. In 1932, the school became a special secondary theater educational institution. In 1939 it was named after the great Russian actor, Vakhtangov’s favorite student Boris Shchukin, and in 1945 it was given the status of a higher educational institution. Since that time, it has been known as the Higher Theater School (since 2002 - Theater Institute named after Boris Shchukin) at the State Academic Theater named after. Evgenia Vakhtangova.
The authority of the Institute’s teachers is very high both in our country and in the world. Suffice it to remember that Vakhtangov’s methodology for educating an actor had a huge influence on the pedagogy of the great Mikhail Chekhov.
The Vakhtangov School is not just one of the theater institutes, but the bearer and custodian of theatrical culture, its best achievements and traditions.
The teaching staff of the Institute is formed only from graduates who pass on Vakhtangov’s precepts from generation to generation, and the principles of the school - from hand to hand. The permanent head of the school from 1922 to 1976 was Vakhtangov’s student, student of the first intake, the outstanding Russian actor and director Boris Zakhava. The current Artistic Director of the Institute is People's Artist of the USSR, Vakhtangovite, famous theater and film actor, Professor V.A. Etush served as rector for 16 years (from 1986 to 2002). Since June 2002, the rector of the institute is People's Artist of the Russian Federation, leading actor of the Evg. Vakhtangov Theater, professor E.V. Knyazev.
The school is rightfully proud of its graduates. Among them are many outstanding actors of Russian theater and cinema, whose work has already become history. These are B. Shchukin, Ts. Mansurova, R. Simonov, B. Zakhava, A. Orochko, I. Tolchanov, V. Kuza, O. Basov, V. Yakhontov, A. Goryunov, V. Maretskaya, A. Gribov, A .Stepanova, D. Zhuravlev, N. Gritsenko and many others. On the modern Russian stage there are M. Ulyanov, Y. Borisova, Y. Yakovlev, V. Etush, V. Lanovoi, A. Demidova, A. Vertinskaya, O. Yakovleva, K. Raikin, A. Kalyagin, A. Shirvindt, L .Maksakova, I.Kupchenko, M.Derzhavin, V.Shalevich, E.Knyazev, S.Makovetsky, M.Sukhanov, E.Simonova, O.Barnet, I.Ulyanova, N.Usatova... This list is constantly updated. There are theaters whose cast is almost entirely made up of Vakhtangovites. This is primarily the Theater named after. Evg. Vakhtangov, as well as the Taganka Theater under the direction of Yu. Lyubimov. There are many graduates of the School in the troupe of the Lenkom Theater under the direction of M. Zakharov, in the Satire Theater and in Sovremennik.
Without Vakhtangov actors it is impossible to imagine the work of such outstanding masters of Russian cinema as I. Pyryev, G. Alexandrov, Y. Raizman, M. Kalatozov and others. Among the most famous actors of Russian cinema are the “Shchukinites” O. Strizhenov, T. Samoilova, R. Bykov, V. Livanov, A. Mironov, A. Kaidanovsky, L. Filatov, N. Gundareva, L. Chursina, Yu. Nazarov, L. Zaitseva, N. Ruslanova, N. Varley, A. Zbruev, N. Burlyaev, I. Metlitskaya, Y. Bogatyrev, N. Volkov, L. Yarmolnik, V. Proskurin, L. Borisov, E. Koreneva, A. Tashkov, Y. Belyaev, A. Belyavsky, A. Porokhovshchikov, E. Gerasimov, A. Sokolov, S. Zhigunov and others.
Many graduates of the institute became widely known thanks to television - A. Lysenkov, P. Lyubimtsev, A. Gordon, M. Borisov, K. Strizh, A. Goldanskaya, D. Maryanov, S. Ursulyak, M. Shirvindt, Y. Arlozorov, A Semchev, O. Budina, E. Lanskaya, L. Velezheva, M. Poroshina and many others.
The Vakhtangov school gave the Russian stage famous directors - N. Gorchakov, E. Simonov, Y. Lyubimov, A. Remizova, V. Fokin, A. Vilkin, L. Trushkin, A. Zhitinkin. The famous Yuri Zavadsky made his first directing and teaching experiments within its walls. She raised the great Ruben Simonov, to whom the Evg. Vakhtanogov Theater owes the most brilliant era of its existence.
The school helped and is helping the birth of new theater studios and groups. This is, first of all, the Yuri Lyubimov Theater on Taganka, which arose from the graduation performance “The Good Man from Szechwan” by B. Brecht; Moldovan youth theater "Luchaferul" in Chisinau; Theater-Studio named after R.N. Simonov in Moscow; theater "Sovremennik" in Ingushetia; studio "Scientific Monkey" in Moscow and others.

