An Actress at the Center of a Political Firestorm (2012)

Theater Plus blog No. 155. This topic has never gone away – it may never have left the field of play in Russia ever. The topic is this: Genuflecting before Power. Or, more precisely: The Intelligentsia Genuflecting before Power. A few days ago I reposted a piece about the playwright Nikolai Kolyada suddenly declaring his allegiance to Vladimir Putin after having supported an opposition candidate for some time. That was a big story. The story covered here, of popular actress Chulpan Khamatova putting herself in the Putin camp shortly before presidential elections in 2012, was much, much bigger. The reasons for that should be clear in the text below. What interests me, as we come upon still another Vladimir Putin election in the spring of 2018, is that, I suspect, not only has nothing changed, it has gotten much worse. We will see as we watch events unfold, but I’ll bet you we’ll see a parade of glassy-eyed famed actors, directors, writers and such fall in lock-step as they march into a future promised by Vladimir Putin. It’s all pretty disheartening. And this trend will only get stronger, one suspects. The BBC ran a piece recently in which it traces the recent flood of people abandoning Russia. Those are all people who have decided that there is nothing they can do to change anything. The more of them that leave, the less of them there are to attempt to counteract trends like the Khamatova support for Putin. You can watch the video Khamatova made in support of the Russian president above. 

16 February 2012
By John Freedman

A schism has been brewing in the ranks of Russia’s cultural elite ever since contested Duma elections on Dec. 4. In the first flush of protests that took place the following day, Dec. 10 and Dec. 24, actors, composers, directors and writers were prominent among the growing crowds.

And yet anyone who thought that the entertainment world was going to speak with a single, unified voice was sorely mistaken. We were reminded of that when maverick Yekaterinburg playwright, director, educator and theater manager Nikolai Kolyada announced in mid-January that he had joined Prime Minister Vladimir Putin‘s election campaign committee.

Last week a barrage of videos made by Putin’s campaign showed that the presidential candidate has the muscle to bring star power to his side. The list of celebrities stumping for Putin is impressive — they include actors Oleg Tabakov, Yevgeny Mironov, Alisa Freindlikh and Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, film director and actor Fyodor Bondarchuk, pop singers Nikolai Baskov and Dima Bilan, and classical musicians Yury Bashmet, Vladimir Spivakov and Valery Gergiev.

But is there something wrong with this picture?

Forget Baskov’s hand on his heart as he gushes about how he trusts the man. Forget Gergiyev and Mironov, whose theaters — the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg and the Theater of Nations in Moscow, respectively — have been rebuilt and financed by Putin’s administration. Even forget Bashmet, who bizarrely goes so far as to compare Putin to the Stradivari family, the great makers of fine violins in the 17th and 18th centuries.

No, what has shaken the cultural world to its core was the appearance two days ago of a video made by the beloved actress Chulpan Khamatova. In it she expresses gratitude to Putin for never once failing to honor his promises to help her Gift of Life foundation for cancer-stricken children. “Therefore,” she concludes in a dour voice in the 31-second video, “I will vote for him.”

For many in Russia this was like Goldilocks joining forces with the wolf. Toto going over to the monkeys. Chewbacca shooting Harrison Ford’s Han Solo in the back.

The blogosphere virtually exploded on Wednesday with accusations, defenses and laments. Suffice it to say that as I write these lines at midday on Thursday, approximately 300 to 800 people each had watched the videos of the other stars I mention above. The Khamatova clip, which can be watched by clicking on the picture above, had received a staggering 67,500 hits. The vast majority of comments left beneath the video expressed sympathy with the actress, leaving no doubt that people believed she was forced to support Putin in order to save funding for her children’s foundation.

This opinion was bolstered by a photo distributed by RIA-Novosti Wednesday evening showing Putin ushering Khamatova into a hospital room earlier in the day. Putin looks confused and uncomfortable as he stretches his arm behind the actress, who wears a stony expression and appears to shrink from the Prime Minister. (The BBC runs the photo in a Russian-language article about the event.) Many commenting on the photo on Facebook and LiveJournal suggest that Khamatova had been crying.

A question arises: Is Putin’s campaign forcing people to support him in exchange for financial support for their projects? The notion is understood in Russia, if not exactly respected, that heads of theaters, orchestras and other organizations will throw their support behind the government in return for significant funding of their activities.

In the case of Khamatova, however, we are talking about a foundation that cares for sick children whose families could not otherwise pay for treatments. Would Putin pull the plug on Khamatova’s foundation if she did not join his political team?

Clearly, the vast majority of Russian Internet commenters believe so. Here are just a few of the comments following her pro-Putin video:

“A hostage mouths the demands of terrorists.”

“Now I feel truly sad for her. It is obvious this person was forced to say this.”

“Chulpan Khamatova! I bow down before you! May God bless you!”

Not everyone has been so understanding. As reported in Publicpost.ru, Alfred Kokh, the businessman and former deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, insisted that Khamatova knows well the game she has played to win Putin’s support for her foundation.

“The Don asked for a small favor,” Kokh wrote on Facebook in reference to Putin. “You wouldn’t refuse an old friend? No, I’m ready. I know how I am indebted to the Don. Where are the SSers in this? The hostages? If you don’t want to be beholden, don’t go begging. It’s very simple!”

Svetlana Reiter wrote on OpenSpace.ru that she recently overheard conversations of people who knew that Khamatova had no choice but to make the video. Reiter described the talk she heard at a birthday party that took place before the Feb. 4 demonstration on Bolotnaya Ploshchad: “‘Her arms were twisted,’ a low, conspiratorial voice said in one corner. ‘They promised to deprive her foundation of all financial aid and to destroy its reputation,’ were the whispers in another corner. ‘She wept at the filming of the video,’ others insisted.”

Just last week film director Alexander Sokurov warned in the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily that Putin’s campaign committee was playing with fire by mixing film actors and directors up in politics.

“When I recently was urged to join Putin’s campaign,” Sokurov said in the interview, “I kept telling them one thing: Quit pulling the creative community, all these weak souls and weak-nerved people, into your processes. Don’t ask people, because the day will come (a difficult day!) when you will have no one left to appeal to.”

One wonders if that difficult day might come sooner than later. Judging by the response the Khamatova video triggered, the Putin campaign may have metaphorically held a gun to Khamatova’s head, but it shot itself in the foot. Far from this being a coup for the candidate, it has turned into a debacle in which the actress emerged more or less unscathed while Putin looks downright beastly.

These things have a way of going down in history under simple, mythologized headings: “The Actress Who Would Save Children; the Politician Who Would Steal Their Medicine to Gain the Actress’s Support.” I wonder whose side most people will come down on?

