Creativity of Evgeny Vakhtangov as a special direction of the Stanislavsky system. Biography of Evgeny Vakhtangov

February 13 (February 1, old style) 1883 in Vladikavkaz in the family of a tobacco manufacturer.

In 1903 he entered the Moscow University at the natural faculty. In the second year he moved to the Faculty of Law and in the same year made his debut as a director, staging the student play "Teachers" based on the play by Otto Ernst (Ernst Julius Otto). The performance took place on January 12, 1905 and was given in favor of the needy. In 1906 he organized a drama club for university students.

In 1909, Evgeny Vakhtangov entered the theater school Alexandra Adasheva (his teachers were Leopold Sulerzhitsky, Vasily Luzhsky, Vasily Kachalov).

Since 1911 - accepted into the staff of the Moscow Art Theater(Moscow Art Theater; 1919-2004 - academic, Moscow Art Theater). Soon on young actor drew the attention of Konstantin Stanislavsky. He instructed Vakhtangov to conduct practical classes according to his method of acting.

In the same year, Vakhtangov began to conduct experimental classes on the System with a group of theater youth, which formed the core of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater organized in 1912 (since 1924 - Moscow Art Theater II). He staged here "Celebration of Peace" (1913) Gerhart Hauptmann (Gerhart Hauptmann), "Flood" (1915) Hennig Berger (Henning Berger), "Rosmersholm" (1918) Henrik Ibsen (Henrik Ibsen). At the same time, Vakhtangov conducted pedagogical work in a number of other Moscow theater schools, led amateur circles.

In the First Studio, Evgeny Vakhtangov was constantly looking for new ways to portray the psychological state of the hero. Over time, the rigid framework of the Stanislavsky system began to seem cramped to him. He was carried away by the theatrical ideas of Vsevolod Meyerhold, but soon rejected them. Yevgeny Vakhtangov formed his own understanding of the theater, he formulated it in one short slogan - "fantastic realism". Like Stanislavsky, he believed that the main thing in theatrical performance is, of course, an actor. But Vakhtangov proposed to separate the personality of the performer from the image that he embodies on stage.

Among the youth groups where Vakhtangov taught in 1912-1922, a special place belonged to the Student Drama Studio. The Studio did not have its own premises in 1913, the participants gathered every day in a new place. In 1914, the premiere of the play "The Lanins' Manor" by Boris Zaitsev took place. In the autumn of 1914, the Studio had already settled in a small apartment in Mansurovsky lane on Ostozhenka (then it was called Mansurovskaya). Since 1917 - the Moscow Drama Studio under the direction of E.B. Vakhtangov. September 13, 1920 Studio E.B. Vakhtangov was accepted into the Art Theater under the name of his Third Studio. On November 13, 1921, the permanent theater of the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater opened. Since 1926 -.

In each of the productions - "The Miracle of St. Anthony" (1921, second edition, Third Studio), Chekhov's "Wedding" (1920, Third Studio), "Eric XIV" by August Strindberg (1921, First Studio) - with a huge expression revealed the confrontation between darkness and light, death and conquering life. This tragic conflict reached its greatest strength in "Gadibuk" by Semyon Ansky (1922, studio "Gabima").

Based on a fairy tale by an Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi(Carlo Gozzi) Vakhtangov, already shortly before his death, staged "Princess Turandot". With this performance, he opened a new direction in theater directing. Using characters-masks and tricks Italian comedy del arte, Vakhtangov filled the fairy tale contemporary issues and topical issues. Vakhtangov proposed to present topical issues not directly, but in the form of a kind of game - polemics, disputes or dialogues of characters with each other.