History of the B. Shchukin Theater Institute
October 23, 1914 is considered the birthday of the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute. On this day (October 10, old style), Evgeny Vakhtangov gave his first lecture on the system of K.S. Stanislavsky to the students of the Commercial Institute who had gathered around him. From this day the story began. But there was also a prehistory.
Evgeny Bogrationovich Vakhtangov (1883 - 1922), student of K.S. Stanislavsky and L.A. Sulerzhitsky, employee of the Moscow Art Theater and student of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater (1912), staged his first professional performance based on G. Hauptmann's play "Feast of Peace" in the Studio in the fall of 1913. In this production he expressed his attitude towards the world and the theater. But his teachers, seeing in him only a student, and not an independent creative person, intervened in the production: they broke it and corrected it. Vakhtangov in creative personality developed very quickly. Already by 1911 he was thinking independently and freely. Having become acquainted with Stanislavsky’s work on the system, he wrote down: “I want to form a Studio where we would study. The principle is to achieve everything yourself. The leader is everything. Check system K.S. on ourselves. Accept or reject it. Correct, supplement, or remove lies.” (Vakhtangov. Collection of materials, M.VTO, 1984, p. 88).
The desire to test the Teacher’s discoveries, his dependent position in the theater and the First Studio forced Vakhtangov to look for opportunities to organize his own studio. The meeting with students of the Commercial Institute took place in the late autumn of 1913, against the will of Vakhtangov. They themselves chose and found him, offering to lead their amateur club and stage a play. Vakhtangov agreed. The meeting took place on December 23, 1913 in an apartment rented by the Semenov sisters on Arbat. Vakhtangov came solemnly, festively dressed, and even embarrassed the future studio members with his appearance. Vakhtangov began the meeting by declaring his devotion to K.S. Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater, and called the dissemination of Stanislavsky’s system his task.
At the first meeting, we agreed on staging B. Zaitsev’s play “The Lanins’ Estate”. In March 1914, the premises of the Hunting Club were rented, where they were going to perform a performance.
Vakhtangov immediately got down to business, but, realizing that the amateurs had no experience, he began to practice exercises with them according to the system. The classes lasted two and a half months. The performance took place on March 26. The performers played their roles with gusto, but their enthusiasm did not reach the audience through the stage. Vakhtangov ran behind the scenes and shouted to them: “Louder! Louder!” - they didn’t hear him. After the performance he said: “So we failed!” But even here they did not believe him. We went to a restaurant to celebrate the premiere. In the restaurant, the performance designer Yu. Romanenko invited everyone to join hands and form a chain. “Now let’s be silent for a minute, and let this chain forever connect us with each other in art” (Chronicle of the School, vol. 1, p. 8). Vakhtangov suggested that amateur students begin to study the art of theater. To do this, it was necessary to find a room where one could work. With this we parted ways until the fall. But when Vakhtangov came to the theater, an angry scolding from K.S. Stanislavsky awaited him, who had received information from newspapers about the failure of Vakhtangov’s work. He forbade Vakhtangov to work outside the walls of the Moscow Art Theater and his studio.
And yet, on October 23, 1914, the first lesson took place new studio. It was called in different time: “Student Studio”, “Mansurov Studio” (located at 3 Mansurovsky Lane). “Vakhtangov Studio”. But she worked secretly so that Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater did not know about her.
Vakhtangov built the House. The studios did everything with their own hands, since Vakhtangov believed that the House becomes yours only when you drive at least one nail into its walls.
While studying Stanislavsky's system, Vakhtangov changed the order of the elements of the system, proposing a path from simple to complex: from attention to the image. But each subsequent element contained all the previous ones. When creating the image, all elements of the system had to be used. We did exercises, etudes, excerpts, improvisations, independent work. Performing evenings were shown to selected viewers. And in 1916, Vakhtangov brought the first play to the studio. It was “The Miracle of St. Anthony” by M. Maeterlinck. The play was satirical, but Vakhtangov suggested staging it as a psychological drama. This was natural, because the studio members were not yet ready-made actors; in mastering the image, they followed Stanislavsky’s formula “I am in assumed circumstances.” Therefore, Vakhtangov demanded that they justify the behavior of the embodied image. The performance was shown in 1918, and it was actually a graduation ceremony for the first group of students.
The first studio members were students of the Commercial Institute, including B.E.Zahava, B.I.Vershilov, K.G.Semenova, E.A.Aleeva, L.A.Volkov. Gradually new studio members came to the Studio: P.G.Antokolsky, Yu.A.Zavadsky, V.K.Lvova, A.I.Remizova, L.M.Shikhmatov. In January 1920, B.V. Shchukin and Ts.L. were accepted into the studio. Wollerstein (who took the pseudonym Mansurova). Everyone who wanted to become a studio member first went through an interview, which determined whether he could become a studio member according to his moral and intellectual level. And only after this the applicant was examined. Vakhtangov, building a theater and wanting to have a permanent school with it, looked closely at the students and determined which of them would be a teacher and which would be a director. The main thing was to develop independence in students.
In 1919, Vakhtangov underwent two operations on his stomach. They did not produce results - cancer developed. Wanting to save the studio, Vakhtangov turned to his teachers at the Moscow Art Theater and asked to take his studio into the number of studios at the Moscow Art Theater. In the fall of 1920, the Vakhtangov Studio became the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. Having transferred to the Academic Department, the studio received its own building on Arbat, Berg’s small, dilapidated mansion, which the studio members turned into a theater with their own hands. On November 13, 1921, the theater opened with the play “The Miracle of St. Anthony” by M. Maeterlinck in a new, satirical solution. For the theater of the Third Studio, the Moscow Art Theater staged Vakhtangov and his famous “Princess Turandot” by C. Gozzi, in which the direction of the Vakhtangov theater was most clearly expressed. He himself will call it “fantastic realism.” Staged in the traditions of the Commedia del Arte theater, “Princess Turandot” amazed Moscow in 1922 with its theatricality, freedom of acting, and the imagination of the director and artist (I. Nivinsky). “Princess Turandot” turned out to be Vakhtangov’s last performance. On May 29, 1922 he died. The studios were left without a leader and had to build the theater that their leader aspired to, alone. The studios managed to defend their independence, did not lose buildings, did not destroy the school existing inside the studio, and in 1926 received the status State Theater named after Evgeny Vakhtangov.
For many years, until 1937, small Vakhtangov school existed inside the theater. Future actors were accepted into the school on the basis of their need for the theater. Admission to school meant admission to the theater. They studied and worked in theater performances right away, from their first year. And the teachers were Vakhtangov’s students: B. Zakhava, V. Lvova, A. Remizov, L. Shikhmatov, R. Simonov...
In 1925, B.E.Zahava (1896 - 1976) was appointed head of the school, who led the school until his death.
In 1937, the school moved to a newly built building on B. Nikolopeskovsky Lane, 12a, and separated from the theater. She had the rights of a technical school, but with a four-year period of study. The artists, released from school, dispersed around different theaters countries. In 1939, Boris Vasilyevich Shchukin (1894 - 1939), a brilliant artist of the Vakhtangov school, teacher, and director, died. In his memory, in the same year, the school was named after B.V. Shchukin. In 1945, the school was equated to higher educational institutions, retaining its old name. Since 1953, targeted courses began to study at the school - groups of students from national republics, who, in most cases, become the founders of new theaters. The tradition of national groups continues to this day. Now there are two Korean and Gypsy studios studying at the institute. In 1964, from the graduation performance “The Good Man from Szechwan” by B. Brecht, the current Taganka Theater was formed, headed by Y.P. Lyubimov, a graduate of the school, an actor of the theater. Vakhtangov and a teacher at the school. In 1959, a correspondence directing department was created, which produced many famous directors.
After the death of B.E.Zahava, the school was run by an official from the Ministry for a whole decade. He morally and artistically failed to manage such complex organism like a school. And in 1987 he was unanimously elected to the post of Rector National artist USSR V.A.Etush.V this moment he is Artistic director Institute. Under Rector Etush, the school reached international arena: students and teachers began to travel with their work to different countries of the world and teach classes in schools different countries. A special fund “Vakhtangov 12a” was also organized, which Hard time always supports the school.
In 2002, the school was renamed the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute.
The educational theater hosts graduation performances every year from autumn to spring, and the performers often receive prestigious awards for the best performance. M. Aronova, N. Shvets, D. Vysotsky were awarded such prizes in different years. For a number of years, the first prizes have been awarded to the institute's performances at the festival of student performances in Brno (Czech Republic).

