Operation on the living – Newspaper Kommersant No. 64 (7509) dated 04/13/2023

The famous director Andrey Moguchiy left the post of artistic director of the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater in St. Petersburg, which he held since 2013. This is the first big theatrical resignation in St. Petersburg, where so far there have been no personnel changes like those that happened in Moscow theaters last spring. The Ministry of Culture also announced that the BDT’s charter has now been changed, as a result of which the “general management of the theater” is now entrusted exclusively to its director. comments Esther Steinbock.

From an administrative point of view, Andrei Moguchiy’s departure does not formally look like a dismissal. His contract ended on April 9, and such an incredible coincidence must have happened that it was on this date that the founder, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, decided to change the charter of the BDT and make the theater directorial. It seems like the Bolshoi Drama Theater does not need an artistic director at all now. So no one expelled the Mighty – it’s just that there is no such position.

In fact, it was probably the other way around. As one of the signatories of the famous letter from theater workers dated February 26, 2022, Moguchy fell into the category of unreliable. A year ago, when the BDT artistic director ended another long-term contract, he nevertheless extended the contract, but only for one year. Before this April, according to Kommersant’s information, there was talk of leaving the artistic director in office. And everything seems to have been agreed upon, but where such decisions are approved – and in the case of the Tovstonogov BDT, this, of course, is not the Ministry of Culture – they put forward certain conditions for the extension, which the artistic director could not agree to. What – one can only guess.

Now we can already say that these were amazing, magnificent ten years that will go down in the modern history of the Russian theater.

In 2013, Andrey Moguchiy came to the Bolshoi Theater when, in the artistic sense, the famous St. Petersburg theater lay in ruins.

For a quarter of a century, after the death of Georgy Tovstonogov, the theater seemed to live in anticipation of a new leader capable of returning the BDT to its former glory. And it was Andrei Moguchiy, who seemed to many a far from obvious candidate for this position, who did this – he returned it.

He keeps the BDT alive, significant, original and loved by the audience.

And the point is not only that on the big stage of BDT Mighty, an experimenter and inventor, seemingly far from academic canons, revealed himself in a new way and unfolded in full force of his directorial talent. Although this is the same: almost all of his performances staged at the Bolshoi Theater – “What to do”, “Alice”, “Drunken”, “Governor”, “Thunderstorm”, the trilogy “Three Fat Men”, “Mother’s Field” – invariably became events , nominees and laureates of theater awards, subjects of interest and disputes of specialists, experts and spectators.

The point is, first of all, that Andrey Moguchy appeared as an outstanding artistic director, who not only realized his talent, but also built, in fact, a new theater. He showed an example of how tradition can be not a shackle to the ground, but fuel for take-off, and how innovation can be not an arbitrary self-sufficient intrusion, but a smart, measured strategy. Attention to the luminaries of the troupe Mighty nevertheless managed (although he could not do without conflicts, where could they be without them) to make friends with trust in the young, whom he spurred when necessary, but, when necessary, shortened. It was hardly a plan drawn down to the smallest detail on paper. Andrei Moguchiy is able to light up from a new exciting idea more than a milligram to weigh all the pros and cons. As an artistic director, intuition and impulses were very important to him. And yet, the decade of the Mighty now looks like a consistent and very honest project in front of himself, in front of art, in front of the city and the audience.

Modern dramaturgy on the stage, invitations from foreign directors, a large-scale celebration of the theatre’s centenary, many special projects, including the unique Plywood Theatre, which literally, physically marked the intrusion of innovation into the classical space — one enumeration of the artistic director’s initiatives would take up a lot of space, and all this, undoubtedly, it has developed into the concept of “BDT Mighty”.

Now that this experience has been interrupted, the book How to Make a Dead Theater Academy Live could be written on its basis.

Nothing more than a coincidence, but on the same day that Mighty was not “renewed”, the permanent director of the Maly Theater, Yuri Solomin, put forward his artistic program – to judge and punish directors for changing the text and titles of Russian classic plays. Everyone has his own path. As for BDT, it’s hard to expect anything good. It only seems to officials that the theater can exist without an artistic director and that the director – in this case we are talking about Tatyana Arkhipova – can handle it alone. It’s not just about inviting directors and keeping the papers in order. Alas, all director’s theaters are similar to each other.