After the first rehearsal of Princess Turandot, Stanislavsky told his student that he could fall asleep as a winner.
On May 29, 1922, Yevgeny Vakhtangov died a few weeks before the premiere of the play. He was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Vakhtangov was married to Nadezhda Mikhailovna Baitsurova, his school friend. Son - Sergey.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Life story
Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov - Russian Soviet theater director, actor, teacher. Founder and head of the Student Studio (since 1926 - the theater named after E.B. Vakhtangov). Performances: "The Miracle of St. Anthony" (1916; 2nd edition - 1921), "Eric XIV" (1921), "Gadibuk" (1922), "Princess Turandot" (1922), etc.
Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov was born on February 1, 1883 in Vladikavkaz in the family of a tobacco manufacturer. His father, a powerful and proud man, saw his son as the heir to the cause. But Eugene became interested in theater. At first, he performed in home performances, later he began to attend the gymnasium drama club, the Vladikavkaz Music and Drama Society.
After graduating from the gymnasium in the spring of 1903, Eugene fails the exams at the Riga Polytechnic College and enters the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Moscow University (later he will transfer to law). But he is more interested in literature and theater.
It was the heyday of the Art Theater. Mkhatov luminaries - Kachalov, Leonidov, Moskvin - became Vakhtangov's favorite artists for life.
In 1905 Vakhtangov married Nadezhda Baitsurova, also a theatergoer. She became a real keeper of the family hearth, a loving mother to their son Sergei.
In 1909, Vakhtangov entered the theater school at the Moscow Art Theater, immediately into the second year. On March 15, 1911, Vakhtangov was admitted to the Moscow Art Theater, and a few months later Stanislavsky instructed him to conduct classes with a group of actors. Yevgeny Bagrationovich speaks enthusiastically about the Stanislavsky system. But in his diary there is also such an entry: “I want to form a studio where we would study. The principle is to achieve everything yourself. Leader is everything. Check system K.S. on themselves. Accept or reject it. Correct, supplement or remove lies.
In 1913, Vakhtangov headed the Student Studio. The first performance, Zaitsev's The Lanins' Manor, was a flop, and for the next two years the studio members resisted the temptation to play in public.
Vakhtangov is working fruitfully at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. On its stage, he staged four significant performances: "The Feast of the World" (1913), "The Flood" (1915), "Rosmersholm" (1918) and later - "Erik XIV" (1921). Hauptmann's "Peace Festival" was played with the utmost nakedness of the human psyche, as if trying to get to the bottom of the most hidden depths of consciousness. Everything was sharpened, exaggerated, taken to the extreme. However, after watching the play run, Stanislavsky was dissatisfied: Vakhtangov introduced bitterness and excessive passion into the play.
In August 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. Theaters are catastrophically empty. The first studio shows a peaceful "Christmas" play "The Cricket on the Stove" based on the story of Charles Dickens. Vakhtangov, who played the role of the manufacturer Tecklton, was the only actor who introduced harsh and harsh tones into the lyrical scale of the performance. The magazine "Apollo" singled out the fiery temperament as the most significant in the acting personality of Vakhtangov, but the temperament is secret, hidden. He does not break out even in the most dramatic moments, he concentrates in gesture, in facial expressions, in the drawing of the role.
At this time, Evgeny Bagrationovich feels the first disturbing shocks of the disease - stomach ulcers. He drinks tea with soda and puts on a play by the Swedish writer Berger "The Flood", with a rather sketchy development of the action in the genre of melodrama. In the director's notes for the first act, Vakhtangov writes: “All are wolves to each other. Not an ounce of compassion. Not an ounce of attention. Everyone has their geshefts. They tear at each other. Fragmented. Lost in action. Nothing human is left. And so not only today, so always, all my life.
In his work with the studio students, he invariably relied on the Stanislavsky system, but used it in different ways. If in the Student Studio he sought the truth of feelings from the performers, then in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater he taught to reveal this truth through expressive form. In the words of P. Markov, "he gave the psychological grain a stage frame."
Mikhail Chekhov wrote that Vakhtangov had a special sense of the actor. His pedagogy consisted of “the ability to penetrate into someone else's soul and speak its language. He, as it were, invisibly stood next to the actor and led him by the hand. The actor never felt violence from Vakhtangov, but he could not evade his director's intention. Carrying out the tasks and plans of Vakhtangov, the actor felt them as his own. When the actor dropped his tone, Vakhtangov whistled, putting two fingers into his mouth.
In the summer of 1915, after a tour of the First Studio, Vakhtangov, along with Nadezhda and his son Seryozha, rested in Evpatoria. Soon dachas and resorts will be replaced by hospitals, recreation with fun games - treatment and surgical operations.
The next production by the First Studio was Ibsen's Rosmersholm. Work on this performance was carried out for two years (1916-1918). Criticism called the main character Rosmer Hamlet of the new era.
When the dress rehearsal of Rosmersholm took place at the beginning of the 1918-1919 season, Vakhtangov was in the hospital. They didn't even tell him about it. The conspiracy of silence is explained by the fact that the artist's intention did not meet with understanding among the studio members. “The performance gives the impression of being forced”, “Idealism and mysticism!” - there were critical reviews. The path of extreme, sharpened psychologism was passed here to the end.
Work on the play "The Miracle of St. Anthony" by Maeterlinck in the Student Studio began in the autumn of 1916. However, this performance, interpreted by Vakhtangov as a satire, brought to the grotesque, was not a success. The student studio was going through a period of split.
January 2, 1919 Vakhtangov leaves for the Zakharyino sanatorium in Khimki. Doctors insist on gastric surgery. Yevgeny Bagrationovich agrees, not telling his wife and son anything - he does not want to worry them. At the end of January, he returns to Moscow, goes headlong into business, manages to complete the production of "The Flood" in his studio - for showing at the People's Theater, and in March - again the sanatorium "Zakharyino" and again the operation.
A few days later, he learns that the twelve most gifted students left him after all. The blow is brutal. Vakhtangov is shocked and confused. It took a while to gain strength...
Vakhtangov wants to do as much as possible. In 1921, he worked in his studio on "Princess Turandot", "Gadibuk" - in the Jewish studio "Habime", "Eric XIV" - in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. The third studio showed the second edition of the play "The Miracle of St. Anthony", work on Chekhov's "Wedding" was being completed. These five performances, staged by Vakhtangov during the last two years of his life, brought him worldwide fame. Here comes the main philosophical problem Vakhtangov's creativity is a question of life and death.
"Wedding" Vakhtangov attributed to Chekhov's "great plays" and was going to solve it on the same large scale as "Three Sisters" or "Uncle Vanya" were solved at the Moscow Art Theater. Simultaneously with the "Wedding" Vakhtangov finished and new version"The Miracle of Saint Anthony".
The word "grotesque" immediately flashed in enthusiastic reviews of the play. Vakhtangov writes: “Everyday theater must die. "Character" actors are no longer needed. All who have the capacity for characterization must feel the tragedy (even comedians) of any characterization and must learn to express themselves grotesquely. Grotesque - tragic, comic. Vakhtangov is fascinated by the theater of the grotesque, tragedy - psychological drama seems to him vulgarity, everyday theater - doomed to death.
In Strindberg's Erik XIV, staged at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater in the spring of 1921, Vakhtangov moves from condensed psychologism to generalization. He was looking for a stage expression for the theme of Eric's doom (as the theme of the doom of royalty in general). Pavel Markov wrote that in "Erik" Vakhtangov "threw onto the stage the anxiety that filled the life of those years."
Absorbed by work, Vakhtangov watched his health episodically, at one time he did yogi gymnastics, switched to dietary nutrition, but then broke the regime - he smoked continuously, up to a hundred cigarettes a day, sat at theater parties after the performance, still captivating young people with his songs, parodies, mandolin. And it happened that he played cards with passion all night long.
In December 1921, at the insistence of relatives and friends, a council of doctors was convened: Vakhtangov developed especially severe pain. The council gathers at the theater on the Arbat. Doctors pronounce a verdict - cancer, but they hide it from the patient. Evgeny Bagrationovich, feeling himself, repeats in surprise: “Strange, strange ... It’s strange that they didn’t find anything with me, because here’s a tumor, I’m probing it, but they can’t find it ...”
The tragedy of Vakhtangov's fate echoed in the tragic collisions of performances, in the suffering and torment of the characters in the play "Gadibuk" by S. An-sky. One of the sources of the tragic grotesque was the "strange" pictures of the artist Nathan Altman. He brought them from Petrograd and showed them to Vakhtangov. Characters from the world ancient legend appear in unusual angles: crippled, unhappy people look from the cardboard, their gestures are sharp, their rhythms are convulsive.
The performance was in Hebrew. Back in 1920, Vakhtangov, according to M. Sinelnikova, wanted to stage a performance in which people would “say completely incomprehensible words, but everything would be clear” - thanks to the action built by the director.
On January 31, 1922, the premiere of "Gadibuk" took place, and on February 13, Vakhtangov last time went on stage - played Frazer in "The Flood". The doctor informed Nadezhda Mikhailovna that her husband had no more than two or three months to live. However, until February 16, Vakhtangov rehearses new role- master Pierre in the play by N.N. Bromley Archangel Michael. This "ladies'" tragedy seemed vague and pretentious to many. But Vakhtangov was also attracted by the modernized form of the play, and broken dialogues, and twisted images - in a word, the pathos of denial with which this work was imbued. The performance turned out to be gloomy, cumbersome. Vakhtangov did not complete this work - due to his illness, the performance was produced by director B. Sushkevich.
Vakhtangov's last performance has long become a legend and calling card his theatre. In Gozzi's "Princess Turandot" he saw the continuation of the tradition of the folk theater "comedy of masks", the theater of improvisation, born in the squares of Italy.
Vakhtangov was in a hurry to finish the performance, he worked day and night. February 24, 1922 - the last rehearsal in the life of the director. He is very ill. He sits in a fur coat, his head wrapped in a wet towel. At four o'clock in the morning, the installation of the light was completed, and Evgeny Bagrationovich's command was heard: "The whole play from beginning to end!"
After the rehearsal, he was taken home in a cab. He did not appear in the theater again. The directors of the play - Zavadsky, Zakhava, Kotlubay - visited the patient daily, receiving instructions and comments from him about the release of the play.
On February 27, Turandot is shown to Stanislavsky and his comrades at the Moscow Art Theater. The studios don't play seriously at all old fairy tale Gozzi - they throw blankets over themselves as raincoats, wrap their heads in turban towels, hang towels instead of beards: Vakhtangov continues the principles of Stanislavsky's Twelfth Night and goes further than the teacher. The performance, witty and graceful, rare in elegance, foaming with fun, the director managed to connect with the unsettled, but full of hope life of the twenties. It was optimism and faith in the strength and energy of life that constituted the main content of Turandot. “During the 23 years of the existence of the Art Theatre,” Stanislavsky said in his address to the troupe, “there have been few such achievements. You have found what many theaters have been looking for so long and in vain.
After May 24, the director's health deteriorated sharply. He does not recognize loved ones; forgetting from morphine, he imagines himself a commander ...
Vakhtangov died on Monday May 29, 1922 at 10 pm. He lay among the flowers in the shoes of Princess Turandot. At the last moment, it suddenly turned out that the prepared slippers did not fit, and Nadezhda Mikhailovna, seeing the princess’s shoes accidentally left by someone, hastily put them on Yevgeny Bagrationovich’s feet ... They buried him in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, in the row where the artists are buried Art Theatre.
In 1926 the Vakhtangov studio became State theater named after Evg. Vakhtangov.

