Maxim Didenko shot a film-performance in virtual reality format. Maxim Didenko presented the VR performance “A Cage with Parrots”
What is VR?
VR technology (English virtual reality - “virtual reality”) allows you to immerse a person in an artificially constructed world. Wear headphones, special glasses or a helmet virtual reality- and find yourself in an alternative universe. If you have ever played Counter-Strike or other computer game from the first person, you will feel the similarity: here you will also have to turn your head in all directions. But unlike a computer screen, glasses create a feeling of complete illusion of reality and disconnect you from the perception of the real world.
It’s a completely different matter in augmented reality - AR (English augmented reality), which is often confused with virtual. Here real world is not going anywhere, but digital objects are built into it and are visible on the smartphone screen.
Is this a new trend?
Yes, and not just a trend. Futurologists promise that VR/AR will revolutionize the way we communicate with a computer. A real boom in new technologies is expected next fall with the release of the iPhone 8 - its iOS 11 operating system should make augmented reality part of Everyday life. However, already now some real estate sellers are using virtual reality to show clients their future, but not yet built apartments, and Sephora offers to “try on” makeup using a webcam.
Art is keeping up with business: at this year's Cannes Film Festival, Oscar-winning director of Birdman and The Revenant Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu presented a VR film called Flesh and Sand, which puts the viewer in the shoes of a Mexican refugee trying to cross the US border. They also showed it there in Cannes Russian experiences virtual reality - films by students of the Moscow School of New Cinema. Before Maxim Didenko, Yuri Kvyatkovsky had already been noted among domestic theater directors in VR, filmed for Sberbank the story of how on one day in 1916 Stanislavsky, Chaliapin, Akhmatova and Mayakovsky met in the same savings bank.
So is this a film or a play?
In the traditional sense, this is, of course, more of a film, because direct contact not with actors. But still new genre very close to the theater. First of all, because of the effect of presence, when the viewer finds himself inside the action. In addition, if in cinema our gaze is manipulated by the operator and editor, then in the theater the viewer himself decides what to pay his attention to: the actors, the scenery, or the neighbor. The same freedom is given to you in a VR production: you can ignore the characters for the entire performance and look at the sky above your head. In more complex productions, the audience is not even limited to a static position in a chair, but is allowed to move around virtual world- which is already close to popular now.
“The Parrot Cage” - what is it about?
Gogol Center playwright Valery Pecheykin was inspired by Elon Musk's plans to fly to Mars and composed a short dystopia about how the hero failed the last test before being sent to the red planet. They gave him a cage with parrots, and when he heard the cry of the chick, he just threw a cloth over the cage. Indifference turns out to be an unforgivable trait for a person of the future. Despite the 8-minute format, Pecheykin and Didenko manage to tell a full-fledged story with development, characters and even an impressive change of scenery. At the same time, you as a viewer not only find yourself in the thick of things, but become the center of the story. After all, it was you who did not help the parrots, and it is you who are accused by the agitated man in white played by Rinal Mukhametov. There is no way you can justify yourself: you were injected with a special drug and deprived of your voice, so you can only wait in fear for the outcome. And she will be very cruel, although beautiful at the same time.
The performance will be shown at City Square until the end of September, and possibly longer if the weather is favorable.
What else can you see?
So far, the fashion for virtual productions is just emerging, but, for example, at the end of September the play “In Search of the Author” will be presented in Tyumen - an experience of combining a performance of the traditional form and VR technologies, in which some of the episodes were made in virtual reality. As for the capital, the Taganka Theater recently announced that they were launching a VR ticket function and now it will be possible to watch performances while sitting at home using virtual glasses.
On July 5, the premiere of Maxim Didenko’s new project “Parrot Cage” will take place in Moscow City. This is a virtual reality production based on the story of a man who has to pass the last test before flying to Mars.
Maxim Didenko developed an interest in 360-degree video a long time ago. “It all started with “Black Russian” - for this performance we made a 360-degree projection, which ran in the background in parallel with the main action. I then became interested in how cinema could exist in a theatrical coordinate system. Then I staged a play in Prague based on Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” (The Trial. - Esquire), which also had a 360-degree projection, and the actors walked around the stage with cameras in their hands and filmed each other. It turned out to be such a cinematic play. And then Svetlana Dolya invited me to make such an attraction story for the City, and I agreed,” the director told Esquire.
The script was written by playwright Valery Pecheykin, who was inspired by the project of Elon Musk's expedition to Mars and came up with a story about a man who is preparing to travel to the red planet.