Resurrecting Lost Russian Theater in the United States

Theater Plus blog No. 154. Consider this a sequel to the video blog I reposted yesterday – as in that one, almost everything has changed since this one went up nearly six years ago. I, we might say, “I had a job in the great north woods… and one day the axe just fell.” Caryl Emerson, with whom I chat at length here, could say the same thing, perhaps. Since we met in her office at Princeton University, she has retired and gone on to – I hope and trust – bigger and better things. But Caryl is very cool and sharp, and that doesn’t change. She has some great stuff to say about Russian culture and theater and such here. Click on the little picture and give her a listen. 

13 February 2012
By John Freedman

This is what one prominent cable news channel might call “the back story.”

I tell the front story, as it were, in a piece that ran in Monday’s print issue of The Moscow Times — the world premiere this week at Princeton University of a lost adaptation of Alexander Pushkin’s verse novel “Eugene Onegin.”

In order to write that article I talked with Caryl Emerson, a scholar of Russian literature at Princeton who has gotten into the habit over the years of putting the theories of her profession to practical test.

That is, she doesn’t just dig up lost texts, publish them and write about them. When she comes across an old theater project that for some reason never came to fruition, she can’t help but try to rectify that historical injustice.

“Onegin,” scored by Sergei Prokofiev and adapted by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, was supposed to have been staged in 1937 as part of the huge centennial of Pushkin’s death held that year. For various practical reasons having little to do with censorship it was abandoned before it ever reached rehearsals. As Emerson described it to me during a conversation in her office, this was not the classic destruction of a work of art during the Soviet period, but “it was a dissolution nonetheless.”

Enlisting the talents and services of Prokofiev scholar Simon Morrison, conductor Rossen Milanov, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, director Tim Vasen and a cast of student actors, Emerson saw to it that the forgotten work was resurrected.

This is not, however, the first time Emerson, Morrison and Vasen have tackled a project of this nature. In 2007 they mounted a similar project that gave form to another “lost” production — Vsevolod Meyerhold’s planned production of Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov” with a score by Prokofiev.

The music from that unrealized work was not entirely lost, however. According to Emerson, Prokofiev recycled the “Godunov” music “into later symphonies and cantatas” while portions of “Onegin” were incorporated into the composer’s opera of “War and Peace.”

To hear Emerson tell her story about these two scholarly and theatrical projects, watch the video embedded above.

Yale School of Drama Does Russian Theater (2012)

Theater Plus blog No. 153. Another of those tales from long lost worlds. I no longer write blogs or anything else for The Moscow Times; David Chambers no longer teaches at the Yale Drama School. But here we are together in this video blog precisely in those capacities. David had – and still has – very strong ties to Russia. He was one of the biggest reasons why Yale worked with (and continues to work) with Russian artists with some regularity. But he also has a historical interest in Russian theater which he talks about in this video. Give it a look and a listen.

06 February 2012
By John Freedman

It was politics and Bertolt Brecht that brought David Chambers to Russian theater many years ago. As Chambers recalls it now, he could feel the great Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold “looming in the background” as he studied the work of Brecht and began working on his own politically-influenced productions.

The connection with Meyerhold finally happened during a visit to a conference in Montreal in the late 1990s. There Chambers met the Russian pedagogue and scholar Nikolai Pesochinsky and they launched into an ambitious joint project — a reconstruction of Meyerhold’s famous 1926 production of Nikolai Gogol’s “The Inspector General.”

We began to stage what we thought it looked like, and then we built a frame around that,” Chambers told me on Friday in New Haven, CT. The result, he says, was essentially “a production about a production.”

Chambers is a professor of directing at the Yale School of Drama and his connection to Russia and Russian theater now runs deep personally as well as professionally.

I found myself feeling very comfortable in Russia,” he said. “I feel very connected to the place.”

In addition to adopting a son from a small city outside Yekaterinburg, Chambers has actively continued to develop a working relationship with Russia and Russian theater. He has been a participant or catalyst in several projects bringing Russian and American theater cultures together.

These have included, among others, Kama Ginkas’s world-premiere production of “Rothschild’s Fiddle” at the Yale Repertory Theater in 2004; several trips to St. Petersburg and Moscow to study the legacy of the influential Russian directors and teachers Georgy Tovstonogov, Maria Knebel, Anatoly Efros and Lev Dodin; and a joint program with Moscow’s Playwright and Director Center that began last year.

A group from the Center — including director Marat Gatsalov and playwright Nina Belenitskaya — visited Yale last spring. That was followed by a trip to Moscow involving a group of young playwrights currently studying at the Yale School of Drama. Their works were translated into Russian and given staged readings of varying sophistication during a public workshop in early summer.

It was “one of the most valuable new play experiences” Chambers had ever had. He explained that the American writers were “challenged, thrilled, excited and frustrated” by the encounter and that it was a profound learning experience for them.

Accustomed by their own national tradition to having significant control over the staging of their works, the American playwrights were surprised to find that in Moscow they not only were not invited to attend rehearsals, they were not allowed to be present. Thus, when they witnessed the staged readings along with packed houses of spectators at the Playwright and Director Center, they were amazed at what they saw. In some cases that meant they were exhilarated by what directors revealed in their work; in others it meant they were horrified to see how they had been misinterpreted.

As Chambers describes it now, these directorial interpretations were “thrilling, quite different from what American interpretations had been.”

The experience had an immediate effect on Chambers’ work at Yale.

We brought some ideas back and have remodeled the first-year playwright and directing laboratory on the experience,” he explained.

To hear these and many more comments that Chambers shared with me during a chat in his office at Yale, watch the video above.

Melnikov Brings Chekhov to Life on Screen

Theater Plus blog No. 152. The following text speaks for itself. I’ll only add that it is a crying shame that this film, like so many other worthwhile films in Russia in the last 20+ years, pretty much fell through the cracks. There were problems with distributors, with others, – I don’t know the story, really. I just know that a wonderful film, made with talent, humor and insight, did not reach the audience it should have. I snapped the shot above of Vitaly Melnikov and Kirill Pirogov sharing a conversation after the St. Petersburg premiere of Melnikov’s film, “The Admirer.”

30 January 2012
By John Freedman

Perhaps I am too close to today’s topic to be believed. You are hereby forewarned that I attended the premiere of Vitaly Melnikov’s new movie “The Admirer” in St. Petersburg last week not as a reporter for The Moscow Times, but as the husband of actress Oksana Mysina.

The reporter, however, rarely lags far behind the husband.

Still, my point here is not to write about Oksana’s hilarious — I can say that much, can’t I? — performance of an extravagant decadent poetess, who repeatedly badgers the great writer Anton Chekhov at the most inopportune times. I rather mean to talk about Melnikov’s beautiful, atmospheric film that brings to the screen one of the most believable, convincing screen portrayals of Chekhov that I have ever seen.