Evgeny Bogrationovich Vakhtangov is an outstanding director, actor, teacher.
Founder and head of the Student Drama Studio (1913, since 1921 - the 3rd Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, and since 1926 - the Evg. Vakhtangov Theater).

Born in the city of Vladikavkaz in a Russian-Armenian merchant family. His father was a large tobacco manufacturer and hoped that his son would continue his business.
Vakhtangov became interested in theater even in his gymnasium years and decided to devote his whole life to it. Despite the prohibitions of his father, Eugene in his gymnasium years performed a lot and successfully on the amateur stages of Vladikavkaz.
After graduating from the gymnasium, he entered the Moscow University in the department of physics and mathematics and immediately joined the student theater Club. In the second year, Evg. Vakhtangov moved to the Faculty of Law and in the same year made his debut as a director, staging the student play "Teachers" based on the play by O. Ernst. The performance took place on January 12, 1905 and was given in favor of the needy.
Vakhtangov finally quarreled with his father when he married his school friend, Nadezhda Mikhailovna Boitsurova. Soon their son Seryozha was born. The father was simply furious, he regretted that he had given his son an education, and deprived him of his inheritance.
IN student years, often coming from Moscow to Vladikavkaz, Vakhtangov tries to hometown organize his own theatre, he dreams of turning his father's factory building into a theatre.
In 1904-1905, Vakhtangov participated in illegal gatherings of youth. On the day of the December uprising in 1905, Vakhtangov built barricades in one of Moscow's lanes, and participated in the creation of sanitary care for the wounded.
In the summer of 1909, Evgeny Vakhtangov directed the Vladikavkaz artistic and dramatic circle and staged the plays “Uncle Vanya” by A.P. Chekhov and “At the Gates of the Kingdom” by K. Hamsun in it. Vakhtangov's father was again furious, believing that the posters of performances with the name Vakhtangov posted around the city dishonored him and caused moral damage to the factory.
In the summer of 1910, Vakhtangov again spends in Vladikavkaz, together with his wife and young son Serezha. Yevgeny Bogrationovich staged here an operetta by the local author M. Popov, which was a success in Vladikavkaz and Grozny.

Vakhtangov left the Faculty of Law and entered the A. Adashev School of Drama in Moscow, after which in 1911 he was accepted into the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater.
Soon K.S. Stanislavsky drew attention to the young actor. He instructed Vakhtangov to lead practical lessons according to his method of acting at the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. It was in this studio that Vakhtangov's talent was fully revealed. And as an actor, he became famous as Frazier in Berger's The Flood.
On the stage of the studio, Vakhtangov created several chamber performances, in which he also played as an actor. In the First Studio, Evgeny Bogrationovich was constantly looking for new methods of depicting the psychological state of the hero. Over time, the rigid framework of Stanislavsky's recommendations began to seem cramped to Vakhtangov. He was carried away by the theatrical ideas of Vsevolod Meyerhold, but soon rejected them. Yevgeny Vakhtangov formed his own understanding of the theater, quite different from Stanislavsky, which he formulated in one short slogan - "fantastic realism". On the basis of this "fantastic realism" Vakhtangov built the theory of his own theater.
Like Stanislavsky, he believed that the main thing in a theatrical performance is, of course, the actor. But Vakhtangov proposed to strictly separate the personality of the performer from the image that he embodies on stage.
Vakhtangov began to stage performances in his own way. The scenery in them consisted of the most common household items. Based on them, with the help of light and draperies, the artists created fantastic views of fabulous cities, as, for example, was done in the last and most beloved Vakhtangov performance "Princess Turandot".
Vakhtangov also suggested changing the costumes of the actors. For example, an unusual theatrical dressing gown, embroidered and decorated, was put on a modern costume. To further emphasize the conventionality of what is happening on stage, the actors put on costumes right in front of the audience, thus transforming from an actor into a character in a play in a matter of seconds. For the first time in the history of the theatre, there was a boundary between the character and the artist. Vakhtangov himself, who enthusiastically accepted the revolution of 1917, believed that this style of acting is quite consistent with the new time, because the revolution sharply separated new world from the old, departing.
After the revolution of 1917, Vakhtangov tried to create a new, not elitist, but "people's" theater. From morning to evening he was on his feet - rehearsals took place in three studios: the Moscow Art Theater, the Jewish studio "Habima" and in the troupe People's Theater, lessons, preparation of the performance for the anniversary of the revolution.
Vakhtangov dreamed of staging Byron's Cain and the Bible, but death prevented these plans.

Just a year before his death, he founded the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, which later became the State Theater named after E. B. Vakhtangov.
At the very beginning of 1921, Vakhtangov's rehearsals at the Third Studio were temporarily suspended. Yevgeny Bogrationovich devoted all his time to Habima's studio, where he completed work on "Gadibuk" (1922).
In 1921, on the stage of his studio, he staged the play by M. Maeterlinck "The Miracle of St. Anthony" (second edition). In this production, Vakhtangov has already tried to realize his innovative ideas. It was a very bright spectacle, in which both the director and the actors made up a single creative ensemble. The performance managed to convey to the audience the complex symbolism of the play and the metaphorical thinking of the playwright.

According to the tale of the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi, Vakhtangov, shortly before his death, staged "Princess Turandot". With this performance, he opened a new direction in theater directing. Using the characters-masks and techniques of the Italian commedia dell'arte, Vakhtangov filled the tale with modern problems and topical issues.
Everything that happened in post-revolutionary Russia, the heroes of the tale immediately discussed from the stage in the course of the action. However contemporary issues Vakhtangov proposed to present not directly, but in the form of a kind of game - polemics, disputes or dialogues of characters with each other. Thus, the actors not only recited the memorized text of the play, but gave characteristics, often very ironic and evil, to all the events taking place in the country.

After the first rehearsal of "Princess Turandot", Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky told his brilliant student, who no longer got out of bed, that he could fall asleep as a winner.

On May 29, Vakhtangov's wife, Nadezhda Mikhailovna, called the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater and said: "Come soon!" Yevgeny Bogrationovich died, surrounded by his students. Before his death, consciousness returned to him. He sat down, looked at the students for a long time, and said very calmly: “Goodbye.”
"Princess Turandot" became latest work Vakhtangov, he did not live only a few weeks before the premiere.
Vakhtangov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Evgeny Vakhtangov was born on February 13, 1883 in Vladikavkaz into a Russian-Armenian merchant family. His father was a large tobacco manufacturer and hoped that his son would continue his business. The customs in the house were harsh, his father was a cruel man, Eugene was constantly afraid of him.