“Of course, this is more cinema than theater. But in our new production there are elements from both the first and the second. In cinema, your gaze is controlled by the director and cameraman, they decide what you will look at, and in this sense it is a more totalitarian art. In the theater, you choose - especially if it is a multi-figure production. Of course, they are trying to manipulate your attention, but you have some choice. And in the case of “The Parrot Cage,” it turned out to be a movie in which you can choose what you will look at,” Didenko shared.
The director believes that the use of 360-degree technology in cinema has great promise: “I think this is a window to the future. The future of what cinema will be and what theater will be. You just have to experiment."
The main character was played by Gogol Center actor Rinal Mukhametov (“Optimists”), the remaining roles were performed by actors from Dmitry Brusnikin’s Workshop: Marina Vasilyeva (“What’s My Name,” “Dislike”), Vasily Butkevich (“ Good boy", "The Rag Union"), Igor Titov, Yuri Mezhevich, Yana Yenzhaeva, Gladstone Makhib. The director's constant collaborator is Ivan Kushnir ("Cavalry", "Circus", "Kharms. Myr", "Black Russian", etc.), and the costume designer is designer Anna Chistova ("Zoology", "Duhless 2", "About love"). “The Parrot Cage” was produced by the production companies “Friend of a Friend” and Life Is Short, known for such films as “The Rag Union” and “What’s My Name.”
The VR production will be shown daily in City Square from June to the end of October 2017. Ticket price starts from 450 rubles.
For complete immersion into the world of virtual reality, a special mirror cube was installed on the square, thanks to which the spectators - participants in the production, with maximum accuracy, will be able to find themselves in the place of the hero of the play - literally and figuratively. In the first seconds of viewing, it seems that nothing has changed in the world around us - with the possible exception of the time of day and the appearance of a luxurious yellow car. The City Square is still in front of my eyes, with the same skyscrapers all around.
Nothing unreal or fantastic - until the moment you want to look at the sky, across which the planet Mars, shimmering in all shades of red, is approaching the viewer directly.
The spectacle in itself is mesmerizing, but what is happening to the right and left makes you take your mind off the planet hanging directly above your head. The desire to quickly see every corner of this reality accompanies throughout the entire production, causing virtual eyes to literally run wild.
The idea of a VR performance was realized by two young but notable theatrical figures who are now in the spotlight: the play was written by Valery Pecheykin, a staff playwright at the Gogol Center (among other things, who wrote adaptations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Shakespeare for Dream in summer night"), and was directed by Maxim Didenko, who made "Cavalry" at the Meyerhold Center, "Pasternak" at the Gogol Center, as well as "The Idiot" and "Circus" at the Theater of Nations.
The hero is an astronaut, a potential conqueror of the expanses of Mars. In the course of the action, we learn that before the flight he was given one last test - parrots in a cage: will he pay attention to them when they need it. How concerned the character is with the fate of the birds will be judged by a man in a snow-white suit, whose appearance resembles either a doctor or a scientist. A blonde in a white robe and fashionable shoes helps him. These characters speak sternly to the hero, looking straight into his, that is, our eyes.
He will also be judged strictly. In the play we find the hero on a hospital gurney, where the doctor and his assistant are waiting for an answer to the question -
why he never went to the cage with the parrots when the bird's cry was coming from there.
It is clear that the hero failed the last test before departure. As does the girl lying next to him, also tied up and trying to free herself - until she is calmed down with an electric shock and taken away in an iron container. What is happening is frightening, the doctor’s monologue addressed to the hero makes him more and more nervous, but it is in this monologue that lies the key to understanding why approaching the cage with parrots was so important for the future inhabitant of Mars.
The main character of the play, aka the man in white, is
actor Rinal Mukhametov, who previously played in Didenko’s productions at the Gogol Center, as well as in the film “Attraction” and the TV series “Optimists.”
The role of his assistants was played by actors from Dmitry Brusnikin’s Workshop - Marina Vasilyeva, known for such films as “Loveless”, “What’s My Name”, and actor Vasily Butkevich, who played in the films “The Good Boy” and “The Rag Union”.
“When we read the play for the first time, we were even scared: there is a lot of cruelty and ambiguous actions in the play,” says theater producer Svetlana Dolya, “but after some time we realized that it contains a fundamentally important idea for our time and country about that the most important thing that a person of the future should have is not strength, or intelligence, or even health. In order to fly to Mars and begin to conquer new lands, a person must first remain human. Inner empathy for others is the most important thing that people of the future should have.”
