Evgeny vakhtangov. The work of eugene vakhtangov as a special direction of the stanislavsky system
At the age of 25, Evgeny Vakhtangov already taught in theater studio Stanislavsky, and two years later he staged his first performance. He used the latest directorial techniques, experimented with sets and made the audience part of the stage action. Vakhtangov invented a new direction of theater - fantastic realism, and Stanislavsky called the innovative director "the first fruit of our renewed art."
“Create for yourself. Enjoy for yourself "
Evgeny Vakhtangov was born in Vladikavkaz. His father was a tobacco manufacturer and hoped that his son would continue his business. However, as a child, Evgeny Vakhtangov became interested in theater and decided to devote his whole life to it. In his high school years, he already played in amateur productions: "The Marriage" by Nikolai Gogol, "Poverty is not a vice" by Alexander Ostrovsky and "Children of Vanyushin" by Sergei Naydenov.
After graduating from high school in 1903, Evgeny Vakhtangov entered Moscow University and immediately entered the student theater group. He staged performances and played himself - both in Moscow and during his visits to Vladikavkaz. For each production, Vakhtangov developed a general plan, carefully listed all the items that should be on the stage, described the costumes, makeup and gait of the actors, even calculated the pace of the curtain's movement. The Moscow Art Theater was an example of theatrical art for him. Here Evgeny Vakhtangov was inspired by everything: scenery and acting, sound effects and technical details.
In 1909, Vakhtangov decided to get a professional theater education and entered drama courses at the Moscow Art Theater. It was mainly the theater artists who taught here: Alexander Adashev and Vasily Lugsky, Nikolai Alexandrov and Vasily Kachalov. They trained young actors according to the methods of Konstantin Stanislavsky.
Evgeny Vakhtangov wanted to become a director, and Konstantin Stanislavsky soon began to distinguish him from the rest of the students. He appointed Vakhtangov as the main assistant for work with young actors. Inspired by Stanislavsky's technique, Evgeny Vakhtangov dreamed of creating an acting studio.
“I want to establish a Studio where we would study. The principle is to achieve everything by ourselves ... Test the system of KS [Konstantin Stanislavsky] on ourselves. Accept or reject it. Correct, supplement, or remove a lie. Everyone who comes to the studio should love art in general and stage art in particular. Joy to seek in creativity. Forget the audience. Create for yourself. Enjoy for yourself. Themselves judges. "
Evgeny Vakhtangov
Stanislavsky himself strove for this. Therefore, in 1912, together with Leopold Sulerzhitsky, they opened the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, in which Evgeny Vakhtangov began to teach. At the same time, Vakhtangov worked in other Moscow theater schools, among which the Student Drama Studio occupied a special place. It was created in 1913 by five students from different Moscow universities. A year later, aspiring actors invited Vakhtangov as a teacher and director.
Evgeny Vakhtangov's innovative studio
Evgeny Vakhtangov in his youth. Photo: vakhtangov.ru
Yuri Zavadsky. Cartoon on Evgeny Vakhtangov. 1913
Evgeny Vakhtangov. Photo: vakhtangov.ru
At first, the Student Drama Studio did not have its own premises; the participants gathered either in the students' rooms, or in restaurants, or in empty cinemas. Rehearsals took place mainly at night, since during the day Evgeny Vakhtangov worked with the 1st studio of the Moscow Art Theater, and the students studied and worked.
The Student Studio presented its first production - "The Lanins' Estate" in 1914. The premiere of the performance caused a storm of indignation. Critics wrote sarcastically about the childish helplessness of novice actors, about the pitiful theatrical scenery, about the insolvency of the director Vakhtangov. Stanislavsky, on the other hand, was so angry with Vakhtangov for his amateur performances and the failure of the "Lanins' Estate" that he forbade him to teach outside the walls of the Moscow Art Theater and the 1st Studio.
However, the classes in the Student Studio did not stop, but were now held in the strictest confidence. For his students, Vakhtangov hired the best innovative teachers, despite the poverty of the studio.