Vakhtangov became interested in theater even in his gymnasium years and decided to devote his whole life to it. Despite the prohibitions of his father, Eugene in his gymnasium years performed a lot and successfully on the amateur stages of Vladikavkaz.

After graduating from high school, Evgeny Vakhtangov entered University of Moscow to the Physics and Mathematics Department and immediately joined the student theater group. In his second year, Vakhtangov moved to the Faculty of Law and in the same year made his debut as a director, staging the student play "Teachers" based on the play by O. Ernst. The performance took place on January 12, 1905 and was given in favor of the needy.

The marriage of Evgeny Vakhtangov and a quarrel with his father

With your father Vakhtangov finally broke up when married on his school friend - Nadezhda Mikhailovna Boytsurova. Soon their son Seryozha was born. The father was simply furious, he regretted that he had given his son an education, and deprived him of his inheritance. This marriage was the collapse of all parental hopes - Vakhtangov's father wanted to marry his son to the daughter of his millionaire friend.

In his student years, often coming from Moscow to Vladikavkaz, Vakhtangov also tries to organize your theater, he dreams of turning his father's factory building into a theater.

In 1904-1905, Vakhtangov participated in illegal gatherings of youth. In factories and factories, together with the revolutionaries, he distributes revolutionary leaflets and leaflets. On the day of the December uprising in 1905, Vakhtangov built barricades in one of Moscow's lanes, and participated in the creation of sanitary care for the wounded.

In the summer of 1909, Evgeny Vakhtangov directed the Vladikavkaz art and drama circle and staged plays in it. "Uncle Ivan" A.P. Chekhov And "At the gates of the kingdom" K. Hamsun. Vakhtangov's father was again furious, believing that the posters of performances with the name Vakhtangov posted around the city dishonored him and caused moral damage to the factory.

In the summer of 1910, Vakhtangov again spends in Vladikavkaz, together with his wife and young son Serezha. Yevgeny Bagrationovich puts here an operetta by the local author M. Popov, which was a success in Vladikavkaz and Grozny.

The relationship of the spouses was not always cloudless. Vakhtangov gave all his time to the theater, they often lived separately. But Vakhtangov loved his wife very much. In one of his letters he wrote to her: “You will not be happy without me, and you will not be happy without me. We love each other so well. And we do so many stupid things. I mess up so much.

Now I need to be healthy. And we have to start our life again. Support me. Help me, my Nadia, my God, part of my soul, part of my body. I can't imagine myself without you. It suddenly became so clear to me now: we found each other. And we must never part. I love you, I kiss your hands. Your Zhenya. Write to me...»

Vakhtangov left the Faculty of Law and entered the A. Adashev School of Drama in Moscow, after which he was accepted into the troupe in 1911 Moscow Art Theater.

Vakhtangov's acquaintance with Stanislavsky and "fantastic realism"

Soon the young actor drew attention K.S. Stanislavsky. He instructed Vakhtangov conduct practical classes according to his method of acting in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. It was in this studio that Vakhtangov's talent was fully revealed. And as an actor, he became famous as Frazier in Berger's The Flood.

On the stage of the studio, Vakhtangov created several chamber performances, in which he also played as an actor. In the First Studio, Evgeny Bagrationovich was constantly looking for new methods of depicting the psychological state of the hero. Over time, the rigid framework of Stanislavsky's recommendations began to seem cramped to Vakhtangov. He was carried away by the theatrical ideas of Vsevolod Meyerhold, but soon rejected them. Yevgeny Vakhtangov is forming his own understanding of the theater, rather different from Stanislavsky, which he formulated in one short slogan - "fantastic realism". On the basis of this "fantastic realism" Vakhtangov built theory of own theater.

Like Stanislavsky, he believed that the main thing in a theatrical performance is, of course, the actor. But Vakhtangov proposed to strictly separate the personality of the performer from the image that he embodies on stage.

Vakhtangov began to stage performances in his own way. The scenery in them consisted of the most common household items. Based on them, with the help of light and draperies, the artists created fantastic views of fabulous cities, as, for example, was done in the last and most beloved Vakhtangov performance "Princess Turandot".

Vakhtangov also suggested changing the costumes of the actors. For example, an unusual theatrical dressing gown, embroidered and decorated, was put on a modern costume. To further emphasize the conventionality of what is happening on stage, the actors put on costumes right in front of the audience, thus transforming from an actor into a character in a play in a matter of seconds. For the first time in the history of the theatre, there was a boundary between the character and the artist. Vakhtangov himself, who enthusiastically accepted the revolution of 1917, believed that this style of acting is quite consistent with the new time, because the revolution sharply separated the new world from the old, outgoing one.

One of the commanders of the Red Army wrote in his letter: “I watched Princess Turandot, and everything inside me rejoiced: long live life! Long live Soviet authority! Life is going! Will wonderful Life!»

Evgeny Vakhtangov's attempts to create a "people's" theater

After the 1917 revolution Vakhtangov works very hard, despite the ever-increasing stomach disease. In 1919, Vakhtangov undergoes two operations due to the narrowing of the stomach. However, the doctors then did not tell him about the true disease - stomach cancer.

IN last years Vakhtangov was in a heightened ecstatic state of life - a mixture of agony and enthusiasm, when a heightened sense of the frailty of human flesh and the power of a creative impulse that overcomes it merge together. Vakhtangov tried to create a new, not elitist, but "folk" theater. From morning to evening he was on his feet - rehearsals were held in three studios: the Moscow Art Theater, the Jewish studio "Habima" and in the troupe of the People's Theater, lessons, preparation of the play for the anniversary of the revolution. “And all this colossal burden,” Vakhtangov wrote, “I drag, crouched in half, beveled by my illness, and I can’t, I don’t have the right to leave at least one of the cases ... I have to have time to give back what I have.”

Vakhtangov dreamed of staging Byron's Cain and the Bible, but death prevented these plans.

Just a year before his death, he founded the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, which later became State Theater named after E.B. Vakhtangov.

At the very beginning of 1921, Vakhtangov's rehearsals at the Third Studio were temporarily suspended. Yevgeny Bagrationovich devoted all his time to Habim's studio, where he completed work on "Gadibuk" (1922). After handing over the Gadibuk, Vakhtangov left for a sanatorium for 10 days. But the rest did not bring him relief, he returned from the sanatorium even more weakened. However, he immediately got to work. The studio, concerned about Vakhtangov's state of health, decided to convene a council of doctors. To everyone's horror, it became known that Vakhtangov's days were numbered, he had cancer of the stomach and liver. In order not to create panic, they decided not to say anything to Vakhtangov. However, Yevgeny Bagrationovich himself, apparently, knew perfectly well that the time of his life had come to an end, so he was in a hurry to do everything in his power.

In 1921, on the stage of his studio, he staged the play by M. Maeterlinck "The Miracle of St. Anthony" (second edition). In this production, Vakhtangov has already tried to realize his innovative ideas. It was a very bright spectacle, in which both the director and the actors made up a single creative ensemble. The performance managed to convey to the audience the complex symbolism of the play and the metaphorical thinking of the playwright.

Vakhtangov's production of "Princess Turandot"

Based on the fairy tale by the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi Vakhtangov, already shortly before death, puts "Princess Turandot". With this performance, he opened a new direction in theater directing. Using the characters-masks and techniques of the Italian commedia dell'arte, Vakhtangov filled the tale with modern problems and topical issues.

