A sketch based on a play by a playwright from Omsk provoked protests from the audience

In the non-competitive program of the festival “Golden Mask” “Mask Plus” showed the performance “Do whatever you want, as long as I love you.” It was staged by Murat Abulkatinov at the Prokopyevsk Drama Theater based on a play by a young playwright from Omsk, a student of Nikolai Kolyada, Svetlana Bazhenova.

Once upon a time, Nikolai Kolyada brought to Moscow a performance based on her play “How Zoya Feed the Geese”, and in Yekaterinburg it was played in a wooden house in the city center, a kind of residence of modern authors. Interestingly, the performance from Prokopyevsk is not the only one in the Golden Mask program based on the play, the full name of which is: “I bit off your ear, or Do whatever you want while I love you …”. There is also a version of the Saratov Youth Theater.

In Prokopyevsk, they actively work with modern dramaturgy and invite young directors. And the performance of Murat Abulkatinov was born thanks to the director’s laboratory of modern dramaturgy “Experiment 123”, dedicated to the theme “Dangerous Age”. A half-hour sketch was born within five days. Then an hour-long performance appeared on its basis.

Moscow spectators, although their composition is not limited only to the capital, and many came from all over the country, as it turned out after the performance, before it starts, they discuss where Prokopyevsk is located. Many do not know that this is a city in the Kemerovo region. After the performance, there is a discussion, at which the regular visitors of the Mask Plus program remain. There are very few men. And those who remained do not need to explain where Prokopyevsk is located.

The performance touched the nerve of many, and only one girl, whose face could not be seen behind the hood, introduced herself: “I am an artist,” said categorically: “How could such a thing be brought to Moscow? It’s very bad.” She said that the music is old-fashioned and terrible, and Jim Jarmusch, to whom the authors appeal, is almost like last year’s snow. After the rebuke, the girl immediately leaves. The director and actors courageously accept her harsh judgment. Everyone has the right to an opinion. And I must say that she was right in many ways. What is good in a laboratory demonstration is not always justified in other circumstances. Success at the experimental site in Prokopievsk or somewhere else is not always a reason to enter a large platform. But if you dared, then you must be prepared for failure.

The curators of the program explain their choice by the desire to show that in our theater there is a layer of professional modern dramaturgy, to which the play by Svetlana Bazhenova belongs, that this is an attempt to comprehend private history in the context of a family and a historical perspective. Murat Abulkatinov and himself from the small town of Novouzensk, Saratov region. Graduate of the Saratov Conservatory. Sobinova, with a diploma of a puppet theater artist, has experience in puppet theaters. In 2022 he graduated from the workshop of Sergei Zhenovach at GITIS, he stages a lot and constantly participates in experimental projects and laboratories. According to him, I read Svetlana Bazhenova’s play a long time ago, and she left a bright mark, and the teenage theme is close, since he himself is partly a teenager at heart.

The first thing that meets the viewer is a veil enveloping a small stage. She makes her cough. They say that in Prokopievsk the veil effect works absolutely. It envelops both the stage and the hall, creating the illusion of loneliness, isolation from the rest of the world. There is almost nothing on the stage. A black box and light, TV screens all around, and a figurine of a girl in a white men’s shirt. On her head, a veil knocked to the side. The young bride, who did not have a wedding, is called Sveta. She is 16 years old, and she is experiencing everything that her peers perceive acutely – difficulties in communicating with parents, first falling in love, a feeling of uselessness. Actress Alexandra Bulatova resembles a teenager – like a reed in the wind. The mascara is smeared, the eyes are huge, as if filled with tears. Sveta is talking to someone we can’t see. She wants to be left alone, she is sure that no one needs her. And stands alone on the roof. Wrong step – and nothing will happen.

Sveta is impressed by the film “Only Lovers Left Alive” by Jim Jarmusch, which the director himself loves. Titles are projected onto the back, and we will see the names of Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, other actors who starred in the picture. To some of the audience, this seems terribly old-fashioned, because Jarmusch is already something from the past. Although a cult picture for many. Sveta tells several acquaintances and strangers about her experiences. We do not see her interlocutors, we hear only their voices. But after the performance, actors and singer Valeria Klimova will take the stage, whose voice sounds from the stage. Sveta is left to herself, she has to understand her own feelings and the world around her, to understand why, in fact, to live.

She is still a schoolgirl, but she has an affair with a fizruk, an adult man. He has hands like her father, and that’s important. She is experiencing the departure of her father from the family, and this is the most painful topic for the girl. Her grandmother constantly tells her about Jesus Christ, reinforcing her words with obscene words. They say that a monument to Jesus was erected in Prokopievsk. In this chaotic world, the main character lives, who is very nervously and touchingly played by Alexandra Bulatova, but this does not save the situation. The sketch is still a sketch. You need to do something with it, then you can already go on a big voyage. In the meantime, more questions to the authors of the performance and those who invited him to the Golden Mask. Perhaps this is the difficulty of moving to a new stage. Not everyone can stand it.