“The Admirer” (which could also be translated as “The Lady Admirer” — Poklonnitsa in Russian) focuses on Chekhov through the eyes of a woman named Lidia Avilova. She was the author of some stories published in the popular press at the end of the 19th century and is often mentioned as one of Chekhov’s many love interests. There are hefty scholarly debates about how close Avilova really was to Chekhov and how reliable her memories are of what transpired between them.

Melnikov, who based his screenplay on writings by Avilova, Chekhov and the writer Ivan Bunin, isn’t the least interested in any of that. He immediately waves off anyone’s attempt to pin him down to historical accuracy (as if that could be an absolute) by beginning his film with an epigraph drawn from Avilova’s words: “These are not reminiscences. They are dreams. Dreams of my life.”

“The Admirer” is a subtle, quiet, though remarkably tense film about the gray areas of life in general, and, specifically, of the lives of two people whom fate brought together for a short time. As one St. Petersburg critic wrote, the film “reveals the beauty of understatement, of restraint, of self-sacrifice — after all, it is a film about a love affair that, essentially, never happened.”

A film about a love affair that never happened. Now, doesn’t that sound Chekhovian?

Following the screening I had the distinctly humorous opportunity to overhear an exchange between a photographer and Kirill Pirogov, the actor who plays Chekhov in the film.

“You are the spitting image of Chekhov,” the photographer stated admiringly.

“Oh no,” replied Pirogov.

“You look exactly like him!”

“No, we don’t look anything alike.”

“I don’t mean physically, necessarily,” the photographer responded, changing tactics.

“No, no. I am nothing like Chekhov at all,” Pirogov insisted.

“But you are, on screen, I mean,” the photographer tried one last time.

“Oh, no. There is nothing common whatsoever between Chekhov and me,” the actor stated flatly, effectively killing the conversation.

Be that as it may, Pirogov provided a rich, convincing, living image of Chekhov. He did so by playing virtually nothing. He eschews physical mannerisms and never strikes poses he could have imitated from famous photographs. He rarely wears the famous pince nez. But Pirogov’s interpretation of Chekhov surely approximates the original in much deeper ways.

Pirogov’s Chekhov is a listener. He is protective of his privacy. He is utterly modest about his accomplishments and fully aware of what he does well. When he speaks or acts, he does so with conviction and reason. He is so uninterested in pomp, ceremony and flattery that he merely turns and walks away from it — it isn’t worth the energy he would have to expend to condemn it. He is instantly aware when something, or someone, of interest has appeared. And he responds to that simply and openly. He has a sharp eye and a keen ear. He has a quick, analytical mind — which we usually see through the actor’s eyes. His character is reserved and contained, but complex and adaptable.

I’m talking about an actor’s interpretation of a beloved historical figure in a cinematic setting. But anyone who has admired Anton Chekhov will surely recognize some of their own impressions of the man in the descriptions I have given of Pirogov’s performance. It is a performance that has the almost magical ability to make us feel we intimately know a human being we cannot possibly know.

Avilova, played with grace and depth by Svetlana Ivanova, is something of a collective portrait of the understanding and sensitive individual every artist would probably love to have as an admirer. Writers often talk of one or two “readers” whom they write for – an ideal reader, as it were.

This is how Melnikov imagines Avilova. She makes no claims on Chekhov personally or professionally. She, indeed, appreciates Chekhov for what he does and who he is. For her that is all one and the same. In her mind it would be silly to talk of the author as if the man did not exist, just as it would be wrong to speak of the man without taking into account his accomplishments as a writer.

Since Avilova is married and the mother of two children when she meets Chekhov, there is never any real question of her acting upon her attraction. This was the 19th century, after all. Avilova and Chekhov do exchange “private” names — they call each other Egyptians — and there is one moment when Chekhov’s lips brush her cheek. But the considerable erotic tension of “The Admirer” is borne entirely in words, intonations, thoughts, glances and the most chaste of actions.

“The Admirer” is also a love letter to St. Petersburg. Melnikov is one of the great directors to have been based in that city since the early 1960s. Unlike many of his films, which have been recognized as classics, Melnikov himself has stubbornly remained in the shadow of his work. Every Russian knows and loves films such as “The Boss of Chukotka” (1966), “Seven Brides for Private Zbruyev” (1970) and “The Elder Son” (1975), although they may not know who made them.

Many of his films, such as “The Tsar’s Hunt,” “Poor, Poor Pavel” and “The Admirer” are primarily set in St. Petersburg. In “The Admirer” Melnikov, his directors of cinematography Sergei Astakhov and Stepan Kovalenko, and his designer Alexander Zagoskin provide long, loving panoramas of the city under gray skies and in streets buried under snow. The Neva River, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Savior on the Blood cathedral and the famous Bronze Horseman monument to Peter the Great appear in the film alongside “anonymous” street scenes that show the so-called Northern Capital at its most romantic and beautiful. The city rightfully becomes an additional character in the film.

I was particularly impressed with one scene at a winter fair during which Chekhov and Avilova take a short, bumpy sleigh ride down a snowy hill. The snow is thick and realistic and a bit dirty, like any snow gets when people are around. This is no cinematic whitewash, no soap-suds fakery. Everything throughout this film has the same touch of believability and authenticity.

I told Melnikov I thought his film was a love letter to his hometown, but he corrected me.

“I am not even from St. Petersburg,” he said smiling. “I am from Siberia.”

Nonetheless, that doesn’t negate my observation. Wherever Melnikov was born and grew up, his vision of St. Petersburg in “The Admirer” is breathtaking and offered with obvious love.

Melnikov said the film is being purchased by distributors in Russia “relatively well.” A Moscow premiere is scheduled for March and the film will begin a run at least in St. Petersburg theaters that same month. According to producer Olga Agrafenina, several foreign film festivals have expressed interest in the film.

If you’re at all interested in Anton Chekhov, Russian literature or Russian culture in general, my biased opinion is that you won’t want to miss “The Admirer” when it comes, as they say, to a theater near you.

A Playwright for Putin (2012)

Theater Plus blog No. 151. This was a shocker – sort of. I say that and I think of how strange a Bob Dylan line has always sounded to me – “Look into my heart and you will sort of understand” (“Thunder on the Mountain”). You’d think, you either do or you do not understand in a situation like this (peering into someone’s heart). But, no, life’s more complex than that. And, now, maybe, I (sort of) get that line for the first time. Because I have to write that this story involving Nikolai Kolyada sort of shocked me. I mean, it came out of the blue like a UFO, I wouldn’t have expected it in a million years. Kolyada, the forward-thinking, forward-doing director, playwright, theater-maker, turning on a dime and taping a campaign video for Vladimir Putin? It was pretty gross. Just a few weeks before Kolyada had been openly supporting Mikhail Prokhorov for president. Then, he started to think who butters his bread and he went all-fours-up. It caused a lot of (temporary) breaks with the great man (I mean the playwright). A lot of folks wrote him off. I kinda (sort of) crossed him off my list of interesting people. This was just too much of a cheap shot. Interesting people don’t take cheap shots like this, do they? Well, see, that’s just the thing. You back up a few steps, take a few days or months to think, and you begin to realize that all this stuff is murkier than you want it to be. As time went on, Kolyada’s flabby-ass public genuflection before Putin for a few million rubles (a pittance) sort of, kind of, seemed to fade into the realm of “who cares?” and everything this guy has done for 30 years just kept standing there like a monument. And at a certain point you say, screw it. Give the guy a break. After all he’s done? Give him a break. Give him one really stupid, disgusting, cheap-ass move. And for all the thousands of great deeds he’s done – give him credit for those, too. So, indeed, I peer into his heart and I sort of understand… I pulled the photo above from Kolyada’s website. 

