Daria Yurskaya and her colleagues remembered their theater pains and joys

To the 125th anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov staged a “documentary film on stage” called “Curtain” on his Small Stage. Director Yuri Kvyatkovsky, who has long worked in the field of documentary theater, and playwright Andrei Stadnikov showed what is usually hidden from the audience, and sometimes from theater workers. What kind of organism is this – MCT? And the theater as such. A black hole devouring everyone and everything, a terrarium or an altar? The performance features exclusively women.

The theater, like a funnel, sucks in not only actresses, but those who came to it due to circumstances, having work experience in the timber industry, prison, hospital. Came and got stuck for years. Almost no one leaves the theater, and if they do, their return is inevitable. Even if it takes 10–20 years, it returns.

Yuri Kvyatkovsky received a ready-made documentary play by Andrei Stadnikov, written in 2021–2022. Two years before the start of rehearsals, Andrei began recording interviews with actresses and theater workers – costume designers, make-up artists, ushers responsible for issuing keys, laundry workers who clean not only stage costumes, but also stage clothes (people far from the theater do not even suspect what is such a concept). During this time, some of those interviewed left the theater, others are no longer alive, but their monologues remain. Those whom Andrei Stadnikov interviewed did not know what would eventually be included in the play.

One of the actresses is played by Daria Yurskaya, a representative of a theater dynasty, the daughter of Sergei Yursky and Natalya Tenyakova. “I speak on my own behalf, I play the role of Dasha Yurskaya,” the actress said after the performance. “You can’t say anything new, it’s the same thing every time.” We don’t see the screen with our faces and names on it. Working with another actress so that she has time to repeat your text as if in a mirror image is quite a circus technique. Today the theater employees came to the show. They also did not know which of them would be shown and which would not. We were scared. We didn’t make a parody, we didn’t literally copy them, but we tried to show the diversity of human characters.”

Many did not recognize themselves on stage, since the director and actresses did not strive for literal copying. Their main task was to capture human character, which was largely collective. “We meet these people every day in the theater, and although we pronounce words from their interviews, this is a collective image,” says Maria Karpova. “I didn’t communicate with my heroines, I just listened to their voices, grasped their intonation, and figured out what kind of person they were. The senior usher was the hardest part. The costume designer works at the play, and I was afraid that she would recognize herself, although I don’t look like her. But she didn’t recognize herself in my heroine. There are many women working in our theater. They wash at night, sew during the day, and tell us words in the evening. I wanted to use their words to talk about what is happening in the country and the theater.”

“Curtain” has three acts in one and no intermission. Each one is like an independent short story. It is impossible to predict where the director’s imagination will lead, especially in the third part, where the ghosts of the past come to life, the “old men” of the Moscow Art Theater – Androvskaya, Prudkin, Tarasova… – take on new life thanks to the reproduction of the mise-en-scenes of legendary performances of the 1930s-1940s, 1980s. Basically these are Chekhov’s heroes who sing like in an opera. Documentary theater combines with academic music. Only women perform in the men’s parts.

But we will come to this later. In the meantime, the actresses are sitting at the makeup tables, remembering how they came to the theater, peering into the mirrors where other actresses are reflected, repeating the same words. Overcoming awkwardness, they pronounce their own texts and are deprived of the opportunity to improvise; they must pronounce a clearly recorded text that they themselves once said. Nearby, young cameramen record everything, and we see the faces of the actresses on the big screen. Not everyone feels confident in front of the camera, which requires more limited means of expression, without excessive theatricality. People in the theater often live as if in a cocoon, they do not hear what is happening in life, but the street eventually bursts into their world.

Yuri Kvyatkovsky says after the performance: “This is a play about women, because they are the ones who keep the traditions of the theater. Our heroines may not go on stage, but they still fill it with their energy. Andrey Stadnikov is my long-time co-author. He conducted documentary research. We have already done a similar performance with students in Brusnikin’s workshop, “This is me too. Verbatim” (students asked people on the street, in cafes, shops, and on the basis of these conversations and observations, the image of our contemporaries arose, their monologues were heard, arranged by novice actors. – S.H.). Ten years after our first experience, this text arrived. The fact that there are only girls on stage is not my whim; it was included in the text, which came to me in finished form. This is a woman’s view of what is happening, because it is women who have to resolve all disasters. They are the keepers of history and meaning. Some of them have been working in the theater for more than forty years and preserve its history and the spirit of the place. A person is trying to leave something behind, and it seems to every theater employee that his presence at the Moscow Art Theater is not without a trace.”

Nadezhda Zharycheva took part while still studying at the Moscow Art Theater School in Verbatim and now says that thanks to the performance she became acquainted with the theater in a new way. Some she knew before, some she didn’t. The actresses were offered to meet real heroines, but some refused. Olga Voronina goes on stage in military uniform. She likes that only actresses are involved in the play. According to her, releasing the play without men is calmer. If men dressed as women in the third act, it would have been rude. “I have only bright feelings associated with the theater; it’s not a black hole,” says Olga. “We live here like on a flying saucer, protected from what is outside, and this helps me personally.”

The most incredible one here is Maria Sokova. She moves from one heroine to another and is always reliable. She does everything gently and with gentle humor. Her most striking feature was the “washing worker,” who has to wash heavy clothes and curtains, which requires physical strength.

Behind one of the actresses is a “Don’t talk” poster. In the play, sometimes everything is drowned in conversations, there is not enough silence. And not everything on stage is determined only by words.