The smallest theater in Russia settled in a former shoe shop

The common flea (Aphaniptera galloping), due to its microscopic size, still needs to be looked for. And you won’t find a theater with that name just like that in St. Petersburg either: no sign, no sign, no address on the website. This is also an element of the game for the potential audience: first you need to find a theater, and then enjoy the art. So I found it: on the 9th Sovetskaya, in a shabby gateway, where there is an inconspicuous door on the left, two steps down – and here you have a theater.

There used to be a shoe shop here. Shoemakers, perhaps, nothing: I took the shoes from the client – stuffed the heels, glued the sole – returned it. And what is the theater like here? It turns out that it is very comfortable, because the main thing is the idea. And the idea, according to the director and founder of “Flea” Kirill Lukevich and director Yana Pleshanova, is that size does not matter for the theater, and in practice this dubious idea has been successfully proven since May last year.

Yana Pleshanova shows me flea mansions. “Mansions” is a rather narrow corridor, which you literally get into from the street. On 9 “squares” there are a wardrobe, a toilet, a buffet with a counter and dishes. The ends of the corridor end on the left with a toilet, and on the right, behind a black curtain, with a stage. “How is this possible? Maybe a mistake? I continue to doubt. There is no mistake, everything is true: the Flea Theater, according to the documents, has nine square meters, and all of the above can easily fit on them.

I must say that the story of a small size for the theater is not new at all. If you dig around on the Internet, then small, tiny theaters appear from time to time in foreign cities. I have met such ones – even for ten people – in Berlin, Barcelona, ​​somewhere in South America … But our “Flea” seems to be the smallest. Otherwise, we, Russians, cannot: we have Lilliputians too – the smallest Lilliputians in the world.

On the wall, painted in bright yellow, the whole location is painted by hand with a black felt-tip pen: “Warehouse”, “Buffet”, “Toilet”, “Hall”, “Stage”.

“Where, exactly, is the hall?”

We are standing in it.

And how many spectators fit here?

“Exactly six, and here, in the corridor, all six fit,” Yana explains. “Here are the folding chairs. We put them in three rows – two in each. We have everything thought out: each next row is higher than the previous one. And behind there is a place for the administrator, who leads the performance.

At the end of the third row, on a shelf that falls during the performance, there is currently a buffet. Well, not in the usual sense of the word (sandwiches with fish and sausage), but a tray on which there are small glass mugs in a circle for ten people – for six spectators, an administrator, a director, well, or if someone else comes from their .

Behind the microbuffet there is a door to the toilet, and here it is just not “micro”, but quite normal and designed in bright pink, girlish colors. Above the toilet, on the top shelf, there is a warehouse, where the scenery of all the performances. Today, “Flea” has three of them: “Wolf” (a sentimental confession of a seasoned wolf), “Dyimovochka trip” and a tour performance (a walk with a graffiti artist around an underground city). An important clarification: the performances are not for children, as the names might seem, they are played in the evenings.

When the curtain opens… At that moment, I thought that behind a very small curtain, there should still be a decent place. But no, Yana opens the curtain, and there … If two people fit, and then happiness.

– And you want to say that this is a stage ?! I ask, not believing my eyes.

– Yes, yes, an artist or two work here …

On an area of ​​about a meter by a meter, there is a black metal structure, similar to those that housewives keep in the bathroom, in two or three “floors”, and everything you need is stored on them. Today everything is prepared for the play “Thumbelina”. The actress, as Yana says, settles down on the edge, Thumbelina is already drawn on her index finger, and this finger travels from the bottom shelf to the top. The camera captures her fabulous movement, and the audience is already watching in an enlarged view on a small screen installed on the structure.

— The actress herself shoots Thumbelina. The camera is used only in this performance. On it, we kind of parse the history of the inch. This story asked for the smallest theater, about the smallest girl …

– Aren’t you going to stage “Boy-with-a-finger”?

– A logical question. We have such a policy: although we are a small theater, we have a large team of professionals, here are photos of everyone on the wall – the director, artists, actors. We are open to all projects.

According to the creators of such a theater, “Flea” is a typical St. Petersburg word, easy, understandable.

— For an experimental theatre, this is a long time. During the time that we exist, we already have our own audience, who is no longer surprised by anything and goes to performances, waiting for the premiere. We comprehend well-known stories – about the wolf, Thumbelina, we read them in a new way. We give people the emotion of childish surprise so that they consider the “Flea” as a kind of pocket of St. Petersburg, in which you can hide from the big world and feel like a child for a while.

– What is the duration of your “flea” non-children’s performances?

– 35 minutes.

— How small can a theater be to exist as a theater? And did not survive, but lived? How much does the ticket cost?

– One and a half thousand, and on the movie that we show – five hundred. Actors get the price of a ticket for going out, and according to Peter, this is not a bad price at all. We go to zero.

— How does the idea of ​​a microscopic theater influence your philosophy of life?

– In order for the idea of ​​a director, a great artist, to reach people, it is not at all necessary that it be a huge, multi-tiered theater. The theater is not in buildings, not in the wings. I realized that nine meters would be enough for me to live.

– Does the audience feel claustrophobia?

– I often watch performances, and during this time none of the spectators complained, did not say that he felt bad. Maybe it’s because the ceilings are high, under three meters. By the way, the stucco molding was preserved on them. I have an apartment of twenty-five “squares”, and I used to think that if guests come to me, about ten people, then they will be cramped. And here I have a theater where we are eight at nine. And not all nine, but the audience is three or four. But, you know, we all fit, and it’s great. Everything is open with us, we do not hide anything, everything is very simple, and everyone plays this flea game with pleasure. We tell our viewers that the theater is a living organism for people, and it is addressed to them, not hidden.

– Have you ever come across the opinion that for 35 minutes of a mini-performance, one and a half thousand is a bit too much?

– I thought about it, but for these fifteen hundred the viewer gets not just 35 minutes of spectacle. The viewer usually arrives early: he needs to find the “Flea” – we do not have a special sign, and we want to be looked for like fleas. Our buffet is free, even alcohol in microdoses, but we do not pour it, but offer to add it to tea. After the performance, we raise the bar counter, because the audience often stays and begins to communicate and talk, and not about the performance or the theater. We stand for another half an hour, chatting, getting to know each other, and everyone likes it.

– Only Petersburgers go to you?

– Not only. Once a girl came in: “I’m coming to you from Barnaul.” I found our theater on the Internet as a cool place and came. We do not have a “buy a ticket” button on our website, there is even a waiting list. We don’t apply for grants or subsidies: we don’t need huge sums for which we have to report later. The policy of simplicity and openness.