24 January 2012
By John Freedman

It surely has been one of the strangest developments since the popular movement protesting the alleged falsification of elections took hold in Russia in early December.

Over the New Year holidays Nikolai Kolyada, one of the nation’s most respected playwrights, directors and theatrical visionaries, joined Prime Minister Vladimir Putin‘s presidential campaign in Yekaterinburg. It brought forth a flurry of cries, accusations, counter-accusations and even a bit of petty vandalism that has horrified Russia’s theater community over the last two weeks.

Along with other Yekaterinburg luminaries, including Alexander Pantykin, a rock musician, and Anatoly Marchevsky, the director of the city’s circus, Kolyada agreed to be a member of Putin’s so-called “People’s Headquarters.”

“I joined Putin’s election campaign because I believe we cannot find a better leader. I will vote for him; that is my opinion and my right. All others on offer seem absolutely unworthy to assume such a position,” Kolyada said, RIA-Novosti reported.

Reactions came swiftly. So virulent were the attacks on Kolyada on his LiveJournal page that he temporarily closed it down.

On the morning of Jan. 13 Kolyada found that his theater had been plastered with photographs of Putin with lipstick traces all over his forehead. Expressing fears for his own safety and that of his company, Kolyada called on the police and city prosecutor to find the culprits and ward off further attacks.

Four days later the vandals came forward themselves. Vyacheslav Bashkov, a member of “Movement Against Violence” explained why his organization carried out the midnight raid.

“Unlike other members of Putin’s support group, Kolyada, until the very last moment before he joined them, had been an authority figure for this city, for the Oblast and the country,” Bashkov said. “No one expected him to do something like this. Society is extremely disappointed; that is one of the reasons.”

More fallout came when Pavel Rudnev, a longtime colleague and collaborator of Kolyada’s in many projects—not the least of which was the playwright’s prestigious Eurasia play competition—openly broke ranks with him.

This occurred on Wednesday after Kolyada posted a television news clip on his LiveJournal page showing Russian opposition politicians visiting the American embassy in Moscow for a meeting with new ambassador Michael McFaul. The event was seized on by many in the blogosphere as proof, or, at least, a suggestion, that the Russian opposition is taking orders from the U.S. government.

“Nikolai Kolyada posted the already well-known news report of opposition leaders arriving at the American embassy,” Rudnev wrote on LiveJournal. “The propagandists from NTV claim the opposition leaders went there to receive instructions, but there is not the slightest proof of that fact in the news report. Kolyada’s comment was, ‘What horror and shamelessness.’

“I commented, ‘I also go the American embassy. Is that horror and shamelessness, too?’

“Nikolai Kolyada, without saying a word, erased my commentary and blocked me.”

“Considering the history of our relationship and taking into account the political events of recent days, I am compelled to declare that I am resigning from the jury of the Eurasia play contest, where I have worked for many, many years.

“Nikolai Kolyada now has other friends,” Rudnev concluded.

It is worth noting that the copious comments on Rudnev’s post almost invariably express regret, rather than anger, over what has transpired.

Many have expressed support for the playwright. The company of the New Art Theater in Chelyabinsk publically declared on Wednesday that they stand firmly behind Kolyada. Their statement said, “We are deeply upset by exhibits of political and human intolerance that have arisen around your position.”

During a live radio appearance on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio in Yekaterinburg the same day, the station’s program director Konstantin Von Stein posted the news on his Facebook page that “almost all listeners are supporting Kolyada.”

Appearing on a television talk show (see the video posted above) a visibly exasperated Kolyada explained why he chose to support Putin’s candidacy.

“I don’t want to wake up March 5 in another country,” he said.

When asked why he had soured on presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, Kolyada admitted he had supported him six months ago but declared he had “fallen out of love” with him.

“My current life suits me,” Kolyada said.

But a series of quotes posted Jan. 12 on a blog on website Grani.ru clearly imply that Kolyada’s support for Putin may have come about because he received a government grant last year to move his theater into a new home.

Kolyada is quoted as saying, “Russia needs a firm hand, a firm hand like that of Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]… Under the circumstances I don’t think we need renewal. Putin — watch the television — travels and gets around and talks. He delves into everything, he sticks it to everyone, he behaves like a boss, he slams the table with his fist…

“You know, we won that tender [a 5 million ruble grant from the governor of Sverdlovsk region — note by Grani.ru editor] entirely honestly. But I thought, ‘Kolyada, they’re giving you five million, the government is giving you a building for your theater, they do something else for you, and you’re going to be in the opposition?'”

Kolyada attempted to put the controversy behind him with a video blog published Wednesday, in which he speaks at length about all the new shows and rehearsals going on at his theater. But one senses this event will not be brushed aside so easily.

A Critic’s Back Pages, Part Three (2012)

Theater Plus blog No. 150. Another memory piece written the year of The Moscow Times’ 20th anniversary. Paul Barz’s “The Possible Meeting” at the Moscow Art Theater was a feast of grand, Russian acting. This couldn’t happen these days. And if it did, nobody would notice or care. That may be progress, I don’t know. But my memories of seeing Innokenty Smoktunovsky and Oleg Yefremov burn down the house on Kamergersky Lane remain among my strongest and most long-lasting as a critic. Above: My 1992 review of “The Possible Meeting” at the Moscow Art Theater.

16 January 2012
By John Freedman

As I have already had reason to say in this space, this season marks the 20th anniversary since I began reporting on theater for The Moscow Times and its precursor, The Moscow Guardian. That event has twice sent me to my back pages to recall bits and pieces of ancient history – my memories of my first review for the Moscow Guardian and some thoughts on the nature of Moscow theater in the early 1990s prompted by an early Moscow Times review of a show called “The Gamblers – 21st Century.”

Today I again return to the early 1990s and an encounter with two of Russia’s greatest actors of the second half of the 20th century – Innokenty Smoktunovsky and Oleg Yefremov. This, I hasten to add, was a purely professional encounter. The year was 1992 and I was seated comfortably among spectators at the Moscow Art Theater while Smoktunovsky and Yefremov performed in Vyacheslav Dolgachyov’s production of “The Possible Meeting,” a comedy composed by German writer and journalist Paul Barz about an imaginary meeting between the great composers and rivals Handel and Mozart.

