Alexey Borodin: “There should be a director’s brotherhood”

Festival “Lessons of directing” summed up the results

The sixth festival of the Biennale of theatrical art “Lessons in directing” is dedicated to the 125th anniversary of the fateful meeting of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko in the “Slavianski Bazaar”. It was with them that the closing ceremony of the festival, which took place at the School of Dramatic Art on Sretenka, began.

The climax – the awarding of the winning performance shown in the competition program of the festival – was preceded by a performance staged by Marina Brusnikina based on the book “Letters to the Art Theater”, which contains real letters from viewers to the management of the Moscow Art Theater and its founders from 1898 to 1914. These letters are divided into nine voices: young actors read them on behalf of different addressees – workers, just ladies and ladies who are pleasant in every respect, statesmen, creators and even high school students. And some addressees are unknown. Tellingly, the founding fathers answered everyone: upbringing did not allow leaving someone else’s letter unattended.

The set of rules for the life of an artist of the Art Theater, performed by actors in the style of rap, sounded original: “… since the actor is used to the craft game, / therefore, at every rehearsal / without ambition / is obliged to play … / do not forget your roots, / remember, / there are things on order higher – do you hear?

Conclusion from the reading: Artistic has always been loved, breakthroughs were expected from it and … mercilessly criticized, even taught.

Finally, the neural network, which was created by the young talents of MISiS, for the first time in Russia wrote a sketch of a play dedicated to that very fateful meeting between Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko in the Slavyansky Bazar restaurant, with which it all began.

And, of course, the main competition program was held, which included performances from Biysk, Krasnoyarsk, Glazov, Minusinsk, Moscow, Samara, Perm, St. Petersburg – seventeen productions from outstanding directors of the country. The name of the laureate was determined by the jury, which this time consisted only of young directors. One of them, Vladimir Kuznetsov from Vladimir, even burst into poetic impromptu at the ceremony:

… And, summing up in the final,

At the festival-biennale

We suddenly found out

That there will be only one prize.

But we will keep the intrigue …

The intrigue was revealed after a pause, and the youth jury awarded the only prize to the performance “My Soul Pavel”, staged by the most intelligent and noble knight of the director’s workshop, Alexei Borodin. By the way, it was this performance that received the MK Theater Award a month ago.

“We are now going through a difficult moment in the theater, where our directing brotherhood has somehow become impoverished,” said Alexei Vladimirovich. – And the responsibility that lies with the young heroes (pointing to the young jury) is very serious and great. The most important thing is that they would have had the courage, patience, perseverance to move this matter forward together. There should be a brotherhood of directors. When Peter Brook arrived in Moscow (and it was Soviet times, censorship), he said: “Despite everything, you are so happy that you were given theaters, premises, you were given subsidies …”

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28933 dated December 15, 2022

Newspaper headline:
The neural network dedicated the play to Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko