Details of the sudden death of actor Yuri Vaksman became known

They raised their glasses and he died

The International Theater Day in Yaroslavl ended tragically – at the end of the day, the artist and director of the Chamber Theater, founder of the film company YarCinema, Yuri Vaksman, suddenly died. There was no sign of trouble – he was full of strength, active, a winner.

Now in Yaroslavl there is a festival “Simply Good Cinema” – it was founded and held for ten years by Yuri Vaksman. One of the venues is his Chamber Theater, which he directed for 25 years, and literally in a week this date was going to be celebrated in a special way. They will celebrate, there is no doubt, but without Yuri Mikhailovich, who was the driving force of the theater. Yes, there are a lot of things with the motor.

Let us reconstruct the chronicle of the events of the last day of his life. At 19.00 he came to the Fyodor Volkov Theater – awards were presented here for contributions and achievements in the theater business of Yaroslavl. Yuri Vaksman just became a prize winner as the creator and director of the Chamber. The presenter from the stage, inviting him to receive the award, joked: “Well, Yuri Mikhailovich, as always, will easily fly onto the stage.” The audience appreciated the joke, and Yuri Mikhailovich, a rather frail physique, showed everyone how he could fly. Everyone smiled, laughed, applauded…

Very late, when it was all over, we gathered in the cafe of the Actor’s House, which belonged to Waxman, and at the set table raised our glasses to the lucky winners of the award. And it was at this moment that Yuri, who was sitting between his wife and his assistant, for some reason dropped his head on the assistant’s shoulder. “Yuri Mikhailovich, why are you so emotional?” said the toaster and everyone laughed. But Yuri Mikhailovich no longer heard these words – he was dead. Later, the ambulance doctors confirmed it was a heart condition.

Vaksman was a major figure in Yaroslavl in the literal and figurative sense of the word. Short, densely built, despite being overweight, he was very mobile and active. Its role in the cultural life of the city and region and its development can hardly be overestimated. Vaksman is the Chamber Theatre, the Yarfilm film company, the Actor’s House cafe, a film festival and much, much more. His Chamber (it is important to understand) theater is not state-owned, but private, which means only one thing – it is difficult to maintain it on your own without state support. And not falling into the quality of an enterprise is even more difficult. Vaksman, who in 1999 became one of the founders of the Chamber Theater, managed to keep the theater afloat and create high-quality performances.

Needless to say, his Chamber in Yaroslavl was loved for its versatility: in fact, it is a cultural center with a theater and cinema hall, and a bookstore. The poster only confirmed the multi-vector nature of the artistic search. And the creator of the theater, everyone’s favorite Yura Vaksman, is the soul of this house. And another one too – the Actor’s House cafe. This is where artists from different regions gathered and met. The cafe worked 24/7, because it was the only place where any film crew could come at any time of the day or night to feed the actors and then leave for the set again.

Vaksman was an excellent organizer and communicator. The expressions “let’s go to Vaksman” or “we must go to Vaksman” practically became household words and meant that there was a person, and there was a place where they would always help and lend a hand – this was Yura Vaksman and his cafe. Many matters were decided here, business people shook hands.

At the end of September 2022, here he told me how he starred with his friend Sergei Puskepalis in the film “The Tailor from Brooklyn” (directed by Evgeniy Serov) – the last film. On the same day, the first screening took place in Yaroslavl, and they discussed when the film would be shown in Moscow. Yura was very proud of this work – he had never had anything like it before, although there are many works in his filmography that showed him as a first-class actor. But working with Puskepalis was a special case: the sensitive topic of the extermination of Jews during the Second World War, the memory of those terrible events – all this through the eyes of Waxman, a small, fussy tailor from Brooklyn.

The actor’s house was his home. He could always be found here. And here, by a whim of fate, he ended his earthly journey. There were only people nearby – my wife and friends.