Everything that happened in post-revolutionary Russia, the heroes of the tale immediately discussed from the stage in the course of the action. However, Vakhtangov proposed presenting modern problems not directly, but in the form of a kind of game - polemics, disputes or dialogues of characters with each other. Thus, the actors not only recited the memorized text of the play, but gave characteristics, often very ironic and evil, to all the events taking place in the country.

On the night of February 23-24, 1922, the last rehearsal in Vakhtangov's life took place. The rehearsal began with the installation of the light. Vakhtangov was very ill, he had a temperature of 39 degrees. He rehearsed in a fur coat, wrapping his head in a wet towel.

Returning home after the rehearsal, Vakhtangov lay down and never got up again.

After the first rehearsal run "Princess Turandot" Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky told his brilliant student, who no longer got out of bed, that he could fall asleep as a winner.

On May 29, Vakhtangov's wife, Nadezhda Mikhailovna, called the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater and said: "Come soon!"

Before his death, at times Vakhtangov lost consciousness. In delirium, he waited for the arrival of Leo Tolstoy. imagined myself statesman, handed out assignments to students, asked what had been done in the fight against fires in Petrograd. Then he started talking about art again. Yevgeny Bagrationovich died, surrounded by his students. Before his death, consciousness returned to him. He sat down, looked at the students for a long time, and said very calmly: - goodbye.

Testament of Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov

May 29, 1922 Vakhtangov died. He died the way leaders die. He fulfilled his own covenant - “end your days on earth well, and maybe even talentedly”.

"Princess Turandot" became the last work of Vakhtangov, he did not live only a few weeks before the premiere. Vakhtangov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

The principles of "mobile theatre" embedded in "Turandot", dynamic, changing, and therefore ageless over time, have been forever preserved in the traditions of the future theater named after E.B. Vakhtangov, into which the Moscow Art Theater studio has grown. And "Princess Turandot" has remained a calling card Vakhtangov theater. Princess Turandot herself different years the wonderful actresses of this theater - Cecilia Mansurova and Yulia Borisova, played Prince Calaf - Yuri Zavadsky, Ruben Simonov and Vasily Lanovoy. Fifty years after the premiere, the theater resumed this Vakhtangov production, "Princess Turandot" is on the stage of the theater today.

Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov is an outstanding director, actor, teacher, who practically proved that "the laws of the organic existence of a person discovered by his teacher Stanislavsky on stage are applicable to the art of any aesthetic direction", and created a new theatrical direction "fantastic realism".

Studio youth and admission to the Moscow Art Theater. E. Vakhtangov was born on February 1 (13), 1883 in Vladikavkaz in the Russian-Armenian prosperous patriarchal family of a tobacco manufacturer. Rejecting the commercial career and legacy of his father-manufacturer, he became interested in amateur theater. The break with his father, who dreamed of a trading career for his son, meant for the young Vakhtangov a break with his environment. The theme of family hell, mutual torment, sounded like a personal, deeply suffered theme, in one of Vakhtangov's first directorial works, the play "Feast of Peace" G. Hauptmann (1913).

In 1903-1909. E. Vakhtangov studied first at the natural, then at the law faculties of Moscow University. In 1907-1909 he wrote essays and articles for the Caucasian newspaper Terek. He staged performances and played in student circles in Riga, Grozny, Vladikavkaz, Vyazma, and other cities (“Uncle Vanya” by A. Chekhov, “Summer Residents” and "at the bottom" M. Gorky, "At the Royal Doors" K. Hamsun and others). In 1906 he organized a drama club for students of Moscow University. Passion for amateur theater largely determined later life and the work of Vakhtangov. From the amateur theatre, he took out a predilection for the studio, experiment and improvisation.

In 1909, Vakhtangov entered the drama courses of A.I. Adashev in Moscow, named after their director, where the actors of the Moscow Art Theater Vasily Luzhsky, Vasily Kachalov, and Leopold Sulerzhitsky, who had a serious influence on the formation of a creative personality, worldview and early theatrical views of Vakhtangov, taught. Theater historians recognize for Sulerzhitsky the role of the "midwife" of the Stanislavsky system. The unity of ethics and aesthetics in theatrical art affirmed in the practice of the theater by Stanislavsky, Sulerzhitsky  and their most faithful and talented student - Vakhtangov.

At the time when Vakhtangov entered the Adashev drama school, K.S. Stanislavsky, relying on a huge and demanding work on the stage, began to theoretically summarize his observations and conclusions, finding a whole system of techniques so that the actor would come as close as possible to such a state as if he were not an actor, but himself. actor in the play.

These techniques are at first glance very simple (because they are easy to vulgarize), but the more you study them in practice, the more difficult the matter becomes. L.A. Sulerzhitsky, from whom Vakhtangov directly, step by step, learned about the "system", could least of all be a vulgarizer. On the contrary, the "system" itself interested him only as one of the manifestations and means of high spiritual culture, and he treated Stanislavsky's techniques as a support for the most complex process of creativity.

Sulerzhitsky helped K.S. Stanislavsky to realize and consistently state the found elements of the "system". Great master- K.S. Stanislavsky - needed laboratory, experimental confirmation of the provisions put forward by him. Sulerzhitsky was very useful to him, using his classes with students at the Adashev school.

Yevgeny Vakhtangov came to this school on time. He was at the origins of the emerging doctrine. Having become a favorite student of Sulerzhitsky, he involuntarily became a trusted participant in his creative work. And through Leopold Antonovich, he penetrated Stanislavsky's laboratory of thought.

Sulerzhitsky begins his work with students by destroying the actor's tune, the game "inside", craft clichés. Leopold Antonovich instills in his students an aversion to everything that is lifeless and mechanistic on the stage. In essence, the education of artistic taste begins with this.

Sulerzhitsky begins his presentation of the “Stanislavsky system” with the statement that “one must act on the stage. Action, activity - this is what the dramatic art, the art of the actor, is based on. And he clarifies: “On the stage you need to act - internally and externally. This fulfills one of the main foundations of the art of the theater.

But how to act? What does "inside" and "outside" mean? What place, finally, do “experiencing” occupy in the action? Stanislavsky subsequently answered this in his book as follows: “Senseless running around is not needed on stage. There you can neither run for the sake of running, nor suffer for the sake of suffering. On the stage it is not necessary to act “in general”, for the sake of action itself, but it is necessary to act reasonable, expedient and efficient …»

But what does it mean for an actor to "act truly like a human being"? This question is more difficult than all the other questions. Unresolved, confusing problems intersect here. Can an actor completely "reincarnate" in the image of who he plays?

Sulerzhitsky, referring to Stanislavsky and the experience of the Moscow Art Theater, consistently illuminates these issues from different angles and arrives at a new formula: "I am." This formula signifies such an actor's stage well-being, such a state of his on the stage, when the actor, or rather, his creative act, expresses both the worldly character of the hero and the character of the artist himself. But how to find this state?

So, by the will of a happy accident, Vakhtangov began anew from the basics, he re-tested every theatrical thought that had been born. He tested the techniques of acting on himself and on his comrades. The path he had previously traveled as an actor and director guaranteed him from amateurish hobbies, from calming down on the small. Now he wanted to master precise and sophisticated craftsmanship to perfection. And all his unsatisfied thirst for knowledge, all observation, intuition, taste, energy, he focused on this.

