Sergei Bezrukov gave a master class on intoxication at a cultural forum

“You can’t look your partner in the eyes – he reads your sober gaze”

The ninth international cultural forum – Forum of United Cultures – continues in St. Petersburg. The work is in full swing: panel discussions, round tables, the most unexpected speeches that disrupt the working flow of the event. A similar thing happened when discussing a topic that sounded quite serious: “Russian theater school: connecting generations, uniting countries” with the participation of Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova.

At the end of the first day of the forum, school rectors and theater directors shared their experience of cooperation, new forms of cooperation, but when it was the turn of Sergei Bezrukov, who has been teaching a course at VGIK for the second year, taught in Rostov and Donetsk, something strange began to happen. At first, there were no surprises: the artist promised to explain in five minutes what the Stanislavsky system is, the history of which was outlined before him by Mikhail Shvydkoy.

“My method is this: I live, not play. You need to master the technology of imitation, but you can imitate everything except one thing – feelings,” says Sergei. “Feelings – absolutely not.” And for some reason, at these words, the popular artist was attacked by hiccups. He was clearly embarrassed, apologized, and quickly took a sip of water. As soon as he continued, he was attacked by a sneeze, as if he had caught some kind of infection (by the way, on the eve of the opening of the forum, a PCR test was taken from all participants, without exception). The artist felt completely embarrassed and blushed. Everyone also felt embarrassed, either for him or for themselves. And Bezrukov suddenly said: “Now you have observed a classic imitation of hiccups and sneezes.” Smiling charmingly, he said that his teacher Oleg Tabakov had long ago invented his technique of tears, because after suffering a heart attack at the age of 29, doctors forbade him to cry real tears, to spend his soul. “Otherwise it’s the end,” the doctors told Oleg Pavlovich then,” Sergei concluded.

It was a first-class master class by Bezrukov for everyone, and a separate one for the MK columnist. Sergei showed and explained to me the three stages of intoxication. “When imitating a drunk, you cannot look your partner in the eye – he will read your sober gaze and will not believe you. Therefore, Marisha, look at how this is done: first you look at your partner’s ear, the second stage – at the shoulder, and the third – at the knee. This is how I explain to my students: it should not be about feelings. By the way, many artists, when I ask them to portray hiccups and sneezes on set, fail.”

GITIS Rector Grigory Zaslavsky, who, together with Marina Yudenich, skillfully moderated the discussion about the theater school at the present stage, said that for the first time in GITIS a department of the great director Anatoly Vasilyev appeared, where he will train future teachers: “Anatoly Alexandrovich said that when Russia is in bad , he should be with his country.” In addition, Zaslavsky spoke about joint projects with the Beijing Theater School of Arts. The director of the Vakhtangov Theater, Kirill Krok, spoke on behalf of the Shchukin Theater Institute (its rector Evgeniy Knyazev played a performance that day and could not come to St. Petersburg), recalled the main principle of teaching at the Vakhtangov School: school-studio-theater. At the Forum, Kirill Igorevich signed a cooperation agreement between the Vakhtangov Theater, Pike and the Beijing Theater Academy.

“It’s like I’m a backup dancer for Kirill Igorevich,” Mikhail Shvydkoy joked, but there was a considerable amount of truth in the joke. The fact is that three courses for his musical theater were prepared at Pike. Mikhail Efimovich, being a theorist, clarified that Stanislavsky did not have a System, but a Method. “The system is something closed and finite, and the Method has development,” and how he knows how to do this, he elegantly summed up: “The life of the human spirit and nothing else in the theater is there, and everything else is artificial intelligence.”

By the way, in Turkey, the system of our Konstantin Sergeevich was previously studied in translation from the English edition of his work. But, obviously, translation difficulties led to serious errors in teaching and now Stanislavsky’s books in Turkey will be translated only from Russian.

Nikolai Tsiskaridze, a famous polymath, was in charge of the school of Russian ballet. He recalled that the first ballet was staged at the court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich 350 years ago, the St. Petersburg ballet school celebrated its 280th anniversary, and the Moscow ballet school celebrated its 250th anniversary. The St. Petersburg (later Leningrad) did not stop working either during the First World War or the Great Patriotic War. Even during the terrible days of the blockade, the school continued to operate. “That’s why we didn’t close during the pandemic either. I then asked permission from Olga Borisovna (Lyubimova. – M.R.), and she allowed it under my responsibility.” Tsiskaridze is confident that no events, including 2022, have influenced the desire of people in the world to study Russian ballet in Russia. “And I am sure that there will be no ban on Russian art as long as Tchaikovsky and The Nutcracker are playing.”