Censorship in its repertoire – Newspaper Kommersant No. 162 (7363) of 09/05/2022

First, the Moscow Department of Culture replaced the heads of three well-known theaters in the capital, and now it has decided to intervene in the repertoire of the rest.

In early June, the heads of Sovremennik, the Gogol Center, which again became the Gogol Theater, and the School of Contemporary Play were replaced. At that time, it was about leading people – and here the authorities, as the founders of the organizations mentioned, are in their own right. This time they went further and began to interfere in repertoire politics.

The performances of Dmitry Krymov, one of the most famous, titled and beloved Russian directors, have disappeared from the stages of four Moscow theaters. So, the “School of Dramatic Art” lost the performances “Dowry” and “Oh. Late Love”, “School of Modern Play” – the play “Everything is Here”, the Pushkin Theater – “Kostika” based on Chekhov’s “The Seagull”, and “Pyotr Fomenko’s Workshop” – the play “Mozart” Don Juan. Dress rehearsal”. Somewhere the performances simply disappeared from the calendar and there is no sale of tickets for them, although they remain in the lists of the theatrical repertoire, somewhere “technical reasons” are announced. The reason, meanwhile, is rather political: having left for a production in the United States at the end of February, Dmitry Krymov, after the premiere, spoke out against Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine and decided not to return to Moscow.

In informal conversations, city officials refer to some “deputy requests” and even to “appeals from viewers” ​​- however, no specifics are provided. Perhaps we are talking about the widely discussed initiative of the State Duma deputies, who created a whole group to identify “dissenting” cultural figures. This assumption is also supported by the fact that, in addition to Dmitry Krymov, the young director Alexander Molochnikov, who had previously become the object of special attention from parliamentarians, also fell under the ban. Some time ago, the Bolshoi Theater was forced to cancel cooperation with him. And now the Theater on Bronnaya has removed two works by Molochnikov, Bulba. Feast “and” Platonov hurts. The latter has literally just been successfully shown in St. Petersburg on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater as part of the tour of the theater of Konstantin Bogomolov.

By the way, the performances removed from the repertoire were not only well received by critics, but had an obvious box office success. “Kostik” of the Pushkin Theater and Fomenkov’s “Don Juan” were not only recognized by experts as the pinnacles of Krymov’s work, but also became leaders in sales – fees from them probably accounted for a fair amount of the theater budget, and the economic damage has yet to be assessed. As for, for example, the play “Platonov hurts”, they only managed to play it a few times, that is, the funds spent on it were simply thrown away.

Simultaneously with the Moscow repertoire changes, the program of the oldest St. Petersburg festival “Baltic House”, which will be held in November, was “cleansed” – another Moscow production by Dmitry Krymov, “Boris” based on Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov”, disappeared from it. At the same time, the play “School of the Modern Play” called “Angels Came Out for a Smoke”, staged by Joseph Reichelgauz, who was fired back in June, and the production of the Sakhalin Theater Center “Gorka” were deleted, perhaps because its director Marfa Gorvits allowed herself too bold statements in social networks.

One can speculate about the level at which decisions were made to “cancel” Krymov and Molochnikov for a long time, but here’s the fact: in theaters of federal, not Moscow subordination, the performances of Dmitry Krymov still remain on the calendar – “Seryozha” of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater and “Mu -mu” of the Theater of Nations are available on theater websites. Tickets for Mu-mu have been sold, Seryozha has a tour scheduled for September, and there were still a few tickets for the Moscow show at the end of October yesterday. However, the actors of both theaters have already told reporters that they were warned that the performances could be cancelled.

Moreover, the head of the Moscow Art Theater named after Chekhov, Konstantin Khabensky, is already ready to interfere in repertoire policy. At the opening of the season, he said that in connection with the ongoing special operation he was going to make changes to the repertoire. True, his words were initially misinterpreted – the journalists decided that it was about cleaning up the already existing repertoire. In this regard, the Moscow Art Theater even posted on its website a fragment of Khabensky’s speech, where the word “new” is highlighted with a caps lock – “it’s wrong now to take NEW material that would somehow be ironic, scoff … on a topic related to any military operations … ” . That is, the conversation is not about filming performances, but about adjusting plans. True, one of the first premieres in the new season of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater was announced as “The New Optimistic Tragedy” staged by Konstantin Bogomolov. It is quite difficult to imagine the performance of this director without this or that degree of irony, or even “snickering”. Well, the more attention will be riveted to the upcoming premiere.

Esther Steinbock