If theater can be champagne, this show was ten cases of it. I still stand by the gushing final paragraph of my review: “There’s no need underestimating what is at stake in this exhilarating performance. Like the characters they play, the two great actors are locked in a sparring match. It is a battle from which everyone emerges a winner. It takes a genius to play one and this performance gives us two at once! Bravo!”

Yes, indeed!

As I trace my memory in search of similar theatrical one-two punches I have experienced, I only come up with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in “The Gin Game,” a touring production of which I saw in Leningrad in 1979. Never have I seen petty bickering and trivial skullduggery performed with such gusto and consequence as it was by these two acting duos.

Smoktunovsky, who died in 1994, less than two years after the premiere of “A Possible Meeting,” was famous for his love of self. He once memorably claimed that his director Grigory Kozintsev in the legendary Russian film version of “Hamlet” was a no-count amateur and that whatever success the film had was thanks to his – Smoktunovsky’s – heroic performance of the title role.

One of my favorite memories is of seeing Smoktunovsky enter the stage door at the Art Theater one day. I happened to be walking by on Kamergersky Pereulok, the lane on which the theater stands, and I saw him approaching. So beautiful was his carriage and so compelling his presence, I stopped and watched him after he passed. Walking slowly, rather like a school child playing hooky, he stopped in front of every portrait he could find of himself on the Art Theater walls. He stood before each, contemplating his own likeness with love and affection. It was a beautiful scene and I’ll never forget it.

Smoktunovsky was an actor of boundless grace and elegance who possessed an innate understanding of understated gesture and speech. At his best his work was seamless. Everything about him was soft, rounded and polished. He moved like a cat, employing speed and lethargy in equal parts and always at the right moments.

It goes without saying that Smoktunovsky played Mozart in “The Possible Meeting.” There never was any doubt that the actor considered himself anything less than perfect for the role of one of the greatest geniuses the world has known. His performance was an exercise in supreme self-admiration and self-adoration, and it fit to perfection. Smoktunovsky oozed genius while always leaving just enough room to have laughs at himself and the character he was performing.

Yefremov’s Handel was cranky and cantankerous and no less aware of his prodigious talents than his opponent. But what perhaps was most striking of all was his extreme generosity on stage.

Yefremov and Smoktunovsky each had reason to consider himself the finest, maybe the most beloved, actor of his age. This naturally made them competitors. As actors at the Moscow Art Theater (where Yefremov was artistic director from 1970 until his death in 2000), they were colleagues. In “The Possible Meeting” they were both competitors and colleagues, and each performed knowing that well.

But it was Yefremov who repeatedly backed off to let Smoktunovsky shine. Playing a character who was as abrasive as sandpaper, Yefremov-the-actor never tried to play one-upmanship with his partner. As he groused and grumbled in character as Handel, you could see the actor underneath delighting in Smoktunovsky’s soaring flights of acting prowess. For every jesting thrust Smoktunovsky sent his way, Yefremov parried easily. And then he would stand back as if to say, “My, my! Isn’t that Smoktunovsky something! A bit over the top, perhaps, but, damn, he’s good!”

I’ll tell you what: They both were.

Remembering Vadim Levanov

Theater Plus blog No. 149. The death of Vadim Levanov at the end of 2011 took us all by surprise, although everyone knew he was extremely sick and that the treatment was not doing what it should. Still, losing someone like this in the prime of his life was a monstrous blow. Vadim’s colleagues have since honored him with an annual new play festival in Samara that is named after him. We’re all still waiting for theaters to catch up with those unproduced plays he left us. I took the photos of Vadim Levanov above and below at Winzavod following the premiere of his “Gerontophobia” in May 2011.

07 January 2012
By John Freedman

We will have reason to remember Vadim Levanov for years to come. For starters I will write about him again in March when his play “Ksenia of St. Petersburg” premieres at the National Youth Theater. Another production of that play is still drawing crowds at the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, as is his modern adaptation of “Hamlet” at the same theater.

Levanov, who, according to his friend Zhenya Berkovich, wanted to outlive Anton Chekhov, died in the early morning hours of Dec. 25, 2011. Chekhov lived 44 years and 6 months, Levanov — 44 years and 10 months, the victim of prostate cancer. After undergoing treatment in Israel and Moscow throughout the fall, the writer died in his hometown of Tolyatti.

Levanov will always be associated with what has come to be known as the “Tolyatti phenomenon.” In fact, he created it virtually single-handed.

In the late 1990s he was asked to assume control of the so-called May Readings, an obscure annual poetry festival held each spring in Tolyatti, and to breathe life back into it. He agreed on the condition that he be allowed to change its focus to drama. Within half a decade he had transformed it into a national event. Not only did his own plays attract attention, but a small group of talented local writers came together around him, each writing plays of significance. These included Yury Klavdiyev and the brothers Vyacheslav and Mikhail Durnenkov. All have gone on to gain international reputations.

I first met Levanov properly at May Readings in 2006. It was a homespun affair held in a rundown old library located at Ulitsa Golosova 20. That’s how everybody talked about the location – “Is today’s event at Golosova 20?” “Will you be at Golosova 20 tonight?” Readings of plays by the Durnenkovs, Klavdiyev, Levanov and many others were held in two small halls filled with crowds consisting of locals and visitors from abroad.

Levanov, who had walked with a cane since an accident in his 20s, attended most, if not all, of the events. But he spent the bulk of his time seated in a corner in a back room telling and listening to tall tales around a splintered coffee table laden with used tea bags, partially eaten cookies and glasses half full of cognac or vodka.

The first thing that struck me as I chatted with Vadim informally was his modesty. He had a wry smile that always seemed to suggest things could be much better than they were, but maybe they weren’t as bad as they might be. And that, his smile and eyes suggested, meant things were pretty good, all things considered.

Soft-spoken and disinclined to make grand statements, he wasn’t much interested in telling me how May Readings had turned into an important event on the Russian theater calendar. He pretty much shrugged his shoulders and indicated that it had happened on its own.

I got different stories from the writers whose lives he had changed. Mikhail Durnenkov and Klavdiyev both spoke affectionately and with great respect about how much Levanov meant to them. The younger local writers spoke of Levanov with downright reverence.

A sign of Levanov’s character is the way he responded to the success that came quickly to his “pupils.” He never betrayed the slightest jealousy when the Durnenkovs and Klavdiyev were staged throughout Russia and translated and produced abroad while his own professional achievements remained modest. On the contrary, he was invariably ready and willing to talk about his friends’ latest plays and productions, and to share in celebrations of their triumphs. And when his own plays became hits – Valery Fokin’s production of “Ksenia of St. Petersburg” at the Alexandrinsky was nominated for a Golden Mask award in 2010 – you would never have known it by his behavior or attitude.