“So, in terms of movement, we had the best teacher Alexandrova, the ancestor of rhythmic etudes. Evgeny Bogrationovich said: “I need the best, the most daring, perhaps, innovator in every area. We are so poor that we must learn from the best. " Therefore, if Pyatnitsky was the best in terms of voice, then let's give Pyatnitsky. Yes, Evgeny Bogrationovich knew how to recognize real people of art! He had a flair for them, and he tried mainly to raise teachers from his older students. "
Actress Cecilia Mansurova, from "Conversations about Vakhtangov" by Khrisanf of Kherson
Evgeny Vakhtangov gradually acquired his own understanding of theater. In the performances, he sought to emphasize the conventionality of what was happening on the stage, therefore, for example, the Vakhtangovites wore classical theatrical costumes over modern clothes... And to reinforce this idea, the artists wore them on stage. In a matter of seconds, they transformed from actors into characters in the play. For the decorations, they used ordinary household items, which were played up with the help of light and fabric draperies.
In 1917, the student studio came out of the "underground" and became known as the Moscow Drama Studio of Yevgeny Vakhtangov. In the same year, Vakhtangov fell seriously ill, but he began to work even harder and harder. “The first studio, the second studio, my studio, the Jewish studio“ Habima ”, the Gunst studio, the folk theater, proletkult, art theater, the lesson, the performance of the November celebrations - these are ten institutions where they tear me to pieces”, - wrote Evgeny Vakhtangov.
Grotesque theater and fantastic realism
Evgeny Vakhtangov as Tackleton in the play Cricket on the Stove. 1914 year. 1st studio of the Moscow Art Theater. Photo: wikimedia.org
Evgeny Vakhtangov as Kraft in the play "Thought". 1914 year. 1st studio of the Moscow Art Theater. Photo: wikimedia.org
Evgeny Vakhtangov as Fraser in the play "The Flood". 1915 year. 1st studio of the Moscow Art Theater. Photo: aif.ru
After the 1917 revolution, it became difficult for the Vakhtangov avant-garde theater to find mutual language with a new spectator - "primitive in relation to art." The director decided to join the Konstantin Stanislavsky Theater. In 1920, Vakhtangov's studio became part of the Moscow Art Theater, and was named the Third Studio.
A year later, the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater had its own theater building. In honor of the opening, the artists gave the play "The Miracle of St. Anthony" based on the comedy of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck. This was the second appeal of the Vakhtangovites to this play, and this time Vakhtangov staged the performance in the tradition of grotesque theater. He wrote: “Household theater must die. "Character" actors are no longer needed. All who have the capacity for specificity must feel the tragedy (even comedians) of any specificity and must learn to identify themselves grotesquely. Grotesque - tragic, comic ".
Absorbed in work in several studios, Vakhtangov almost did not follow his health: at one time he was engaged in yoga gymnastics and followed a diet, but then he broke his regime: he constantly smoked and sat up after performances at theatrical parties.
Shortly before his death, Yevgeny Vakhtangov began working on the production of Princess Turandot based on the tale of the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi... With this performance, he opened a new direction in theatrical direction - “fantastic realism”. Vakhtangov used characters-masks and techniques of the Italian comedy dell'arte, but he made the tale very modern. Actors dressed in costumes right on stage fairytale heroes, and at the same time talked on topical topics.
“My last conversation with Vakhtangov before the dress rehearsal for Turandot was wonderful. He told me that in this work he is carried away by a specific acting state, like this: you and I sit in the front row and watch the play, but I also play this play. And while I am free, I share my impressions with you, and then I say: my way out, now I will play for you. And I leave the first row, climb onto the stage and begin to play everything - grief and joy, and this friend of mine believes me ... And then I finish, sit down with him and say: well, how is it? "
Leonid Volkov from the book “Evgeny Vakhtangov. Documents and certificates "
Returning home after another rehearsal of the play "Princess Turandot", Vakhtangov fell ill and never got up. The premiere took place without him, but Konstantin Stanislavsky was present at the performance. Delighted with the work of his student, Stanislavsky personally expressed his recognition to Vakhtangov: “What I saw is talented, original and, most importantly, cheerful! And the success is brilliant. The youth have grown a lot ".
"Princess Turandot" became last work Evgenia Vakhtangov. He died on May 29, 1922. Vakhtangov was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.
(1883-1922) Russian actor and director
The name of Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov went down in the history of Russian and world theatrical culture and took a place among its most prominent figures.
He was born in the city of Vladikavkaz into a Russian-Armenian merchant family. Yevgeny's father was a famous tobacco manufacturer and hoped that his son would continue his business. However, the young man, even in his gymnasium years, was carried away by the theater, which became the work of his whole life. Despite his father's strict ban, Vakhtangov began performing on the stages of amateur theaters in Vladikavkaz. After graduating from high school, he entered the physics and mathematics department of Moscow University, where he also entered the student theater circle.
