Actor Tikunov sang a rap in the role of Mayakovsky: “With my voice I can play an orc”

“Mayakovsky’s revolutionary poems didn’t resonate with me”

— Stas, your texture is very suitable for the role of Mayakovsky. You have his height and become.

– But I’m two centimeters taller – his height is 188, and I’m 190. In general, this is a grandiose figure. When the roles were assigned, I was confident that I could cope. At the audition with Alexei Borisovich Frandetti, each of us sang selected compositions, and I sang so confidently that I realized that they would give me the role.

— And before this production, what was your relationship with his poetry?

— At the institute, I generally read Mayakovsky’s poems, especially the lyrics. I liked them, they were close in spirit, but the revolutionary ones didn’t appeal to me.

— What is your favorite lyric?

– Three – “Lilechka”, “Good attitude towards horses” and “Violin and a little nervous”. It was a real balm for my soul, I read them a lot, tears flowed like a clown’s in a circus.

– How big and sensitive you are. By the way, I’ll ask you about one clown again.

– Well, yes, sensitive, like all actors. They are like children who must be able to perceive any situation and react to it instantly. After all, children, if you offend them, immediately get offended and cry. So we live in the proposed circumstances, with this magical “if” of Stanislavsky. That is, how would I behave if…

— How would you behave if you weren’t given the role of Mayakovsky, or, worse, taken away?

— I wouldn’t be too upset, because I’m very busy in the theater. Plus there is additional work – dubbing, voice-over, advertising, computer games, cinema, TV series. Maybe I would have been upset, but still what was mine did not leave me.

“When talking with Zakharov, I started to stutter”

— In 2012, Mark Zakharov took you to Lenkom, although you are from the Shchepkinsky School, and not from GITIS, where he taught and where most of the Lenkom actors came from.

— But Inna Mikhailovna Churikova is also from “Shchepka”, and Alla Yuganova, and Dmitry Groshev are also from there. By the way, I remembered that when I showed up to Zakharov and we were all waiting for the end of the show in the corridor, he called me one from the course and two more girls and asked me to read some poem. And so I read Mayakovsky’s “Good Treatment of Horses.” And he then took me, and I was immediately introduced to “Juno” and “Avos”. And this is the school of life.

— Is this a cruel school of life? Like “hazing” in the army or as a playground for young animals?

— We don’t have “hazing” at all in the theater. You are so supported on stage that a young artist who has just entered Juno will not hesitate, will not stumble even once, because there is always a friend’s shoulder nearby. Even if you are a sailor and don’t know what to do next, they immediately whisper to you: “My friend, this will happen now, come on, get your act together.” They patted me on the shoulder, stomped my foot – and such a team spirit in all our performances. This is what Lenkom is famous for – we have very good, friendly relations with each other. And you will never be lost. Both honored and national artists will help you out – titles on stage are not important.

— “Lenkom” recently celebrated the 90th anniversary of Mark Zakharov, whose personality and direction influenced modern theater. How do you remember him? Maybe, like many, he was afraid of him?

– I was very, very afraid. I began to stutter, and when I read the text, the letters were intertwined before my eyes. And I didn’t understand what was happening to me at that moment. And others also had some cracks inside. I don’t know how to describe it, but Mark Anatolyevich possessed some kind of magical energy: when he entered, you immediately wanted to stand up, straighten up and salute. He was so powerful, with incredible energy and an incredible sense of humor, a super-intellectual, the wisest, most educated person. I watched how, with one word and florid approaches, he could reveal in a person what needed to be explained for hours. And he – in a word, and not directly, but by acting through other receptors, achieved his goal. Let’s just say I’ve never heard him ever raise his voice.

— When did Mark Anatolyevich notice you in the crowd where you were running for a long time?

– Not that he noticed… He noted me at Andrei Prikotenko’s play “Five Evenings”, where I played Slavik. He then told me: “You play very well.” “Thank you,” I replied. “No, no, I insist.” But nevertheless, I did not play in his performances, although I was assigned to the role of Fedka in “The Day of the Oprichnik.” I watched the rehearsals, but never went on stage – Anton Shagin was producing the play. After the Master left, I entered his “The Marriage of Figaro” and was introduced via video.

– That is, according to the drawing of the previous artist – Dmitry Pevtsov.

– Yes, I just took tracing paper and brought something of my own to the role. I adore this role, now it is my favorite, and this performance is a holiday. I know that after it I will be devastated and positively charged.

— I don’t want to offend you, but it turns out that you played many roles after others. What is it like to carry out roles for someone else?

“And I don’t think that I’m playing out someone’s roles.” I do this with my own feeling, with my own drawing, psychophysics. I don’t know how to repeat, although I can copy and parody, but you need to be able to connect your resources, give your vision of the role, without straying from the director’s drawing.

“If a person is in love, anything can happen to him”

— I want to return to the play “Mayakovsky,” which is accompanied by rap and hip-hop. How difficult is this singing technique for a dramatic artist trained to sing in a different manner?

– Yes, this is a completely different style, manner, and on the street people who sing rap are simply predisposed to it. But it always seemed to me that I was not particularly inclined towards hip-hop and rap. Well, that’s not my thing, I prefer academic vocals, where there is a melody. So during rehearsals I had to look for the melody within myself, and when I found the melody of the speech, I realized: this is a very high-quality, good training for actors as an articulatory and breathing warm-up. That is, when you need to stretch out the whole thought into a beat and at the same time not get out of the vamp, from the size in which this track is laid out.

– Sorry, but what is a vamp?