No matter what the situation Levanov always had the air of someone who looked down on everything – success, failure and everything in between – from a vantage point where most things appeared to be equal.

Levanov was a fixture at the Lyubimovka young play festival in Moscow each fall. In recent years his bad leg tended to confine him to a wheel chair, no easy thing to deal with in Russia. But he had a way of making his disability seem like he was privileged. His wheel chair was like a working man’s throne, around which everyone gathered eagerly.

The last time I met Levanov was at the end of May in 2011. The May Readings festival by then had been consigned to history, its huge success in the first decade of the century having caused its downfall as writers like Mikhail Durnenkov and Yury Klavdiyev migrated to Moscow and St. Petersburg, respectively. Levanov was in Moscow in May for the opener of his play “Gerontophobia,” which was staged by Zhenya Berkovich at the Winzavod complex.

After the first show was over we stood together in a dark corridor and made small talk, most of it about the eerie beauty of the space in which we were located – an old wine cellar deep beneath the surface of the earth. Vadim was impressed by the fact that the cellar, according to tile figures encrusted in the walls high above us, was built in 1856.

“This was here four years before the serfs were freed,” Vadim said quietly.

As always, he was on an even keel emotionally, especially for someone who had just witnessed the performance of his newest play. And, as always, we chatted about the Durnenkovs and Klavdiyev and what they were up to. But that was Vadim, taking things in stride.

About this time we learned that Levanov was ill. Berkovich mounted a campaign that in a short period raised over $80,000 internationally for his treatment. I mention this because of the extraordinary response that came from all over the world, from people who loved and respected Vadim and considered themselves his friends.

The last time I talked to Levanov was by Skype. It was in June and he was in the hospital in Tolyatti undergoing tests. We had agreed he would call me at a certain time, but he had not yet done so. I saw he was online and so I dialed him first. It turned out that his father was in his room and they were still visiting. I apologized and told them to go on with their chat, but Levanov, Sr. politely said, no, he was on his way out. I told him he had a lot of people pulling for his son. Showing me a familiar low-key smile, he wished me well and left the room. Vadim curled up comfortably on his hospital bed and we talked about his life and his work.

As ever he was self-effacing and forgetful of facts and numbers. And there was that look in his eyes again that none of this was really important. All of this – our talk and the reasons for it, the premiere of “Gerontophobia” – were a pleasant distraction, but probably not much more than that. It was the same down-to-earth Vadim Levanov I had met five years earlier at Golosova 20.

It might be that Levanov was already coming to terms with the illness that would kill him in half a year’s time. But as I think back on that now I’m inclined to think it was more than that. From the first day I met him to the last time I talked to him I was impressed by Vadim Levanov’s directness and his sincerity. He had what Russians admiringly call “prostota” – simplicity. He never put on airs, and he was always at home with himself. That drew people to him, it inspired them with confidence and it allowed him to have insight into what makes people tick.

According to Pavel Rudnev’s beautiful remembrance of Levanov, published in numerous sources, Levanov’s last words were “there are no angels beside me.” Memorable words, those. They surely will go down in the register of famous Russian literary death bed phrases, alongside Chekhov’s “I haven’t had champagne in a long time.” But I can’t help but agree with Rudnev, who added: “If there were no angels beside him, then they don’t exist at all.”

Many of Levanov’s two dozen plays have yet to be staged, and some, like “The Bloody Noblewomаn Darya Saltykova,” an unflinching look at a mass murderer in the 18th century, have intrigued directors for years. “Ksenia of St. Petersburg” remains the writer’s chief calling card at present, but I would not be surprised to see several more of his plays making their way onto stages in the near future. We were only just getting to know Vadim Levanov when he left us.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year! (2011)

Theater Plus blog No. 148. It’s six years down the road, but the timing of this repost comes up pretty well. Happy Holidays to all!

27 December 2011
By John Freedman

What is the end of the year to a theater critic? Hibernation time and little else.

Although you do get a few musical theaters running “The Nutcracker” here during the expanded Yuletide season, it’s nothing like the way it’s done in the United States. In fact, as far as I can tell, theaters that do “The Nutcracker” here do it primarily to pull in foreigners.

Some theaters open new shows at the end of the year, but by and large by the 23rd or 24th of December the flow of new shows stops. And it won’t pick up again until mid-January.

If you’re new to Russia, you may not yet know that this country blissfully begins drifting into a haze of reverie around the time of what is locally known as “Catholic Christmas.” That lovely state of suspension and disconnection lasts through what is called the Old New Year on Jan. 14.

I once lived for a half a year in France and was astonished to see Paris go absolutely empty for the month of August. It was like living in one of the old ghost towns in Southern California where I grew up — nothing but skittish rabbits, broken-down fences, gusts of wind and tumbling tumbleweeds.

Well, Moscow is like that from about Dec. 24 to Jan. 14. Don’t talk to me about productivity statistics, please! My colleagues and I have worked hard enough. We have put out enough product over the last year, and we enjoy our opportunity to collapse exhausted into a chair, whether it is soft or not.

Ay, but there is the rub, as one old writer occasionally put it.

In fact, there are people here who work like maniacs during the holiday season. For the most part these are young people, often students, although that is not a hard and fast rule. Also, for the most part, these are actors, or at least people who imagine, or imagined, themselves as being actors one day.

The job they do is important and in high demand — they play Father Frost and Snow Queen for New Year’s parties, Christmas parties, school parties, office parties, family get-togethers, wintertime pageants, and that revered staple of the New Year season — the “yolka.”

Now, “yolka” means a pine tree, or, in the proper context, a New Years tree. You may call it a Christmas tree. But, by association, “yolka” is also a party that — at least metaphorically — is held around the holiday tree.

Thus we have that most frequent of phrases heard among young actors as the year comes to an end: “Are you working any yolkas?”

I know a husband and wife pair who worked a commercially-staged yolka that ran for the whole holiday season. They were on stilts and they performed 12 hours a day with 15 minute breaks between shows. When the Old New Year arrived, they ended up in the hospital from exhaustion.

Father Frosts and Snow Queens tend to work on a “smaller” scale. I put “smaller” in quotes because I have known people to work 18 to 20 hours a day for three weeks straight during this time of year, racing from party to party, putting in appearances by contract and schedule at events in apartments, offices and community centers scattered all over Moscow and the Moscow suburban area. I have known Father Frosts and their trusty Snow Queens to fall asleep on the metro, not only missing their stop, but missing their next appointment. I have known Father Frosts finally to just give it up and go home and crash, appointments be damned.