It is difficult to count the acting schools and studios in which Vakhtangov worked. In addition to the First and Mansurov Studios, Vakhtangov also taught at the Second Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, gave lectures on the Stanislavsky system in the Culture League, in Proletkult, in the studios of B.V. Tchaikovsky and A.O. Gunst. He conducted rehearsals for “The Green Parrot” in the Chaliapin studio. Worked at the Prechistensky workers' courses. Participated in the organization of the Proletarian Studio of workers of the Zamoskvoretsky district, organized People's Theater at the Bolshaya Kamenny Bridge, where the Mansurov Studio played.

Working in various studios provided Vakhtangov with enormous human and acting material. He greedily and passionately loved actors. And I always tried to get to know the person with whom I was communicating, to test his creative capabilities, to find an actor in every person. Vakhtangov’s entire spiritual fervor was to “make actors.” The principle by which he selected the performer for the role is well known - not the one who is better, but the one who is more unpredictable.

Despite the abundance of teams in which Vakhtangov worked, the main work of his life should still be considered the Third Studio. Particularly a lot of spiritual strength was devoted to this studio, and it was here that many of Vakhtangov’s theatrical ideas were formulated.

1. The studio principle. Vakhtangov, like Sulerzhitsky, began his education as an actor not with work on external technique, and not even with internal technique, but with the very concept of “studio-ness.” Vakhtangov believed that excessive pursuit of artistic pleasures was harmful to a young artist. A studio is an institution that should not yet be a theater. A student must maintain purity before the god of art, not be cynical in friendship and strictly adhere to ethical standards. Vakhtangov turned the great discipline of the Moscow Art Theater into theatrical magic. “Studio life,” Vakhtangov said, “is first of all a discipline. No discipline - no studio."

In the Third Studio, a kind of hierarchy of its participants was created in accordance with the degree of their studio level. The degree of talent was not taken into account separately. The studio members were divided into: 1) full members of the studio; 2) studio members; 3) competing members. The studio was governed by a meeting of full members, which, based on the results of the year, promoted competitors to members, or completely expelled them from the studio. Later the structure of the studio was changed. A Council was created that was not elected, but “recognized.”

However, the life of Vakhtangov’s studio was not at all limited to the joys of human communication. The students were not engaged in self-purification, but in theater. The classes were taught by brilliant actors from the Moscow Art Theater, the First Studio (Birman, Giatsintova, Pyzhova) and the oldest members of the Studio. After completing the initial course, the studio students ended up in a kind of pedagogical assistantship and worked with the newly admitted students.