That is why he is in no hurry to join the troupe. He is now most interested in studying the psychology and philosophy of acting. Vakhtangov is convinced of the correctness of teachers with the grateful feeling of a man who has a reserve personal experience, thoughts and sensations now begins to acquire a harmonious sequence. He is especially fascinated by what Sulerzhitsky says about the great importance of fantasy and intuition for actors. Possessing an unusually developed intuition himself, Vakhtangov does not want to now be aware of what huge accumulations of conscious observations and specifically sensual close contacts with life, what work of the mind created this intuition ... It is important that as a result it leads to the correct decision faster and more accurately than naked reason. And it is also important that it is much richer than dry logic and preserves the most precious thing for the actor - immediacy, lightness, liveliness and vitality of feelings and behavior on stage.

At this time, Vakhtangov still does not pose the question to himself: are Stanislavsky and Sulerzhitsky doing the right thing, that the artist’s subtly developed technique, the entire arsenal of playing techniques they have created, is turned into an attempt to solve, perhaps, an unsolvable, because not quite correctly posed, task? Is it even possible to overcome the “unnatural” state that an artist certainly experiences when he performs on stage, brightly lit by the lights of the footlight, in front of the public?

At that time, he did not doubt that it was necessary at all costs to mercilessly suppress and expel this “unnaturalness” in oneself.

Upon completion of the courses in 1911, Vakhtangov was enrolled in the Moscow Art Theater. He plays episodic roles in the performances of "The Living Corpse" L. Tolstoy - Gypsies; "Hamlet" by W. Shakespeare - The actor playing the queen; "Blue bird" M. Maeterlinck - Sugar; "Nikolai Stavrogin" based on "Demons" by F. Dostoevsky - Officer, etc.). Serving in the theater brought him up in the spirit of the fundamental principles of directing the Moscow Art Theater, requiring the actor to reveal the "life of the human spirit", an impeccable sense of the ensemble, and an understanding of the artistic integrity of the performance. Vakhtangov became an assistant to K.S. Stanislavsky in the development and testing of a new acting method, soon called the "Stanislavsky system".

"Drive the theater out of the theater." From 1911, Vakhtangov conducted experimental classes according to the "system" with a group of theater youth, which formed the core of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. Vakhtangov shared and implemented the aesthetic and ethical program of its director L. Sulerzhitsky, which consisted of the following: the goal of serving art is moral self-improvement; studio team - a community of like-minded people; acting - the full truth of experiences; performance - a sermon of goodness and beauty. In his diary of those years, Vakhtangov writes: “I want there to be no names in the theater. I want the audience in the theater to be unable to understand their feelings, bring them home and live with them for a long time. This can be done only when the performers (not the actors) reveal their souls to each other in the play without lies ... Expel the theater from the theater. From an actor's play. Get rid of makeup, costume.

The leading role of Vakhtangov in the study and propaganda of the "system" was also emphasized by Stanislavsky himself. About the essence of the ongoing searches, he wrote: “... In our destructive, revolutionary striving, for the sake of updating art, we declared war on any conventionality in the theater, no matter what it manifests itself in: in acting, staging, scenery, costumes, interpretation of the play, and so on.” .

However, already in the First Studio, Yevgeny Bagrationovich was constantly looking for new methods of depicting the psychological state of the hero. Over time, the rigid framework of Stanislavsky's recommendations began to seem cramped to Vakhtangov. He was carried away by the theatrical ideas of Vsevolod Meyerhold, but soon rejected them. Yevgeny Vakhtangov formed his own understanding of the theater, quite different from Stanislavsky's, which he formulated in the early 1920s as "fantastic realism". On the basis of this "fantastic realism" Vakhtangov built the theory of his own theater.

Like Stanislavsky, he believes that the main thing in a theatrical performance is, of course, the actor. But Vakhtangov proposed to strictly separate the personality of the performer from the image that he embodies on stage.

The rehearsals of the play "Celebration of Peace" by G. Hauptmann, which was supposed to officially open the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, went as a consistent development of the "system". However, in the sharp interpretation of Vakhtangov's ideas, the teachers discovered unfamiliar facets: naturalism sharpened to hyperbole, psychologism driven to frenzy.

The production was categorically not accepted by Stanislavsky, although in this performance Vakhtangov for the first time most fully expressed himself, his personal pain. A distinctive feature of Vakhtangov's directorial decisions on the stage of the Studio is the contrasting division of good and evil. In the “Celebration of Peace”, the emotional center of the performance was a short and fragile idyll of friendship that reigned during a meeting of the family, where everyone quarrels and hates each other. The short-term idyll only set off mutual hatred, selfishness, and the breakdown of traditional ties. Vakhtangov analyzed these diseases of the time, mercilessly exposing the torn souls of the heroes. The merciless truth of the performance frightened and shocked.

"Is it art?" - asked one of Vakhtangov's contemporary critics and himself convincingly answered his own question: “But if all this was achieved not by shouting, not by waving hands, not by goggling, this was achieved by an absolutely extraordinary simplicity of tone, such simplicity that was not achieved even in the Artistic theater, such simplicity, which is terrible and much more difficult than any kind of elation.

The effect of a sudden transformation, a leap from enmity and evil to the ideal of love and prosperity became one of the important constructive techniques of Vakhtangov's direction. The play "The Flood" by G. Berger (1915) was built by Vakhtangov as a triad: the first act - "the wolf customs of business America", representatives of different social groups of which are brought together by the will of circumstances; the second act is the bright triumph of unity in the moments of the seeming threat of death; the third act is "back to square one" when the threat has passed.

In the play "Cricket on the stove" by Ch. Dickens (1914, First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, staged by B. Sushkevich), in contrast to the complacent Dickensian comfort, the figure of the evil manufacturer Tacklton, played by Vakhtangov in a sharp-characteristic drawing, with emphasized mechanistic movements and a dead mask of the face, appeared. This image entered the history of the theater as a brilliant example of the theatrical grotesque. In the play "Rosmersholm" by G. Ibsen (1918), the asceticism of the external form (gray cloth, the play of light, a minimum of accessories) and the intensity of the inner life of the actors served to reveal a life-affirming theme - the heroes' daring breakthrough to freedom, albeit at the cost of death. In "Rosmersholm" Vakhtangov's pre-revolutionary searches in the field of psychological realism came to an end.

Simultaneously with the Moscow Art Theater and its First Studio, Vakhtangov conducted pedagogical work in a number of Moscow theater schools and continued to lead amateur circles. Stanislavsky valued "persistence and purity" in Vakhtangov, and saw in his work as a propagandist of the "system" a guarantee of theater renewal.

In Vakhtangov's pedagogical practice, the ideas of studio life, the rules of impeccable discipline and corporate responsibility, and hatred of empty hypocrisy were implemented. Among the youth groups where Vakhtangov taught in 1912-1922 (drama courses by S.V. Khalyutina, the Jewish studio "Habima", the Second Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, the studio of A.O. Gunst, the studio of F.I. Chaliapin, the Armenian studio, the Film Studio B Tchaikovsky and others) a special place belonged to the Student Drama Studio (Mansurovskaya), which was destined to become the Moscow Drama Studio under the direction of E.B. Vakhtangov (since 1917), the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater (since 1920), the State Theater. E. Vakhtangov (1926).