This is not, I may add, the best way to run a business (and a business it is, believe me). When you have a household full of children waiting for Father Frost to show up with his silver-and-blue-adorned sidekick and no knock ever comes on the door, things can get complicated. Children tend to cry. Parents tend to threaten. If you’re planning on playing Father Frost and Snow Queen this year, you may want to get a separate phone number to use for these few weeks exclusively. That way nobody can track you down later if you burn out somewhere between the Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo and Bulvar Admirala Ushakova metro stops and don’t make it to your next gig.

I mentioned the word “business.” That fact of the matter is that many young actors actually make so much money during the three weeks of the year-end holidays that they can support themselves for most of the entire following year.

That is in principle, of course. That might be true for someone who knows how to create and faithfully observe a budget.

Ay, but there’s that rub again. You just watch. Starting around mid-January, keep an eye on the crowds in Moscow’s restaurants and coffee shops. My bet is you’ll see them packed with kids blowing a year’s budget earned over the New Year on cappuccino, cheese cake and good company. I don’t know as I can blame them.

Happy New Year to them all!

An Actor on the Political Stage

Theater Plus blog No. 147. When I wrote this blog Alexei Devotchenko had just under three years left to live. He was one of the most politically outspoken members of the theater community, something that got him in a lot of hot water and also earned him the deep respect of many. He was a talented actor who always went his own way, no matter that that meant for himself and others. He is missed in Russia’s gray Putin-era stagnation. Pictured above is the program for Alexei Devotchenko’s peformance of “Farewell Waltz.” 

15 December 2011
By John Freedman

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin‘s televised talk on Thursday — billed as “A Continuation of the Conversation” — had hardly begun when actor Alexei Devotchenko sent out a salvo on Facebook, indicating he was following the event on Echo Moskvy radio.

“On Echo they’re saying that the vast majority among the police are on the side of the people,” Devotchenko wrote. “How about arresting Putin right in the middle of today’s ‘live broadcast,’ right in the middle of his, so to speak, ‘continuation of the conversation’?”

Not everything Devotchenko writes on Facebook, or says in public, can be printed in a newspaper. He has emerged as, arguably, the most outspoken political commentator in the world of theater and film. His is an angry, strident voice that often resorts to the riches of Russian obscenities to bring his exhortations home.

That is not to say that his arguments lack coherence or intelligence. Devotchenko frequently expresses himself with force and clear thinking in interviews, open letters and in popular blog posts on Live Journal, the Echo Moskvy website and elsewhere.

Hailing from St. Petersburg, Devotchenko was at the forefront of a loose public movement attacking Valentina Matviyenko for corruption and a lax attitude to residents’ needs during her term as St. Petersburg governor. The actor’s commentary of Matviyenko’s inability to clean the city of dangerous snow and ice was especially caustic and memorable. Eventually the governor resigned and moved to Moscow, where, with the aid of her friend and benefactor Putin, she was appointed Chair of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation.

There were no signs that this “victory” gave Devotchenko reason to ease up his public appeals, however. On the contrary, having relocated to Moscow himself, he redoubled his efforts to speak out against Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev.

Most recently, at the end of November, he relinquished all the state awards he has accumulated over his career, including two State Prizes and the status award known as Honorary Actor of the Russian Federation.

“I no longer want to carry the proud rank of ‘Honored Actor of the RF,’ received from the hands of Valentina Ivanovna Matviyenko,” he wrote on his blog, as reported by Pravda.ru. “Fortunately I didn’t receive this knickknack from her personally, because that day I fled to the country. It was given to me later. I do not want to be a two-time laureate of the State Prize of the RF, received from the hands of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. True, this was during his previous accession to the throne. Shameful.”

Equally as important, the actor brings his convictions to his art.

In Kama Ginkas’s production of “The Diary of a Madman” at the Theater Yunogo Zritelya in Moscow, Devotchenko incorporates strokes of political commentary as he plays a man who is hounded by society and his own demons, and who grows more belligerent as his grip on sanity increasingly eludes him. A scene of him slapping photos of Medvedev, pop stars Fillip Kirkorov and Alla Pugachyova on a wall alongside his own portrait is loaded with poison irony.

Devotchenko also carries his message in a one-man show called “Farewell Waltz,” directed by Vladimir Mikhelson, that he has performed for the last six months on various stages around Russia. This is a piece cobbled together out of poetry written by Nobel Prize winning poet Joseph Brodsky. But it begins and ends with recordings of historical broadcasts that frame everything in between in a political light.

In the opening moments the actor sits almost motionless as he listens to a radio account of a Brezhnev-era Communist Party Congress in which the reporter assures us that every word spoken was greeted by “sustained, stormy applause.” Devotchenko’s responses are slight but expressive and are met with “stormy” laughter among the audience — eyes suddenly opening wide, fingers abruptly turning downward, a quick, doubting movement of the head to the side. As minimal as Devotchenko’s responses are, his actions are eloquent and bitterly satirical.

Ninety minutes later the show ends with a recording of Putin announcing the formation of his now-notorious People’s Front to further his political endeavors. But this time, like a broken record, the Prime Minister’s words cannot move past the phrase, “all political forces must be equal, United Russia, trade unions and youth organizations…” The words are repeated over and over again perhaps a dozen times as the actor finally loses patience and disappears from the stage to laughter and applause.

In fact, the performance of “Farewell Waltz” has a minimum of politics at its core. Instead, Devotchenko uses Brodsky’s works to paint the picture of a person alone in society, one who is constantly at the mercy of the social machine. We are introduced to simple people who have been lost to their friends and themselves, or ground under by the complexities of life. They live normal lives colored with life’s usual little tragedies.

Yet politics is never far from the surface, no matter what the topic of a given scene. And some of the biggest laughter of the evening is reserved for a tale about a family that suddenly finds itself arguing incoherently about the meaning of Vladimir Lenin in their lives. The poet-observer, played by Devotchenko, is utterly baffled by this development until he one day visits the toilet and finds that in place of toilet paper, the family has been using pages from Lenin’s complete works to maintain their hygiene. Each of them, as a result, has read some quote that no one else in the family will ever see — that page is now lost to the city’s sewage system.

A Timeline of Recent Politics and Culture in Moscow (2011)

Theater Plus blog No. 146. I think this was one of my most valuable blogs. It put a year-and-a-half of political/cultural events into perspective. It makes fascinating reading even now, at least for me. This short text paints a clear picture of the nascent protest movement. Of course we didn’t know then that there were just 6 months left before the hammer would come down. But that only makes the information here more valuable. The photo above was taken by my friend and colleague Maya Mamaladze. It shows the playwrights Maksym Kurochkin and Alexander Rodionov as they chant “Russia without Putin” at a political rally in Moscow in December 2011.

11 December 2011
By John Freedman

Life and the world will return to something resembling normalcy at some point. But at present, life in Moscow — and that includes the life of culture — is swept up in the fervor caused by disputed elections on Dec. 4 and amplified by subsequent protests Dec. 5 and Saturday.