In the Third Studio, the accumulation period was very long. The first meeting took place at the end of 1913, and full-fledged performances began to be produced only in 1918 (the production of “The Panin Estate” and “Performance Evenings” should be considered only studio work). After the reorganization of the studio in 1919, Vakhtangov declared that the times of the Mansur studio, which spent five years forming a group of actors, were over. The studio comes on new way- the path of the troupe. A new life is required new ethics, new relationships.

The studio principle was supplemented by the inseparable formula: “School - Studio - Theater”. Three in one. The studio preserves the very spirit of art. The school educates professional actors of a certain type, with a common aesthetic. The theater is the place of true creativity of an actor. Theater cannot be created. A theater can only form on its own, retaining both a school and a studio within itself.

Thus, the formula “Student - School - Theater” is constant and universal for any truly creative theater group.

2. "School". Although Vakhtangov said that the main mistake of schools is that they undertake to teach, while they should educate - in his own pedagogical activity he simultaneously educated and taught. The teacher’s tasks were defined by him as follows: to find the student’s individuality, to develop his natural abilities and “thirst for creativity,” so that the actor would not have the feeling: “I don’t want to play.” To give techniques and methods for approaching work on a role in the theater - to teach how to control attention and disassemble the play into pieces. Develop external technique, internal technique, develop imagination, temperament, taste - the second nature of an actor.

Constantly repeating the high mission of the studio, Vakhtangov declared that he had a theatrical religion - this is the god that Konstantin Sergeevich teaches to pray to. Like Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov was talking, first of all, about tension and muscle freedom, which is impossible without concentrated attention, without directing attention to a specific object. You can create only when you believe in the importance of your creativity. Faith requires justification, that is, an understanding of the reason for each given action, position, state. Vakhtangov identified a number of elements that an actor must be able to justify: 1) pose, 2) place, 3) action, 4) state, 5) a series of incoherent positions. The teacher’s task, with the help of exercises, is to develop in the actor the ability to justify his entire stage life.

The actor's faith is based on a special stage naivety. An actor cannot help but know that he is on stage, but thanks to faith, he can truthfully respond with feeling to fiction. He doesn't need to convince himself that the matchbox is a bird. It is enough, thanks to naivety and faith, to sincerely and seriously treat a matchbox like a living bird.

Having mastered muscle freedom, concentration, and justifying his stage actions with faith, the actor creates a circle of attention. The entire existence of an actor on stage is subordinated to a specific stage task. The task exists at every moment of acting, and it is this task that determines both the faith and the inner circle of the actor. According to Vakhtangov, the stage task is composed of three elements: 1) an effective goal (for which I went on stage), 2) desire (for the sake of which I carry out this goal) and 3) the way of execution, or, as we will call it, a device. Vakhtangov was convinced that the stage task can only be action, but not feeling.

Vakhtangov, remaining in the sphere of the theater of experience (and not performance), weaned the actor from depicting feeling on stage. An actor must experience his true feelings on stage, but should not “play” them. Stage feeling is born from a stage task. At each performance the performer “experiences,” but he experiences repeated, affective feelings.

Everything is built on the phenomenon of affective feeling. practical work actor over the role. When this or that stage circumstance (action) is repeated, the feeling found in the actor’s soul earlier arises again. This is how a stable role pattern is created, fixed in the performance.

Of great importance in the education of an actor is a sense of internal tempo, the art of mastering increased and decreased energy. Low energy - melancholy, boredom, sadness. Increased - joy, laughter. The same physical action in a different energy state has a completely different stage design and requires different devices.

By being in the circle of attention, understanding his stage task, finding the right affective feelings and various devices, and determining the energy tempo, the actor almost completely masters his internal technique. However, he is not alone on stage. And the effect of a particular scene depends on the skill of his communication with his partner. Communication consists of conveying our feelings to each other: my living acts on my partner and vice versa - my partner’s living acts on me. When communicating, the object is alive soul. If the partner does not “live” with a genuine (affective) feeling, a tasteless “show” begins.

Vakhtangov offered artists the following sketch to test the truth of theatrical communication: “Here is a box, now tell me that it is gold, and it doesn’t matter to me what you believe, but let your partner believe that it is gold.”

It is quite obvious that when working on internal technology, Vakhtangov acted in accordance with the developments of K.S. Stanislavsky, the creator of the system. But he did not at all consider the Moscow Art Theater “fourth wall” necessary. Forced alienation from the audience is pointless. The actor's task is to influence the viewer. And for this he needs not only developed internal technology, but also effective external technology.

In a notebook of 1921, Vakhtangov drew up a plan of priority lectures in the First Studio: “On stage rhythm”, “On theatrical plasticity (sculpture)”, “On gesture and on hands in particular”, “On stage art (rhythm, plasticity, clarity, theatrical communication)", "About theatrical form and theatrical content", "An actor is a master who creates texture", "Theater is a theater. A play is a performance", "The art of performance is the skill of acting." The degree of his “infectiousness”, the measure of influence on the viewer, depends on the actor’s external technique. This does not at all mean that external technique can have some independent meaning outside of the artist’s stage experiences. The actor must find such external theatrical forms so that the finely developed internal drawing reaches the viewer as much as possible.

