“The viewer can see the “wrong side” of the educational process” – Kommersant FM

Kommersant FM columnist Dmitry Butkevich talks about an unusual exhibition that opened within the walls of the Kitai-Gorod gallery of the Moscow Exhibition Halls Association.

I opened a very non-trivial exhibition here. This is my first time; the Moscow Exhibition Halls Association also has its first experience of cooperation with the Russian Institute of Theater Arts (GITIS); Well, students haven’t had such a general exhibition before either. And at GITIS we have never held an exam within the walls of the state exhibition hall before.

In short, the exhibition is called “Simonov’s Workshop at GITIS. Sample of the Small Stage.” This is a “semi-final exam” for fifth-year students of master Nikolai Igorevich Simonov. The Honored Artist of Russia is now the main artist of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov, and before that he worked as the main director at Sovremennik, the School of Modern Play, the Rostov Regional Academic Youth Theater, and the Vologda Youth Theater.

As part of the current examination and exhibition project, students worked for six months to solve the space of the Small Stage of the Moscow Art Theater, mainly with short plays by contemporary Russian playwrights. This task was given to them at the beginning of the school year by their master.

As a result, nine students presented 14 performance models, as well as all the enormous preparatory work: references that inspired future set designers, sketches of stage and costume solutions, technical documentation and drawings.

The viewer can see the “wrong side” of the educational process, which, as GITIS Rector Grigory Zaslavsky rightly notes in his introductory remarks to the exhibition-exam, is the most interesting part of studying at a creative university.

Although why do I say “future set designers”? They are active. By the time they reach their fifth year, most of them are already successfully staged in various theaters in Russia and abroad.

And some of the works of the current exhibitors participated in the ArtHub creative program, which operates at the Moscow Art Theater. Usually it happens like this: a modern play, a director who chooses a set designer from among the students, and they stage a sketch of the future production, and then the audience votes.

One of Simonov’s students, Elizaveta Ermakova, recently won the current “ArtHub,” and her work (the play “Flashback” by Olzhas Zhanaidarov, directed by Vera Popova) was accepted for production.