Ice puppets took to the stage in Kazan

A new doll is frozen for the next performance.

As you know, puppeteers can make their theater from any material – wood, fabric, paper. Yes, anything can become the subject of a game. But I don’t remember that the dolls were made of ice. But at the Tatar Puppet Theater “Ekiyat” in Kazan, artists work on stage with a character made of ice for two hours. After watching the performance, a MK columnist met the unusual doll.

The performance, where an ice puppet acts among the usual puppets and many different objects, is called “Aviator”. A year ago, director Ilgiz Zainiev staged a serious work based on the novel by Evgeny Vodolazkin at Ekiyat. He admits that since he read the novel in 2016, he has been hatching the idea of ​​bringing it to life through the means of puppet theater. But it was clear to him that the hero of the novel, Innokenty Platonov, who found himself between the choice of dying in the camps in the 30s of the last century or as a result of a dangerous scientific experiment on freezing a person, should be fundamentally different from all other dolls on the stage. And Ilgiz Zainiev found a solution – his Innokenty Platonov, who chose to become frozen for many years, will be… made of ice. Thus was born a puppet that does not leave the black box of the stage for two hours.

The wire structure is visible through the transparent ice. The ice man is controlled by one performer wearing gloves. As the action progresses, which with every passing minute takes on a dramatic and even tragic character, the doll very slowly melts literally before the eyes of the audience. Some pieces may even fall off and fall on the stage – none of the artists will attach any importance to this – such melting corresponds to the content of the work by Evgeny Vodolazkin.

After the performance, already on stage, I was allowed to look at the icy Innokenty Platonov. His height is about 40 centimeters, weight – 4 kilograms. For each performance, as production designer Sergei Ryabinin and actor Dilyus Khuzyakhmetov told me, they create a new Platonov.

– For this we have silicone molds, we fill them with water. Moreover, we tried to fill in different types of water – mineral, distilled, but in the end it was ordinary tap water that performed best, – Sergey Ryabinin explains to me.

Then the water is frozen for 12 hours – and the doll is ready. Dilyus Khuzyakhmetov, having received the doll, customizes it to suit himself – he can sharpen it a little, straighten the metal parts, by which he guides the doll.

– And if the doll breaks during the performance – the ice is still fragile, you never know what could happen on stage, for example, the doll was accidentally caught, hit or fell? – I’m interested.

– We freeze two figures for each performance just in case, but only one works in the performance. The other, as they say, is in the wings,” says Dilyus. One can feel that he loves his hero and that he is cold, or rather icy, does not frighten the artist, although rubber gloves do not save him from the cold.

– I asked the famous puppet theater specialist Nina Monova whether in our country, in any theater, of which there are more than two hundred, there is an analogue of such a doll. She confirmed that we do not have such experiences, but there are such experiences in the world. In particular, in France she knows an actress who works with ice – she has just such a theater.

And we have the first one – and it is not surprising that the play “Aviator” from the Kazan theater “Ekiyat” was shortlisted for the national theater award “Golden Mask” in several categories at once.