3. "Theater": Actor and image. In Vakhtangov’s theatrical methodology, of particular value is its director’s part, the art of staging a play, and the methods of collaboration between the director and actor on the stage image.

Vakhtangov called the actor’s work on the role the creative part of the system, and believed that the system in itself does not determine either the style of production, or the genre of the performance, or even the methods of acting themselves. Working for a role means looking for and developing in the actor the relationships needed for the role. To understand a character, you need to reproduce its feelings, and then express these feelings on stage. An actor who exists truthfully on stage is one who, at the same time, lives in the proposed circumstances of the role and controls his stage behavior.

The theater's initial work on a play is to analyze the play. In the System Plan of 1919, Vakhtangov divided this process into four stages: a) First reading, literary analysis, historical analysis, artistic analysis, theatrical analysis; b) division into pieces; c) end-to-end action; d) revealing the text (subtext).

End-to-end action there is what is denoted by these simple words, that is, the action that runs through the entire play. In search of a cross-cutting action, the play is divided into “pieces” according to two principles: either by actions or by moods. Vakhtangov called a piece what constitutes a stage in approaching the goal end-to-end action to the final. There are main and auxiliary pieces. In order to correctly play the end-to-end action of a role, the actor looks for its “grain”, the essence of personality, something that has been formed over the years and life experience.

For Vakhtangov, when working on a role, it was always about the actor’s internal transformation, about “growing” the image (the seed of the role) in his soul. In Vakhtangov’s method of working on a role, the external and internal always coexisted on equal terms. Every physical action in the theater must have an internal justification, and any characteristic cannot be “sticky” - it is not coercion, but a natural state, an external expression of a certain inner essence.

Vakhtangov did not like long analyzes of plays at the table, but immediately looked for action, tried to find the type of imagery of the play and the psychological essence of individual characters. He tirelessly invited artists to fantasize around the role: “today I dreamed, and tomorrow it will be played against my will,” he asserted (5).

Vakhtangov the director taught the actor, when working on a role, to pay the main attention not to words, but to actions and to the feelings that are hidden behind the actions, that is, to the subtext, to the undercurrents. Words can sometimes even contradict feelings. Vakhtangov's rehearsals were endless, endless improvisations by the actors and the director. In his Plan of the System, he called rehearsals “a complex of accidents” in which “the play grows.”

Vakhtangov the director influenced the actors in a variety of ways. His main creative method was display. Shows sometimes turned rehearsals into a one-man show, in which the great leader-director demonstrated his brilliant acting miniatures. When showing the actor, Vakhtangov acted using a suggestive method, i.e. using the method of suggestion, trying not just to force the performer to do something, but to “stir up” his imagination in search of the right feeling. He infected the actor with both his temperament and his naive faith in the character.

When the grain of the role has fully matured, the actor does not need to worry about identifying certain features of the internal and external physiognomy of the image. The very artistic nature of the actor guides him. All that remains is celebration, freedom of creativity, the joy of feeling the stage. This is true acting inspiration, when all parts of an actor's work - both elements of internal technique and external technique - are impeccably polished. The actor improvises freely, and each of his impromptu is internally prepared and flows from the grain of the role.

The dream of an improvising actor playing a role from scratch was one of Vakhtangov’s favorite ideas. The director dreamed that one day authors would stop writing plays, because in the theater a work of art must be created by an actor. An actor should not know what will happen to him when he goes on stage. He should go on stage, just as we go to some conversation in life.

Having examined the evolution of Vakhtangov’s aesthetics and briefly familiarized himself with his pedagogical and directorial methods, we have come close to the concept of “fantastic realism”, most fully realized in his last two performances: “Gadibuk” and “Princess Turandot”.

"Fantastic realism" of Vakhtangov's last performances

Shortly before his death, Vakhtangov began to call his theatrical method “fantastic realism,” declaring that the principle: “there should be no theater in the theater” should be rejected. There must be a theater in a theater. For each play it is necessary to look for a special and unique stage form. And in general, there is no need to confuse life and theater. Theater is not a copy of life, but a special reality. In a sense, superreality, a condensation of reality. At the same time, the director did not at all abandon the principles of psychological realism, or the inner spiritual technique of the actor. He still demanded authenticity of feelings from actors and declared that real stage art comes when an actor accepts as truth what he created with his stage imagination.

Theater can never become an absolute reality - since there is a convention of the stage, actors representing other people, fictitious characters and situations of the play. “Fantastic realism” is realism because the feelings in it are genuine, human psychology is real. The conventional stage means themselves are fantastic. An actor should not portray a character naturalistically. He must play it using the entire arsenal of stage expressiveness.

The spectator in the theater of “fantastic realism” does not forget that he is in the theater, but this does not at all interfere with the sincerity of his feelings, the genuineness of his tears and laughter. The task of "fantastic realism" - in any production - is to find a theatrical "form that is in harmony with the content and presented by the right means."

The peaks of Vakhtangov’s “fantastic realism” are his last performances “Gadibuk” and “Princess Turandot”. However, the features of this aesthetics are quite clear in the performances already described earlier: in the second editions of “The Wedding” and “The Miracle of St. Anthony”, in “Eric XIY”. The actors in these productions, transforming into the image and trying to “dissolve” in it, seemed to shine through the image with themselves and, playing another person, expressed themselves in it.

