In Yaroslavl they drink tea and declare their love

Since noon on Saturday in Yaroslavl, something unusual was observed on the Volga embankment. In the crowd among the Yaroslavl residents and those who came to the Volkovsky festival, young ladies dressed in the fashion of the century before last are walking around – crinolines, bonnets or scarves over sloping shoulders. Hair neatly tidied up, eyes modestly downcast. And nearby are merchants in undershirts, desperate guys circling around them. And they whisper something to the young ladies. Probably they are seducing. So the Volkovsky Theater Festival, which has already gone most of its way, opened its street program. For the first time in 23 years of existence.

“Here we have all the famous declarations of love from Ostrovsky’s plays against the backdrop of the Volga,” artistic director of the First Russian Theater Valery Kirillov explains to me the essence of what is happening at the moment. – You see, Karandyshev and Larisa are explaining. Now they will go to the gazebo and continue there. And there will also be a dialogue between Katerina and Boris from The Thunderstorm.

I note that this is not a typical street performance, traditionally divided into a performance by artists, performed for spectators on an improvised stage in nature. No, just the Volga embankment, which remembers a lot of things in its lifetime, and just people walking along it on their legal day off. And what can happen in this stream of people, parallel to the natural river, will be shown by the experience of the first street program. According to the organizers, there are no scenes or shouting barkers here – everything happens “on your feet” and everything should fit organically into nature.

In addition to love scenes, a merchant tea party took place on the banks of the Volga. We installed the samovar on seven buckets and let’s make tea. Artists in the role of real merchants who lived in Yaroslavl – merchants Korzinkins, Ponizovkins, Polushkins, all manufacturers. The latter is the stepfather of Fyodor Volkov, the founder of the First Russian Theater. What guys they were!!! The fathers of the city, with paternal concern for their descendants: the Skripins, Ioaniky and Boniface, left Yaroslavl a masterpiece of architecture – the Temple of Elijah the Prophet, completely painted inside with magnificent frescoes.

By the way, Yaroslavl residents, as the proverb says, are all handsome, but for a long time they were called Yaroslavl Volokhlebs. Why? Yes, these business people, relying only on the merchant’s word of honor, loved to drink tea – for three and a half hours, no less. And the menu for it was impressive: jam and kulebyaka were served with tea, then there were closed and open pies, plus some kind of baked goods.

And we are reconstructing such tea drinking,” continues Kirillov. – another feature of our street program is a merchant exhibition of harvest and hunting.

At the same time, there is a theater program. A marvelous performance was shown on the Volkovsky Chamber Stage by the theater from Rybinsk – “Poor Liza” after Karamzin. Actually, in their town, this masterpiece of Russian sentimentalism is played right on the balcony, next to the audience, and, probably, this produces a certain effect. But in the absence of a balcony, in a black office, a stern woman with a bun appears on stage, who, walking from the right half of the stage to the left, with a well-trained voice and clear diction, begins to talk about her love for Moscow, for its open spaces.

It is with exactly the same intonation and tone that the literature teacher usually begins to explain a new topic. Well, I think it’s melancholy, while the schoolgirl sitting next to me, just hearing the painfully familiar mentoring tone, crawled out of her chair. She thought she had come to the theater, but then – hello, school!

But that was not the case: a young man in a light suit, who was standing with his elbows on the fence while the “teacher” was speaking, abruptly interrupted her: “What kind of pathos? Couldn’t it be simpler? It’s more natural.” So director Konstantin Demidov (he is also an artist, he is also responsible for the musical and video design) breaks the usual structure of the performance and sets different rules of the game. According to them, three artists first, as in school, identify the theme of Karamzin’s work (unhappy love, social inequality) and play “Poor Liza” according to the rules of the genre designated by Nikolai Karamzin – a sentimental story. And what is most valuable – while maintaining the purity of this tearful genre. That is, sincerely, with one hundred percent faith in the authenticity of the first feeling, and this faith does not allow for subtext, an ironic look from the heights of the 21st century to the 18th century. Everything here is from the heart, which immediately captivates the viewer.

The format of literary theater, when characters talk about their feelings and actions, performing them (“Lisa was looking for Erast in the crowd”) has minimal video inclusions and is musically scored… with songs from the modern repertoire, for example, Monetochka. And in this case, we can say that the stage sentiment reveals the invisible side of the singer of tough relationships among teenagers – the sincerity that she carefully hides.

The ankle boots on Lisa’s legs, her simple short dress and Erast’s beard and mustache don’t bother him, as if he had just visited a barrier shop. The purity of relationships – love, betrayal, which does not arouse suspicion in the play of the actors – Ekaterina Bondarenko (Liza), Maxim Tkach (Erast) and Maria Lebedeva (Mother Lisa) is brought to the fore.

And as soon as the audience let go of the internal pressure, without being ashamed of their feelings, they shed a tear over the fate of poor Liza, who drowned from unhappy love, when the participants in the performance returned everything to normal. Erast, who, according to Karamzin, paid for the betrayal of love with his entire unhappy life, quoted an epigram from the sentimentalist writer’s contemporaries: “Liza, Erast’s bride, drowned here / Drown yourself girls, there is enough room for everyone in the pond.” The literature lesson ended quite modernly.

And there are still performances ahead from Kaluga, Saratov, Yerevan, Tver, St. Petersburg, Donetsk, Izhevsk and Belgrade, from where the Russian theater came with the play “Ariadne”.