In his second year, Evgeny Vakhtangov moved to the Faculty of Law and in the same year he made his debut as a director, staging a student play "Teachers" based on the play by O. Ernst. A little later, leaving the Faculty of Law, he entered the A. Adashev School of Drama, after which in 1911 he was accepted into the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater.
Soon on young actor drew attention to Konstantin Stanislavsky and instructed him to lead practical lessons according to his method of acting in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. The atmosphere of "studio" with its uncompromising moral and ethical requirements turned out to be very favorable for Vakhtangov, who combined the director's gift and the talent of a teacher. It was in the studio that both of these qualities were fully developed in him.
On the stage of the studio, he created several chamber performances, where he also performed as an actor. In them, Eugene was looking for new methods of image psychological state hero. Not accepting the rigid framework of Stanislavsky's system, for some time he was carried away by the ideas of Meyerhold, but soon rejected them too.
Vakhtangov Evgeny Bagrationovich put forward the slogan "fantastic realism", on the basis of which he built the theory of his own theater. Like K. Stanislavsky, he believed that the main person in the play was the actor, but he always separated the personality of the performer from the image that was embodied on the stage.
In the end, Evgeny Vakhtangov began to stage performances in his own way. The decorations in them consisted of the most common household items. On this concrete basis, with the help of light and draperies, the artist created fantastic views of fairytale cities, as, for example, it was done in his favorite play "Princess Turandot".
Accordingly, the costumes of the actors also combined the concrete and the conventional. For example, an unusually elegant, embroidered and ornamented robe was worn over a modern costume. To emphasize the conventionality of what is happening on stage, the actors put on costumes right in front of the audience, transforming into their characters.
Realizing their creative ideas, in 1921 Evgeny Vakhtangov staged a play by Maurice Maeterlinck "The Miracle of St. Anthony" on the stage of his studio. It was a bright theatrical show, in which the director and actors formed a single creative ensemble. They managed to convey to the audience the complex symbolism of the play, to reveal the originality of the playwright's metaphorical thinking, the convention of characters.
The next work of the director - "Princess Turandot" based on the tale of the Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi - allowed the critics to conclude that Vakhtangov was no longer just carrying out a stage experiment, but began to create a new direction in theatrical direction.
Using the characters-masks and techniques of the Italian commedia dell'arte, the director filled the fairy tale contemporary issues... Each of his performances became an event, because all that was happening at that time in Russia, the heroes were actively discussing on stage. However, Evgeny Vakhtangov presented contemporary issues in the form of a kind of game, polemics, dispute, dialogue of heroes. Therefore, the actors no longer just pronounced the texts, but gave a characteristic, often angry and ironic, of everything that was happening in the country.
"Princess Turandot" was the last work of Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov, who died suddenly a few days before the premiere. However, the principles laid down by him for a dynamic, mobile performance, which, as it were, is created in front of the audience, have forever been preserved in the traditions of the theater.
It is curious that the production of "Princess Turandot" has become a kind of " business card»Theater. Fifty years after the premiere, the theater resumed its production, in which it showed loyalty to the traditions of its great founder. This work added glory to the oldest Vakhtangov actors and made famous names new performers. Princess Turandot in different years played by the brilliant Cecilia Mansurova and Yulia Borisova, and Prince Kalaf - Yuri Zavadsky, Ruben Simonov, Vasily Lanovoy.
Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov - Russian theater director, actor, teacher, founder of the Vakhtangov Theater.
Early period
Evgeny Vakhtangov grew up in the family of an Armenian manufacturer. Even in his youth, he abandoned his commercial career and his father's inheritance, taking up theatrical amateurism. In 1903-1909, Eugene studied at the natural sciences, then at the law faculties of Moscow University. In 1906 he organized a drama circle for university students. In 1909-11 - a student of the drama school of A.I. Adashev, where V.V.Luzhsky, V.I.Kachalov and Leopold Sulerzhitsky taught, who influenced Vakhtangov's early theatrical views.
Anyone who wants to be pleasant is always unpleasant, in the same way that he wants to be pleasant.
After graduating from school, Evgeny Vakhtangov enrolled in the Moscow Art Theater, conducted experimental classes according to the "Stanislavsky system" with a group of theatrical youth, which formed the core of the 1st Studio of the Moscow Art Theater (1912; opened in 1913; since 1924 - the 2nd Moscow Art Theater). As a teacher, Vakhtangov shared the aesthetic and ethical program of the director of the Studio Sulerzhitsky: the goal of art is the moral improvement of society, the studio is a community of like-minded people, acting is the truth of emotions, the performance is the preaching of goodness and beauty.