The performance "Gadibuk" at the Habima studio turned out to be Vakhtangov's penultimate premiere and the last premiere he attended in person. The grain of the performance was determined by Vakhtangov from the version of the title of Annensky's play - "Between Two Worlds." The director again built the performance on the favorite principles of contrast, the conflictual juxtaposition of two (or more) hostile worlds. Of particular interest to the director was the idea of ​​making the play absolutely understandable for a viewer unfamiliar with the Hebrew language. After all, “fantastic realism,” as he said, is a sculpture accessible to the understanding of all peoples. The director saw several conflicting worlds in the play, for each of which a circle of characteristic imagery was sought. The world of rich, socially prosperous, well-settled characters in life was likened to the forms of puppet theater, with its monotonous fixed movements, as if separating soul and body. Equally spiritual is the world of the social bottom, the world of the poor, who either sing of the owner’s wealth or curse him for his greed. Extremely expressionistic colors and forms of “tragic grotesque” were used here. The opposing world of love, of genuine human spirituality - Hanan and Leah - was expressed by the leitmotif of the "Song of Songs", which determined the grain of the characters. The manner of playing by Leah and Hanan can be called “ecstatic lyrics”. The actors were given a special soft plasticity.

The production's art style was designed by Nathan Altman. In the spare lines, black and yellow colors, displaced volumes and perspectives of his sketches, the world of the play was tragically distorted. Make-up was also allowed accordingly, in which there was nothing “theatrical-realistic”, but everything was based on a combination of four bright colors. According to Altman, Vakhtangov completely changed the first act of the play after getting acquainted with his sketches. However, speaking about the change in production style from naturalism to expressionism, one should keep in mind, firstly, the director’s increased interest in the theatrical grotesque, which manifested itself in a number of his previous works, and secondly, the peculiarities of the director’s method of working on the actor’s image.

At the initial stage of rehearsals, he did not demand external characterization from the performer, but sought the organic “growth” of the image in the actor, when naturalistic and ethnographic elements can be very useful. The actor was allowed to try out external techniques of expressiveness only from the already found grain of the role. Requiring each performer to master individual image roles, the director then arranged them into a strict, technically perfect score for the performance. The "freezing" of individual characters and entire groups in "Gadibuk" were unusually expressive. The performance turned out to be even more sculptural than "The Miracle of St. Anthony", it simply "asked to be turned into a bas-relief". A special role in the dynamic statics of the performance was played by the hands, which Vakhtangov called " eyes of the body." The gesture of the open palm, so typical of the Jewish folk dance, became the leitmotif of the entire stage movement score.

One of Vakhtangov’s unforgettable stage masterpieces was the wedding scene, where with extraordinary force the director built an emotional conflict between different planes, the world of the dead and the world of the living.

The third act, the episode of Gadibuk's expulsion, was treated by Vakhtangov as a hopeless tragedy. And death did not bring enlightenment. Such a tragic and hopeless ending was not accepted by many critics. Reviewers, in keeping with the spirit of the times, wanted more optimism.

The ecstatic manner of acting of the actors from the Habimy studio was also assessed differently. Maxim Gorky wrote enthusiastically that “the artists of Habima have a strong advantage over the Art Theater of his best time, - they have no less art, but more passion, ecstasy." But there were other opinions, like the following: "The amount of hysteria, tension, morbidity, shamanism that he [Vakhtangov] drove into his production would be enough for good fifth anniversary in some normal theater designed for the general public."

The finale of the search for a new theatricality was the play “Princess Turandot” in the Third, Vakhtangov, Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. The ending, however, is involuntary. It is unknown what Vakhtangov’s further evolution would have been like if his life had not been so prematurely cut short by an incurable disease.

The director in “Princess Turandot” for the first time revealed the techniques of his theatricality to such a degree of frankness. The mixture of styles and genres, the countless allusions, subjects of parody, the minute-by-minute change of mood - all this seemed to many to be a declaration of bad taste. And only the extraordinary success of the play and its record-long stage life convinced researchers of the director’s right to such an “explosive mixture.”

The choice of the play and many of the formal elements of “Princess Turandot” were seemingly borrowed by Vakhtangov from the experience of past years. And yet, the production of “Princess Turandot” was not a repetition of the stylized performances of conventional theater. Moreover, this performance opened up a new genre and turned out to be the beginning of a new theatrical truth. Vakhtangov in “Princess Turandot” did not abandon either the truth of life, or the beloved dualism of his constructions (two worlds - two principles of acting), or the play of contrasts. And therefore, the opinion of many researchers is true that “Princess Turandot” is the quintessence of Vakhtangov’s method (when this quintessence is not understood only as a fruitless “play at the theater”).

One of the defining ways of combining such diverse elements into a single whole was the principle of irony... A lady's stocking on the head of Emperor Altoum, an unexpected combination of a cloak, a sword and... a tailcoat, a tennis racket in the hands of Altoum as a symbol of royal power, shaggy towels instead of beards sages - all these and many other ironic elements were not an end in themselves. The task of Vakhtangov's irony is aimed at creating a new truth from the contradictory combination of the conventions of theater and the truth of human feelings - the truth of the theater. And in this sense, the director’s last work turned out to be a true innovation, because nothing like this had ever been done in the Russian theater before.