Over the last 18 months I have written much in articles and blogs about the interweaving of politics and arts. At times I have wondered if I have overdone it. Events of the last week indicate I did not.

As one hears phrases like “revolution,” “the end of the Putin era” and “the reawakening of Russia” virtually on every street corner, it seems to be the perfect time to apply some historical perspective. I have compiled a chronology of events where politics and culture found themselves sharing common ground. This timeline is by no means exhaustive. It does, however, suggest how seemingly unconnected events may give rise to political movement. Not surprisingly, perhaps, satire, humor and blunders played a subtle, though important role in this development.

One more caveat — it should not be thought that everyone in the world of culture has risen and has joined the crowds. Many prominent figures have been conspicuously silent throughout this period; others have supported the powers-that-be. Prior to Saturday’s demonstration pop star Sergei Lazarev declared that he was not against United Russia, President Dmitry Medvedev or Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, but that he was against “disorder and anarchy.”

Be that as it may, my list begins with an event that I believe signaled the resurgence of intelligent dissent like no other.

May 29, 2010 — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hosts a meeting with artists in St. Petersburg. Unexpectedly, rock musician Yury Shevchuk asks the prime minister what his thoughts are on the erosion of freedom in the press. Shevchuk’s chat with Putin is criticized by some as presumptuous; others are impressed that a citizen dared challenge authority.

May 30, 2010 — In a widely discussed video interview, actress Liya Akhedzhakova, who attended meeting with Putin the day before, publicly regrets that she failed to support Shevchuk.

June 4, 2010 — Yelena Gremina’s play “One Hour Eighteen,” based on events surrounding the death of attorney Sergei Magnitsky in prison on Nov. 16, 2009, premieres at Teatr.doc.

Sept. 14, 2010 — Premiere of Vladimir Pankov’s production of Yury Klavdiyev’s “I Am the Machine Gunner,” which completely rethinks this play about a modern gang member and his grandfather’s stories of World War II as a rollicking contemporary political satire.

Nov. 25, 2010 — Accepting the Vlad Listyev award for journalism, popular television journalist Leonid Parfyonov stands up before a shocked, skeptical audience of tuxedoed peers to warn against increasing attacks on freedom of the press.

Dec. 10, 2010 — At a benefit dinner boasting the presence of Sharon Stone, Kevin Costner, Monica Belluci, Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell and other western stars, Prime Minister Putin plays the piano and sings “Blueberry Hill” in English. Serious claims were later made that virtually none of the money donated for sick children reached those in need. Following this event Putin’s image noticeably begins to sour.

Dec. 19, 2010 — The contested presidential election in Belarus causes reaction not only among artists in Belarus — the Free Theater of Belarus, for example, went underground and sent out information about evolving events by way of blogs — but among theater artists in Moscow as well. Over the course of several days playwrights Mikhail Durnenkov, Maksym Kurochkin, Anna Yablonskaya, Yevgeny Kazachkov and others publish texts expressing concern about the way events in Belarus reflect a deepening political crisis in Russia.

Late Dec. 2010 — The second trial against jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev prompts numerous important artists to speak out. They include artist Bilzho, film director Eldar Ryazanov, writer Lev Rubinshtein, theater director Vladimir Mirzoyev, actors Natalya Fateyeva, Igor Yasulovich, Liya Akhedzhakova and others.

Jan. 5, 2011 — Speaking on Ekho Mosky radio director/playwright Mikhail Ugarov urges Muscovites to leave chairs at the door of the Moscow City court to protest the treatment of politician Boris Nemtsov, who was arrested at a demonstration on Dec. 31 and not allowed a chair to sit on when he was arraigned.

Feb. 2011 — The Dozhd, or Rain, television station begins airing a series of wildly popular satirical poetry videos created by journalist/poet Dmitry Bykov and actor Mikhail Yefremov. The unchanging targets of their barbs are President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Putin and the general political situation in Russia. This is another important event in the public perception of the two politicians as caricatures rather than as statesmen.

April 29, 2011 — Prime Minister Putin meets the heads of many Russian theaters in the city of Penza. It is a routine working meeting that addresses numerous serious problems, but the very fact that artists are put in the position of having to appeal to the prime minister with hands held out causes much discussion and criticism.

June 14, 2011 — The Joseph Beuys Theater premieres a theatricalized public affairs event directed by Varvara Faer, in which actors read excerpts from the published correspondence between Mikhail Khodorkovsky and novelist Lyudmila Ulitskaya.

July 15, 2011 — In a move that caused shocked responses, the city of Penza –hometown to the great theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold, murdered during Stalin’s Purges — unveils a statue honoring Joseph Stalin.

Sept. 13, 2011 — Two heavily attended and hotly discussed readings at the Lyubimovka young play festival are pointedly political — “Two in Your House” is a spoof of the house arrest of Belarussian presidential candidate Vladimir Neklyayev, and “Conversations in a Kitchen Two Days Before Arrest” is an exploration of the two young people who murdered attorney Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova in 2009.

Sept. 15, 2011 — Controversy arises as a result of a private visit of Prime Minister Putin to the Theater of Nations as the venue prepares to officially mark the completion of repairs to its main stage. As he did in December in St. Petersburg, Putin plays the piano, while artistic director Yevgeny Mironov — rightly or wrongly — is perceived as kowtowing to Putin.

Sept. 23, 2011 — Popular actor/producer Vladimir Mashkov raises eyebrows, and invites scorn, by appearing at the United Russia party congress and pledging his support for the party.

Nov. 17, 2011 — Actor Alexei Devotchenko, an outspoken political activist and blogger, publicly renounces government awards that he has received over the years, including a State Prize and the status of Honored Artist of the Russian Federation.

Dec. 5, 2011 — At a demonstration convened to protest the alleged falsification of elections the previous day, a large number of artists are among the estimated 8,000 attendees. Several are arrested, some receiving beatings and 10 or 15-day jail terms.

Dec. 10, 2011 — A crowd estimated from 25,000 to 60,000 descends on Bolotnaya Square just south of the Kremlin, across the Moscow River. The activity of the artistic community is high. As an official speaker, novelist Boris Akunin calls the demonstration an “important day in his life” and demands the organization of new elections and “online transmissions from every precinct” that would stream “from the first voter to the last vote counted.” Reporting later on his Facebook page, writer Lev Rubinshtein declares, “What happened today could not have been imagined a year ago, or even a week ago. We — many of us — suddenly remembered that personal dignity is worth struggling for and worth speaking out about.” Also on Facebook theater critic Maya Mamaladze reports hearing Maksym Kurochkin — author of a famous play in which Nibelungs morph back and forth into contemporary Russians — declare happily that there were “300,000” people in attendance.