"It's time". The October Revolution and the social changes it brought about had a profound effect on Vakhtangov. The director defines the beginning of a new stage of his work in the article « Ask the artist...» , written in 1919, which is one of the first manifestos of Soviet directing. “If an artist wants to create the ‘new’, to create after it, the Revolution, has come, then he must create together with the People. Not for him, not for him, not outside of him, but with him,” writes Vakhtangov.

Young revolutionary art in those years was striving to display modernity in generalized, metaphorical forms. Figures of the Soviet theater are looking for non-everyday language. Vakhtangov was also looking for such a language. The time demanded enlarged feelings and principles of expression capable of expressing the "music of the revolution." For Vakhtangov, “fantastic realism” becomes such a principle, incorporating hyperbole, the grotesque, and the farcical beginning. Post-revolutionary Vakhtangov dramatically changes his attitude to the form. “The time has come to return the theater to the theater!” - proclaims the director, who previously claimed the exact opposite. Chamber psychologism of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater is successfully overcome, and Vakhtangov's work is rapidly evolving. But modernity for Vakhtangov was never identified with direct associations, publicism. Vakhtangov's productions such as The Miracle of St. Anthony by M. Maeterlinck in a new edition of 1920, Eric XIV by A. Strindberg, and The Wedding by A. Chekhov sounded deeply modern.

Rejecting the poetics of the intimate psychological and everyday theatre, Vakhtangov at the same time retained the laws of the art of experiencing and the organics of the actor's existence. The most important search for the director took place in this direction, including his latest masterpieces - “Princess Turandot” Carla Gozzi and "Gadibuk" by S. Annensky (S.A. Rapoport), staged in 1922

Vakhtangov argued the need for a new stage language, corresponding to the time. With his work, the director proved that the art of experiencing, the truth of life and the truth of passions can and should be embodied in the forms of a supra-everyday, grotesque, brightly theatrical performance.

The evolution that has taken place with Vakhtangov is most clearly seen when comparing two versions of M. Maeterlinck's "Miracle of St. Anthony" staged by him. The first edition of "The Miracle ..." in 1918 was staged by Vakhtangov in the spirit of warm humanity, kind irony and sympathy for ordinary people. In the first version of the performance, the director elaborated a picture of the life of the middle bourgeois, looking for expressive everyday details. After the revolution, the performance underwent a decisive revision. In the new version of The Miracle of St. Anthony in 1920, Vakhtangov washes away the old halftones, introduces only two contrasting colors - white and black, and graphically clear and sharp tones prevail in the performance. A minimum of household color. The director is not occupied with life itself, but with its ironic comprehension. A whole palette of hypocrisy, money-grubbing, envy, greed unfolded on the stage. A familiar scene took on new meaning. Each of the acting figures was a sharply defined, extremely pointed and recognizable type. The crowd was a phantasmagoria. These were the shadows of people, phantoms, dolls, to which everything human is alien.

“Everything was exaggerated,” recalls B. Zakhava, a student of Vakhtangov and a participant in the play, “sharpened, exaggerated, sometimes to the point of caricature or caricature, and therefore could easily seem deliberate, artificial and unjustified. We understood that there was only one way to avoid this: to justify and fill…”. In the new version of The Miracle of St. Anthony, the grotesque was affirmed as a substantive motif of the entire performance. For Vakhtangov, this meant a shift of the image into a bizarre, fantastic plan, as well as the relationship of the actor to his hero, the dialogue of the actor with the image. In Chekhov's "The Wedding" (1920), also staged at the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, Vakhtangov managed to see "a feast during the plague", a world of philistinism and vulgarity, where the only living person was a fake wedding general, lonely appealing for sympathy.

The art of the actor in the theatrical system of Vakhtangov. Vakhtangov found his actor in the person of Mikhail Chekhov, in whom he saw an ally to his ideas. Vakhtangov affirms the priority of the actor's personality over the image he creates.

Premiere of "Eric XIV" by A. Strindberg with M. Chekhov leading role took place in 1921. The scenery of the artist I. Nivinsky made an indelible impression - beveled planes, sharp corners, zigzags of golden and silver lightning. The costumes are tailored in a cubist style. Falling broken columns of a palace or a prison, labyrinths of flights of stairs and, placed by Vakhtangov between two worlds - the living and the dead - Eric himself with huge eyes and woeful smudges of tears on his face. Against the backdrop of a dead round dance of courtiers, a deathly pale dowager queen (S. Birman), Eric-Chekhov looks like a weak, hunted child. But the director inexorably led the actor to a tragic height. In this performance, Vakhtangov embodied the tragedy of royal power, unrighteous and hostile to the people, even when subjectively the ruler is full of goodness and nobility, as Eric appeared in the interpretation of Vakhtangov and the performance of M. Chekhov.

In each of E. Vakhtangov's productions of the 1920s, the confrontation between darkness and light, death and life was revealed with great expression. This tragic conflict reached its greatest strength in "Gadibuka" (in the Moscow Jewish studio "Habima", 1922), where Vakhtangov managed to create a poem of triumphant love, using the new possibilities of theatrical directing of the twentieth century.

The last performance of Vakhtangov's "Princess Turandot" by K. Gozzi (1922) is still perceived as the most significant. The director was led to a new aesthetic not by intuition, but by a clear understanding of the purpose of theatrical art. Vakhtangov was keenly aware of the poetics of play theater, its overt conventionality and improvisation. In such a theater, there is much from the ancient origins of the stage, folk games, areal and farce spectacles. Principle " open game”becomes Vakhtangov’s main principle of the play “Princess Turandot”. The play of the actor with the audience, with the theatrical image, with the mask becomes the basis of this performance-holiday. A holiday for that and a holiday that everything changes places. And Vakhtangov's actors play tragedy by means of comedy. The performance was conceived as an experiment in the field of acting technique, very difficult in terms of the acting task: the studio members had to simultaneously play themselves and the artists of the Italian comedy of masks, playing fairy tale Gozzi and, finally, the characters themselves. The performance was built and rehearsed improvisationally, included reprises on the theme of the day, pantomime interludes, conscious ironic exits and roles, subject to the maximum acting sincerity and the truth of the experience. The director insisted and sought from the performers a genuine reincarnation and genuine experience in the role.

The character of the actors' play is completely new, unusual. “That is a completely real, exciting tone, a genuine human feeling, love, delight, suffering, horror, - then a thin actor's smile over this whole world human feelings. Such is the purely theatrical gesture with which the performance of "Princess Turandot" asserts before the audience its historical place in the fate of our theatre." The same critic will write that Turandot reveals the nature of the actor's soul, "eternally divided between sincerity and pose ... heroism and mischief, reality and play, and, finally, between face and mask."

“The image did not absorb and did not subdue the faces of the actors with its weight,” P. Markov notes, “the actor - a master and a performer - revealed his simple - large or small, significant or insignificant, - but his personal, inherent to him alone, his one distinguishing essence ... The actor's face did not kill the face of the image, but rose far above it, took the image into itself in order to illuminate it with the warmth of participation, trust or ridicule.