In "Princess Turandot" the director once again tried to reconcile the real human feelings of the actors and the invented circumstances of the stage performance. The convention of a fairy-tale stage atmosphere was combined with the requirement for the unconditional and organic life of the actor in the image. It was combined with the requirement for the unconditional and organic life of the actor in the image.

“Princess Turandot” turned out to be a play about the actor’s work. And the theme of the play can be defined as Nadezhda Bromley did: “The actor, the acting, the exposure of the craft.”

The actor became the main character of the play (and not just a performer of the role). Already in the prologue, all the participants introduced themselves to the public by name and then acted on their own behalf, in front of the viewer, either seriously getting used to the role, or slightly mocking their character. Vakhtangov set the studio a most difficult task: first completely destroy the stage illusion, and then restore it. Then - destroy again and reassemble. The actor was encouraged to constantly play with the image. In "Princess Turandot" the "face" of the actor and the "mask" of the image did not completely overlap each other and existed (at least in the very idea of ​​the director) simultaneously.

Vakhtangov strove to combine several levels: authenticity of feelings and bright conventional theatricality, the juxtaposition of a living actor and the image he plays. The conflict of constructions in this case was determined not by the difference in the social environment (as in “The Miracle of St. Anthony” or in “Eric XIV”), not by the philosophical opposition of antagonistic spiritual principles (as in “Gadibuk”), but by the very nature of the acting art, which always dualistically unites imagine a living human performer and an abstract stage image.

Familiarity with the director’s numerous plans allows us to judge how he planned to develop the principles of his “fantastic realism” in the future, how he planned to merge the truth of life and the truth of the theater.

In the project for the production of “The Fruits of Enlightenment,” which Vakhtangov was going to offer to Stanislavsky in 1921, the director was concerned with creating conditions for the actor that would combine stage conventions with the truth of the characters in Tolstoy’s play. Here again, as in “Princess Turandot,” the actor was asked to play not a role from the play at all, but himself, sitting at a rehearsal in the hall. Next - myself playing in the hall Yasnaya Polyana in front of Leo Tolstoy himself. And only then - to portray a certain character.

Dreaming of staging Ostrovsky’s comedy “Truth is good, but happiness is better,” two months before his death, the director proposed to bring the charm of the old, naive theater into the play.

Vakhtangov’s project for staging Hamlet is also known, which he also intended to take on as a “pretext for exercise” at the studio. In a conversation with Zahava, the director admitted that he could not find a form for Hamlet other than the one he discovered and tested in Princess Turandot.

So the point was not in the material of the play itself, but in Vakhtangov’s principled approach to any dramatic material as a reason for creating a theatrical organism of the type that he called “fantastic realism.”

Conclusion. Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov, who grew up as a master in the bowels of the Moscow Art Theater, accomplished in the course of several years such a spiritual and creative evolution that it is difficult to fit into several decades. He felt the features of the new theater so vividly and so convincingly that the Art Theater readily admitted that it was Vakhtangov who “made a shift in his art.”

However, despite the obvious change in the director’s creative style (from 1913 to 1922), constant constants remained in it. Vakhtangov’s understanding of the theater’s purpose remained virtually unchanged. Theater is the path to the spiritual. Theater is service. There is no theater without a sense of celebration. Each performance is unique, and each performance is a holiday.

Vakhtangov understood the modernity of theatrical art not in the special topicality of the plots, but in the fact that the very form of the performance corresponded to the spirit of the times.

In general, as P. Markov noted, the theme of Vakhtangov’s entire theatrical work was “the liberation of the actor’s subconscious forces before a breakthrough into new theatrical forms.” In his “fantastic realism”, human feelings are genuine, and the means of expression are conventional, the form is fantasized by the theater from the real material of the play, reflecting real life.

Necessary elements of any theatrical performance according to Vakhtangov: The play is a pretext for stage action. The actor is a master, armed with internal and external techniques. The director is a sculptor of theatrical performance. The stage is the place of action. An artist, musician, etc. are the director's employees. All these elements make up a single organism of the performance, alive in all its parts.

An actor in a new theater must strengthen all his abilities - from the strength of his voice and diction to the ability to convey the most subtle psychological experiences to the viewer. An actor simply must master all means of influence, of which he does not have many: face, body, facial expressions, voice, movement, emotion, temperament.

Vakhtangov saw the theater of the future, capable of conveying the fullness of the life of the human spirit, in the forms of an amphitheater, where every movement of the actor’s soul, the expression of his eyes, every almost elusive gesture are best seen. The main thing in this perfect theater will be the actor, who, having combined the perfect internal technique with the developed external technique, will turn into a true master improviser, organically living on stage and maximally influencing the viewer, creating the texture of the theater of “fantastic realism”, and not just playing this or that a different role assigned to him by the play.

Literature:

"Conversations about Vakhtangov." Recorded by Kh. N. Khersonsky. M.-L.: WTO, 1940.

Vakhtangov E. Notes. Letters. Articles. M.-L.: Art, 1939.

Vakhtangov Evg. Materials and articles M., 1959.

Gorchakov N.M. Directing lessons by Vakhtangov, M., 1957.

Evgeny Vakhtangov. Collection / Comp. L.D. Vendrovskaya, G.L. Kaptereva] - M., 1984.

