“Pike” staged a play about love based on Bunin’s stories

A student can always see his master. In any case, if you don’t know the name of the director, then from the very first mise-en-scène of this performance you can unmistakably guess that “In Moscow” was staged by a student of Pyotr Fomenko. And loyal, dedicated, consistent. Kirill begins his performance brightly: “Once on Christmastide, the four of us, three old friends and a certain Georgy Ivanovich, had breakfast at the Bolshoi Moskovsky. On the occasion of the holiday, Bolshoy Moskovsky was empty and cool.”

This is what Ivan Bunin wrote in his story “Ida,” which was the first to be dramatized. Pirogov has a table on the stage in the right corner, around which three old friends have gathered. Champagne in a silver bucket in ice, loud, as if for show, conversations, laughter, libations.

“Gentlemen,” says one of them, “gentlemen, for some reason I’m treating you today and I want to feast to the fullest.” – Spread out for us, servant, a self-assembled tablecloth as generously as possible. You know my royal habits.

And further along the theater, the libations flowing with deliciousness and manners, together with the company, will organically migrate from the restaurant space to the station – just take a couple of steps to the side along the training stage. A change of conventional locations on stage, in the hall, behind its doors, from where voices are heard, a change of characters… And everything seems to be young, easy and charming in this Bunin Moscow until… Until a sad note appears, until it starts to sound the theme of love, whose unsteady nature was so subtly conveyed in prose by the Nobel Prize winner, and which they tried to translate into theatrical language in “The Pike.”

The task, frankly speaking, is not an easy one, but the beginning artists successfully completed it. Firstly, Pirogov worked well with the guys, trying to build roles, even small ones, based on the students’ personalities. Secondly, music also helps them – Kreisler, Sibelius, Massenet, Rachmaninov, Chopin, Ravel, Offenbach, Alyosha Dimitrievich, Strongilla Irtlach, and… animation as a design element. And animation for graduation performances is an impossible thing, primarily because of its expensive production. But funds were found, and the performance only benefited from the animation design. On the wall, Moscow is trembling with alleys; as the author says, “young snow” has fallen, the same understatement as in the classic. This design certainly sets the atmosphere for the performance and game.

In the story “Ida,” written by Bunin in 1925, the hero (Victor Treiber) at the station meets his wife’s friend Ida, who suddenly disappeared from his field of vision. But this fleeting meeting unexpectedly revealed her secret to the hero. “Did you know and do you know now,” said Ida (Varya Bochkova), “that I loved you for five whole years and still love you?” A fleeting meeting, a fleeting recognition in the bustle of the station, where, in addition to the couple, there is also Ida’s young husband, and the protagonist’s friend, as well as a working person at the station, represented by Andrei Popov, Sergei Vasiliev, Ilya Pavlov.

In constant movement on stage or in the hall among the audience, students, who in a few months will become certified artists, build stories and feelings from words and phrases, conveying their fleetingness, impossibility, loss.

In “Clean Monday,” written in 1944, with which Lent begins in the Russian Orthodox Church, the heroes of the story—simply He (Ilya Pavlov) and She (Sonya Lukinykh)—are busy with worldly things. Every day he takes her to restaurants, theaters, and concerts, presenting her with flowers, books, and chocolate. “The girl received them casually and absent-mindedly, lying on the sofa, but it looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town.” The beautiful couple is surrounded by other characters – artists of the Moscow Art Theater (the same, the first one) at the skit party, the cab driver Fyodor, the floor guards in the Egorova tavern, the janitor performed by Treiber, Vasiliev, Popov.

And She, who “did not resist his caresses, but at the last moment pulled him away, went into another room and returned already dressed for evening walks,” unexpectedly went to the monastery for obedience, with the desire to later decide to take monastic vows. Oh, these sudden moments of love…

After the performance we talk with Kirill Pirogov.

— Kirill, aren’t Bunin’s stories too complex material for modern students?

— Bunin, I think, is difficult not only for students, but also for modern people in general, even for professional artists. In addition, prose is not drama, and there is very little of what is the mainstay of drama (plot development, characters). Therefore, it is indeed very difficult for the students, but they trustingly threw themselves into this work, as if into a pool with their heads. And as much as their hearts responded to this, they felt Bunin’s word. This is excellent material for learning very fluid theatrical problems that are not easy to formulate. And they must be formulated in their own language, born and continued on stage, in interaction with each other.

“After all, today people don’t speak at all like Bunin and, it seems, don’t feel.”

“I must say that, strangely enough, this text resonates with them and they are ready to search. There is no guarantee that it will work out, but, as Pyotr Naumovich said, in the theater, as in love, there are no guarantees. But, nevertheless, they suffer, make mistakes, fall, get up and try further. It seems to me that Bunin suits them, in some ways he is in tune, despite the fact that they are young, and Ivan Alekseevich wrote stories at an advanced age. I hope this work will help them to grow. After all, there are very complex technical tasks that not every artist can cope with. And I’m glad they’re trying to play it.

— The main principle of a teacher when working with students.

“It probably grows out of my work with Fomenko: this attentive attitude to their individualities is such a very precarious task. Because you can’t teach, you can learn. And if the person who works with the guys is passionate, then they, accordingly, become infected with it. And then there is always a conversation with young artists, still students, through the author about the theater that we are trying to serve and serve. I recently read Boris Zakhava’s wonderful book “Vakhtangov and His Studio,” he wrote it a few years after the death of his teacher. And here is Vakhtangov’s principle, or more precisely, three positions in order to create a performance: the first is the author, the second is modernity, and the third is the team, that is, the ensemble. This is what I do with them in the hope that they will love theater and engage in it until they “seriously die completely,” as Pyotr Naumovich said.