In Russia, any renewal fascinates and frightens at the same time. Fascinates a few, frightens everyone else. The Russian theater is overloaded with the names of the greats - Stanislavsky, Tairov, Meyerhold, Efros, Lyubimov, Tovstonogov. Almost all of them were revolutionaries, but history turned them into a canon, which hides behind all those who are afraid of renewal.
Kirill Serebrennikov is not the main revolutionary in our theater, he is connected with tradition more than with the avant-garde, but perhaps no one in the post-Soviet era has renewed the theater as much as he did. Not in the sense of artistic language or new forms, he rebooted theater as a phenomenon. The Gogol Center under the leadership of Kirill Serebrennikov ceased to exist as an academic freak show, did not become an underground laboratory either; it turned into a place of attraction, a territory of action, a dynamic art cluster that seduced - and it costs a lot - a young audience. The theater turned out to be sexy. Not a temple or a workshop, but a modern studio (and this, by the way, is a reference to Stanislavsky).
In the mid-2000s, I studied at the institute, which was located not far from Kurskaya and Kazakov Street. The local landscape resembled a zone from Tarkovsky's Stalker - quiet, empty, and the Gogol Theater as a reminder of something lofty and lifeless. Now it is a vital place, not only the Gogol Center itself, but also the area next to it. In fact, the theater director carried out the gentrification (reconstruction) of the area, much like the street artist Blu did with his huge iconic graffiti in Berlin. And if in the German capital gentrification is regarded as a capitalist seizure, then Moscow, still a medieval city in spirit, will clearly not be in the way of updating the landscape.
Kirill Serebrennikov willingly staged both Russian classics, and modern drama (under him, for example, Valery Pecheikin's talent blossomed), and complex texts by Heiner Müller, a seemingly completely forgotten author, but suddenly revived on the stage of the Gogol Center in the form a long-term performance electrified by eroticism. In his performances, there is often a synthesis of theater, contemporary art, contemporary dance, video art, contemporary music - in a sense, this is his aesthetic platform, familiar to many from the project of the same name, which proclaimed the total Gesamtkunstwerk (“united work of art” - “RBC Style”). One can argue for a long time about Serebrennikov's directorial style, but modern culture in his person has received a charismatic energetic frontman, a talented organizer,speaking out and giving space for self-expression to others.
I have a friend, a young artist, a few years ago the artistic director of the Gogol Center looked at his work and asked him to do something like a fresco. It seems that it was Serebrennikov who arranged the first Moscow exhibition of the witty Pasmur Rachuiko, right in the theater foyer. Of course, any artist (in the broadest sense of the word) is selfish and ambitious, but the ability to involve and inspire others in the creative process is a special quality. In her autobiography, Akira Kurosawa recalls teacher Kajiro Yamamoto as a person who inspired students to independently and freely pursue art. I think many of those who collaborated with Kirill Serebrennikov are ready to say the same about him.
The actors of "Seventh Studio" are one of his main achievements. Many of them are already established stars. While the director was under house arrest, his students filmed and produced Acid, an unexpectedly serious statement about fathers and children. And the main thing in this is that students have ceased to be students.
Kirill Serebrennikov is engaged not only in the drama center, he works a lot in cinema, but also in opera and ballet (remember, for example, Nureyev at the Bolshoi Theater). Serebrennikov finished some of these works remotely - a situation unique for the director. And this speaks of him, first of all, as a man of action, a restless artist, in love with the creative process, an actor free from external circumstances. Yes, he began to build his theater in somewhat different realities, softer, but subsequent pressure from the state did not achieve the main thing - did not make him speechless.
Many people write now that the era is leaving. But epochs do not go away due to the termination of the state contract. Serebrennikov is too energetic to stop doing his job. And the Gogol Center will continue to live in the Seventh Studio, in the lively landscape on Kazakov Street, in the audience, in the avatars of Free Kirill, in an excited letter from the genius Anatoly Vasiliev, who responded to the news that Serebrennikov is no longer an artistic director. 2500 years ago Lao Tzu said: "The path that can be talked about is not the path that can be taken." In our life there are so many conversations, highly spiritual blah-blah-blah, nesting mainly on Facebook.
Serebrennikov goes his own way, does not theorize it, it is a sacred practice of action. And we believe Lao Tzu, right?
"Incredibly real." Kirill Serebrennikov's colleagues about working with him.