Vakhtangov revived the commedia dell'arte, but this cannot be called a restoration. The composition of "Princess Turandot" seems to preserve the traditional articulation of Italian comedy. Prologue, then parade, intrigue, interludes, epilogue, farewell to the audience. But, using the existing structure and techniques, he enriched them with the theatrical experience of the early 20th century. The ancient Italian actors would be very surprised if they learned that the parade must be built, that in this case it is necessary to achieve a special, organic communication between the actors.

Vakhtangov does not seem to be leading a rehearsal, but plays along with the masks. He is either an enthusiastic spectator, or a leader wandering troupe, sometimes - in some kind of Italian costume. And he likes to add fuel to the fire. Brigella is forced to look in an imaginary mirror and enjoy her reflection, even when a box of cake is on his head.

The remarks that masks are thrown from time to time often do not make any sense. The very fuss around the objects, the ecstasy with which everything is done, turns out to be funny. However, from these seemingly insignificant episodes, an unpretentious plot gradually emerges, it is improvised on the go. It seems that Vakhtangov is composing a performance, not yet knowing how it will all end.

When Yevgeny Bogrationovich proposes to treat Tartaglia's teeth with the help of a monstrous drill built with masks, Shchukin involuntarily leaves the character and is already really praying that they do not pester him. This causes another burst of laughter, and it becomes clear that the audience will surely laugh at the performance if the stunned Shchukin suddenly drops the mask of Tartaglia and appears himself.

“Before pulling out the teeth,” Pantalone argues, encouraged by Vakhtangov, “we will be forced to pull out the hair as well, since it is known that the tooth hangs by a thread.

Decorations are not ordered in advance. Novinsky's preliminary sketches are only a guideline for the search, the situation is improvised. She plays too. Things play, fabrics, patchwork costumes, color. Turandot is already wearing a blanket that looks like an ordinary blanket, thrown over a yellow-pink dress. The cloaks of the sages are full of stripes - notes, chemical formulas and others. The racket replaces the scepter, the bone knife for cutting books - the dagger. On the street of Beijing (the action takes place in fabulous China) - a modern white chair from Berg's mansion.

Nivinsky and the famous costume designer Nadezhda Petrovna Lamanova sometimes simply reinforce what is and is being mastered on the site. This method of work looks outlandish today: as a rule, the design of performances is made according to approved sketches in theater workshops, in production, and not created in the process of rehearsals.

Things lose their imaginary significance and are included in the game. theatrical costume becomes alive, natural in an atmosphere of festivity. A transforming environment appears, reminiscent of modern dynamic scenography.

But initially Nivinsky offered sketches of traditional interiors in the spirit of life's plausibility, while the actors had to go out to the audience in leather jackets, or work overalls, or Budenovkas. Io direct correspondence to the appearance of the time was immediately rejected by Vakhtangov: “Only not this!”

Music is also created in a playful way. The motives of "Turandot" arise spontaneously. Vakhtangov also uses his own "preparations", including the melody of the Yevpatoriya old man, reminiscent of the "Swallow" by the famous Armenian composer Komitas.

The scenery in "Princess Turandot" consisted of the most common household items. But on their basis, with the help of light and draperies, the artists created fantastic views of the fabulous city. Vakhtangov also made changes to the costumes of the characters. For example, an unusual theatrical dressing gown, embroidered and decorated, was put on a modern costume. To further emphasize the conventionality of what is happening on stage, the actors put on costumes right in front of the audience, thus transforming from an actor into a character in a play in a matter of seconds. For the first time in the history of the theatre, there was a boundary between the character and the artist.

There is an opinion that Vakhtangov did not like the scenery of Ignatius Nivinsky. This is wrong. It is difficult to find an example of such an exact hit of the artist in the director's intention. In addition, the design was done by both - Nivinsky and Vakhtangov. It arose in the course of rehearsals and lived just as improvisationally in the play itself, playing along with the actors.

The scenery looked like a toy building built by the hands of an unintelligent child. It was placed on an inclined surface and consisted of several arc-curved planes in which different levels entrances and exits, arches and windows were cut through. There was a playful column in the intricate baroque style. She was perceived as a favorite toy that a person took with him when going to long way, to the future.

Here are the noiseless tsannys, servants of the proscenium, hooking the multi-colored “rags of Nivinsky” lowered from above onto hooks. They swell like sails, and the platform looks like a tilted deck. It seems that a light yacht is rocking in the ocean. And after a while the sails become the streets of Beijing. So it is simply written on the board - "Beijing". Moreover, each letter in the word looks like an image of a small pagoda or a hieroglyph.

On the night of February 23-24, 1922, the last rehearsal in Vakhtangov's life took place. He rehearsed in a fur coat, wrapping his head in a wet towel. Returning home after the rehearsal, Vakhtangov lay down and never got up again. After this first rehearsal run of Princess Turandot, K.S. Stanislavsky wrote to his brilliant student that he could rightfully consider himself a winner  .

On May 29, Vakhtangov's wife, Nadezhda Mikhailovna, called the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater and said: "Come soon!" Yevgeny Bagrationovich died, surrounded by his students. Before his death, consciousness returned to him. He sat down, looked at the students for a long time and very calmly said: "Goodbye ..." "Princess Turandot" was the last work of Vakhtangov, he did not live only a few weeks before the premiere.

The play "Princess Turandot" was a huge artistic event. Stanislavsky was the first to see that Vakhtangov's work had a great future. But Vakhtangov himself believed that "Princess Turandot" is not an unchanging stage canon and that every time for new play the form of the performance must be found anew.

E.B. Vakhtangov dreamed of staging "Cain" by J. Byron and the Bible, early death from an incurable illness interrupted his creative path and interfered with these plans. But the theatrical discoveries he made in the field of modern directing, acting and pedagogy gave rise to a whole aesthetic direction, called "Vakhtangov".

Evgeny Vakhtangov and Vsevolod Meyerhold laid the foundation of a new theater with their creative searches.

The well-known film director S. Yutkevich writes: “Meyerhold and Vakhtangov loved each other very much and worked, it seems to me, in the same direction. Meyerhold worked in the same direction as Vakhtangov. His understanding of Chekhov was very close to what Vakhtangov offered in The Wedding. And this understanding was all the more striking because it was not about the main Chekhov's plays, but about his still secondary work - vaudeville. Vakhtangov's work is a new, unexpected reading and understanding of Chekhov. Then I had to see almost the same in art. I am sure that the “red wedding” in “The Bedbug” was born by Mayakovsky not without the influence of the Vakhtangov performance. I think Brecht's "Petty-bourgeois wedding" too. I saw echoes of this trend in art in the work of Marcel Marceau, his Lombarde and The Overcoat - here, too, the tradition of fair theaters had an unusually strong effect, but transformed by the light of modern, highly talented professional searches. It seems to me that the same reflection of the art of our masters of the stage - Vakhtangov and Meyerhold - lies on the whole Chaplinian. And this is no coincidence. They managed to embody not only the tradition of the fair theater of Russia, but to guess that common, international, which is the most important thing, the essence of the poetics of folk theatrical art.

E. Vakhtangov, remaining faithful to the general laws of the art of experiencing and the organics of the actor's existence in the image, approved a new stage language in the Russian theatrical culture of the first quarter of the 20th century. Striving for a festive, enchanting theatrical convention and direct contact between the actor and the audience, he abandoned the poetics of the intimate, psychological and everyday theater, from the “fourth wall” of the Moscow Art Theater, separating the world of the stage from the audience.