— This is a ring when the music starts in a circle, and you need to get into its time signature while speaking the text (this is called underscore). It all happens like this: I hear a click – the vamp is leaving, I have two or three seconds left to finish my line. But if I don’t have time, everything falls apart, the musicians who start playing to the click will no longer catch up with me. In short, in Mayakovsky we had a very difficult task – to get into the entire picture set by the director, the music directors, and Vasily Mikhailovich Vakulenko (Basta) – we had to translate his tracks on stage. And we, the actors, were pleased when his team, after listening to us, said that our performance did not look like a parody, like funny sketches of rap in KVN.

– So rapping was easy for you?

– Quite easy. This is done in one breath, for which there are certain articulatory and breathing warm-ups. But maybe it was easier for me than others, because I graduated from a master’s degree in the department of stage speech, and this gave me an additional bonus, training, an additional resource to dub a movie, to thoroughly know the technique of speech. After rap, nothing changed for me: I still continue to love classical vocals, but that didn’t stop me from listening to rap.

— Last question about Mayakovsky: what did you discover about his personality?

— Humanity comes first. He found lyrical notes and focused the play on his mental torment, falling in love, moreover, abusively, on his creative crisis. Here again is the magical “if”: if I were a famous poet who was no longer loved, who was disliked. He constantly doubted, had a bunch of complexes, mental disorders, in particular compulsive ones, when he needed to count the light in the windows, he needed to clearly measure the rhythm, he only spoke in steps. And in this I was looking for lyrics, I didn’t make Mayakovsky such a rude machine. Everything came from his heart.

“It seems to me that all tall men like Mayakovsky, like you, are like that at heart… cute puppies, waiting for tenderness and affection.”

– Maybe.

– Have you avoided answering?

– No, but it seems to me that I have a strong masculine core in my soul, and I cannot say that I am childish.

– Well, would you allow a woman to mock you the way Lilya Brik mocked Mayakovsky?

— It’s difficult to answer. It seems to me that if a person is in love, anything can happen to him. And when he puts on rose-colored glasses during the period of falling in love, he does not notice the humiliation. And when everyone from the outside says to him: “Dude, this is not your man” or “Wow, how cool you look,” he continues not to notice the bullying and abuse.

– Agree that it’s great to be wearing rose-colored glasses, albeit temporarily.

– Maybe.

“I don’t want people to say about me: “Oh, that one voiced Pennywise.”

— Have you completed your master’s degree and become a specialist in stage speech in order to do dubbing? Does this mean being behind the scenes and not in the frame?

– Absolutely right – to enter the profession of a dubbing actor.

– But you remain behind the scenes, you are not there – only a voice. Yes, bright, memorable, unusual, but a voice.

– But I get such a cascade of roles, thanks to which you, as an actor, can do something that you cannot realize in life. For example, releasing inner demons or getting a character role. Many directors doubt that with my texture I can be sharp. And with my voice I can play an orc, evil spirits and even death. Yes, anything – a troll with an inhuman guttural voice or a cartoon character with an exaggerated character. This is where the actor’s imagination comes into play, and this is always amazing.

— For many of your colleagues, dubbing is mostly a means of earning money, not art, and you talk about it with the passion of a fanatic.

“That’s true, because I’m passionate about this profession, and I really want to voice cartoons, computer games, and movies. When you sit in a cinema and know that your voice is heard from the screen, that your soul and heart are invested in this character, but it was you who completed with your voice what he did not do.

“In any case, you managed to instill fear and plunge the audience into hell with just your voice.” I’m talking about the thriller “It” and the role of Pennywise the clown in it. Did you capture the intonations of Jaeden Martell one-on-one or is there also your voice interpretation of the character?

– Naturally, this is Martell’s characteristic voice, but I built a voice diagram from my life experience, from observations of clowns, for example, how they talk in the arena, plus from my imagination, and I came up with such a hero. In dubbing there is a clear timing in which I have to fit the entire role in one day. Pennywise took me several hours.

— What about getting into articulation?

— This is called lip-synching, and synchronization in dubbing is mandatory. That is, I have to start on time with the character, finish on time and still get into his articulation, especially if the sound “b” or “m” is closing.

– Pennywise is a murderer. What demons did you release from yourself with him?

— This work gave me a sense of cascading existence in a role. And yes, I found something in myself that I didn’t even suspect – negative, evil qualities. And it was after this work that I realized that I could play negative characters and that this was more interesting to me than playing heroes. So that it does not look like a parody, but is performed subtly, intelligently, and with humor. To have a smart negative character.

— Did this guy bring you luck, open new doors in your profession?

“It brought me subscribers on social networks and some fame.” But I wouldn’t want it to become the only role for which I’m known. As they knew Shurik from Gaidai’s comedies. Meanwhile, Alexander Demyanenko was a wonderful dramatic artist. I don’t want people to say, “Oh, that’s the guy who voiced Pennywise.” And no one knows the other 250 roles. I actually have 250 dubbing works: Balthazar Brake from Despicable Me 3, Johnny from Zveropoy. There was also a wonderful film “Me Before You” – I did the main character Will there, and also “Mad Max”, in which I voiced Max.

— Does dubbing feed the artist well?

– This is a very underrated work. And what our actors receive compared to dubbing actors abroad is pennies. Yes, it’s a good increase in salary, which I have in the theater, but if I only did dubbing, then I would have to work every day to feed myself and my family.

– But my last question is not about the killer clown, but about Mayakovsky: do you think Mark Zakharov would like your Mayakovsky?

“I think he would really like the performance, because “Mayakovsky” is a kind of “Juno” and “Maybe.” This is a revolutionary style, when it is bright, colorful, light, loud – in general, a Lenkomov performance and a Lenkomov tradition.