Zakhava B.E., Vakhtangov and his studio. L., 1927.

3ographer N., Vakhtangov, M.-L., 1939.

Markov P. About the theater. In 4 volumes. M., 1974.

Simonov R. With Vakhtangov, M., 1959.

Khersonsky X., Vakhtangov, M., 1963.

Chekhov M. Literary heritage. Memories. Letters. In 2 volumes. M., 1995.

Sulerzhitsky was neither an actor nor a professional director, but he brought to the theater his rarer and often lacking talent for artists. Stanislavsky called L. Sulerzhitsky a friend and considered him a genius. “Suler - captain, fisherman, tramp, American,” as Stanislavsky writes about him in his “Memoirs of a Friend,” “had an extraordinary, inexhaustible taste for life. Suler brought with him to the theater a huge baggage of fresh, living, spiritual material straight from the earth. He collected it all over Russia, which he walked the length and breadth of with a knapsack over his shoulders. He brought to the stage the real poetry of the prairies, the countryside, the forests and nature. He brought a pristinely pure attitude to art, with complete ignorance of its old, worn out and captured acting techniques, craft, with their stamps and stencils, with their beauty instead of beauty, with their tension instead of temperament, sentimentality instead of lyricism, with pretentious reading instead of real pathos , sublime feeling." Sulerzhitsky was attracted to the theater by many things. But the main thing to which Leopold Antonovich devoted all his work in the theater was the desire to use art as. an effective means of moral, ethical and at the same time aesthetic impact on the viewer. For Sulerzhitsky, the theater was, first of all, a mass platform for education, public education - a powerful instrument of spiritual culture. Naturally, in order for the theater to fulfill such a role, it was necessary, first of all, to prepare a team of artists and educate the actor himself.

Stanislavsky on the phone: “In the life of the Moscow Art Theater there are countless such victories.” At the other end of the line is Nadezhda Mikhailovna Vakhtangova. “Tell him...” Stanislavsky says worriedly, “tell him to wrap himself in a blanket, like a toga, and sleep like a winner.” The returning Konstantin Sergeevich gives a speech to the public, which ends with the words addressed to the studio members: “You have found something that many theaters have been looking for in vain for so long!”

October 23, 2014 to the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute
- The Vakhtangov School turns 100 years old!

The founding date of the School is considered to be October 23, 1914. On this day, Evgeny Vakhtangov, a young student of Stanislavsky, held his first lesson with the studio students, who in November 1914 organized an amateur theater studio.

In 1917, after the first successful premiere, the first name appeared - the Moscow Drama Studio of E. B. Vakhtangov. In 1920 it was renamed III Moscow Art Theater Studio - Vakhtangov, who was suffering from cancer, wishing to preserve the studio, turned to his teachers at the Moscow Art Theater and asked to take his studio among the Moscow Art Theater studios. Vakhtangov casts his famous “Princess Turandot” as part of this very studio.

On May 29, 1922, Vakhtangov died after a long illness, unable to even come to the premiere and see auditorium your last one famous performance"Princess Turandot". Left without a leader, the artists continued their journey, and in 1926 the team succeeded, defending the building and the right to creative life, receive the status of the State Theater named after Evg. Vakhtangov with its permanent theater school.

Only in 1932 the school received the status of a secondary theater educational institution. In 1939, it was named after the great Russian actor, Vakhtangov’s favorite student, Boris Shchukin, and in 1945 the school was given the status of a higher educational institution. It was called the Higher Theater School named after B.V. Shchukin.

Since 2002 - Theater Institute named after Boris Shchukin.

Today, October 23 at 20.00 on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater will take place
evening dedicated to the anniversary.

The top officials of the state intend to attend the evening, President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin and Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation D.A. Medvedev, as well as Chairman of the Federation Council V.I. Matvienko, Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation S.E. Naryshkin, Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation O.Yu. Golodets, Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation V.R. Medinsky, Minister of Education D.V. Livanov.

The purpose of a gala evening is not just “celebration” next day birth of the School. The task is to reflect in the program all the main stages of the artists’ training, to emphasize that the spirit of democracy reigns at the institute, as evidenced by the fact that on the same stage in anniversary evening will benefit both teachers and students, and also demonstrate that the “indigenous” traditions and methods of educating actors and directors are alive andeffective, despite the considerable age of the School. We took the organization of the holiday extremely seriously: a script was specially written, roles were distributed and, in essence, festive program is a play about the Vakhtangov School.

It employs graduates of the Shchukin School different years: Vladimir Etush, Yulia Borisova, Vasily Lanovoy, Alexander Shirvindt, Mikhail Borisov, Pavel Lyubimtsev, Anna Dubrovskaya, Alexander Gordon and many others. Among the anniversary graduates (graduates of 1954, 1964, 1974, 1984, 1994, 2004) are Alla Demidova, Zinaida Slavina, Alexey Kuznetsov, Yuri Shlykov, Ruben Simonov,Sergey Prokhanov, Alexander Trofimov, Lika Nifontova, Svetlana Ryabova, Natalya Karpunina, Maria Aronova, Nonna Grishaeva, Kirill Pirogov, Vladimir Epifantsev, Viktor Dobronravov and other talented actors.