Sore point of Khabensky: artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov called the anniversary “test for lice”

There are several anniversaries in 2023: the 125th anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov, the 80th anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater School and the centenary of the Moscow Art Theater Museum.

On the eve of the triple anniversary, the artistic director, director of the Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov Konstantin Khabensky shared his plans and reacted nervously to sensitive questions. The day before, he “injured his voice”, so he wheezed, drank hot tea and, as happens with actors, in the course of the conversation, read the play, he almost recovered. The voice appeared, and the reactions were, as befits a real artist, acutely nervous. The most painful topic is related to the relationship with the Moscow Art Theater. Gorky, which was once part of the whole, until the theater split into two halves. There is no talk of cooperation with the director of the Gorky Moscow Art Theater Vladimir Kekhman. “I see a beautifully rebuilt building in which a cool renovation has been made,” Konstantin Khabensky clarified the situation. – With whom to cooperate further on the subject of celebration? I do not see a creative impulse, so we do everything on our own. There must be a common creative language, ideas and understanding of what the Art Theater is, the first theater in the country.”

Everything goes on as usual, no fuss. On March 27, on Theater Day, the Moscow Art Theater Prize will be presented to young people under 35 for the first time in the field of not only drama theater, but also opera, ballet, cinema, and classical music. This is seen as an impetus for further development.

On the day of the theater’s 125th anniversary, a premiere will take place based on materials from the Moscow Art Theater Museum and a play by Yulia Pospelova about metaphorical love, as was said, and, presumably, we are talking about the founders of the Moscow Art Theater Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. In the anniversary year, spectators are waiting for 14 premieres. Why such a shaft? All in the name of an actor who, without a new job, can turn into a man working on an assembly line. The next premiere is Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” directed by Denis Azarov, then Lermontov’s “Masquerade”, on which Peter Shereshevsky is working. Nikolai Skorik will stage the play “The Price of Life” by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, which won the Griboedov Prize 130 years ago, beating Chekhov. The play “Curtain” will appear on the basis of interviews that the playwright and director Andrei Stadnikov took not only from the actresses of the Moscow Art Theater, but also from other of its employees. But the name of the director who will stage Bulgakov’s Theatrical Romance is still kept secret.

Konstantin Khabensky announced the renewal of the theatre’s corporate identity, in particular, its website. In September, the tour will take place in Kazakhstan, which will even cover Baikonur, where the theater staff will see the astronauts on their way: the flight is scheduled for that time. A souvenir from the Moscow Art Theater will also go into space. Well, on Earth there will be a jubilee tour to St. Petersburg, the homeland of Konstantin Khabensky. These will be exchange tours with Alexandrinka. The theater is taking over the artistic direction of the Melikhovskaya Spring festival, which will present the Landscape Theater project, which is seen as an opportunity to “highlight the problem in the regions”.

A competition is planned among Moscow film schools, which will be congratulated with the short films of the Moscow Art Theater on the anniversary. The winner will make a feature film based on the script by Nemirovich-Danchenko, written for Hollywood.

But their students from the Moscow Art Theater School, according to Khabensky, should not be afraid to dive left and right, to be alive. He himself listens to what is happening in the auditorium, and would like to offer the public something that would not repeat what is happening on television. “It is important to feel with the ear, the eye, the diaphragm” – this is the vision of the artistic director.

He himself spends all the time at the Moscow Art Theater. Because of this, he has not acted in films for a long time. “But I’m not complaining,” Khabensky says. – All in our hands. Everything will work out.” And the anniversary, according to him, “is another test for lice, like a solo performance or a monofilm, something that you have not done before. We need a new viewer and new angles.” For this, bloggers were attracted to the theater, who, as it turned out, sit in the holds during the performance and broadcast news on their audience’s gadgets. In this way, they “lure the viewer.”

The rector of the Moscow Art Theater School Igor Zolotovitsky told how, together with Konstantin Khabensky, he visited the 95-year-old Inna Solovyova, the legendary theater historian. “Her legs are bad, but her brains are luxurious,” he explained. So, having come to visit her, the current reformers of the Moscow Art Theater asked what, in fact, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich talked about for 18 hours in the Slavyansky Bazaar restaurant. And Inna Natanovna answered them that, first of all, they ate delicious food there, and do not think that they wanted to create an innovative theater. They just wanted their theater. Zolotovitsky explained that they dreamed of changing the intonation, making it publicly available. In general, the founders are not just icons hanging in the foyer.

But the processes taking place in the theater are observed at the Moscow Art Theater Museum, founded by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich in the year of the 25th anniversary of the theater. Once it was part of it and was located under the stage. Now it is 342 thousand storage units and an independent structure. And the theater cannot escape the close eye of the museum. All wins and losses will be recorded.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28976 dated February 21, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Sore question of Khabensky