As a director, Yevgeny Vakhtangov preferred sharp contrasts of good and evil in the construction of the performance and in the style of the actor's performance (“A Festival of Peace” by G. Hauptmann, 1913; “The Flood” by G. Berger, 1915). In "Rosmersholm" by Heinrich Ibsen (1918, 1st studio), the opposition of the ascetic form (gray cloth, contrasting lighting solution, a minimum of accessories) and the tense inner life of the actors revealed main topic performance: a daring breakthrough to freedom, even at the cost of death.
In The Miracle of St. Anthony by Maurice Maeterlinck (first version, 1918) Sulerzhitsky's tradition prevailed: humanity, humor, soft irony. Simultaneously with the Moscow Art Theater and its studio, Evgeny Vakhtangov led pedagogical work in a number of Moscow theater schools and amateur circles. A special place in his creative life belonged to the Student Drama Studio ("Mansurovskaya" - after the name of the alley where it was located), with whose members he began in 1913 to rehearse the play "The Lanins' Estate" by B.K. Zaitsev (from 1917 - the Moscow Drama Studio under directed by E. B. Vakhtangov, from 1920 - the 3rd studio of the Moscow Art Theater; from 1926 - the Theater named after Yevgeny Vakhtangov).
Hands are the eyes of the body.
Vakhtangov Evgeny Bagrationovich
Creation of a new theater
Together with the post-October performances by Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold, Vakhtangov's performances in 1919-22 laid the foundation for a new theater. In performances staged based on the works of the previous drama, he tried to embody the image of a revolutionary whirlwind, the tragedy of the historical breakdown of eras. Change it aesthetic views and artistic preferences, important provisions of theory and pedagogy are being corrected. While remaining faithful to the general laws of the art of experiencing and the organic nature of the actor's existence in the image, E. Vakhtangov asserts the need for a new stage language, corresponding to the time of social clashes and explosions, refuses the poetics of intimate psychological and everyday theater, from the "fourth wall" - the Moscow Art Theater ramp, separating the world of the stage from the audience, proclaims "death to naturalism", seeks direct contact between the actor and the viewer, demands a festive, enchanting theatrical convention.
The second version of The Miracle of St. Anthony (1921) is marked with a bright theatricality and extreme thickening of satirical colors. In Chekhov's Wedding (1920), Yevgeny Vakhtangov saw a “feast during the plague,” a freak show of philistinism, a musty provincial stupor. In "Eric XIV" A. Strindberg (1921, 1st studio) embodied the tragedy of power, unjust and hostile to the people even when the ruler (in the interpretation of Vakhtangov and the performance of MA Chekhov) is full of goodness and nobility. Each of Vakhtangov's 1921-22 performances with great expression revealed the confrontation between darkness and light, death and conquering life. The greatest force was reached by the tragic conflict in the poem of triumphant love "Gadibuke" by S. Ansky (studio "Habima"). Vakhtangov's formula of "fantastic realism", new expressive possibilities stage direction, which he implemented in the general staging solution, scenography, composition of crowd scenes and plastic sculpting of figures entered the arsenal of the 20th century theater.
That which cannot be overheard in the soul of the people, that which is not guessed in the hearts of the people, can never be of long-term value.
Vakhtangov Evgeny Bagrationovich
"Princess Turandot"
The harmonic principle characteristic of Yevgeny Vakhtangov's nature and work (“the cheerful Meyerhold,” said MA Chekhov) was embodied in the director's sparkling play “Princess Turandot” by Karl Gozzi (1922). The performance was conceived as an experiment in the field of acting technique: the students simultaneously played themselves, the artists of the Italian commedia dell'arte acting out Gozzi's fairy tale, and, finally, the characters of the fairy tale. The play was built and rehearsed improvisationally (reprises on the themes of the day, interludes-pantomimes, proscenium servants, ironic "exits from the role"), deliberately destroyed stage illusions while preserving the maximum actor's sincerity and the truth of the experience.
Having significantly surpassed the original director's task, Vakhtangov became a classic of the theater, made a "strong shift" (Nemirovich-Danchenko) in the art of the Russian stage. The premiere of the play took place when Yevgeny Vakhtangov was already terminally ill. His creative activity broke off, possibly at its highest point. Vakhtangov's students include Boris Vasilyevich Shchukin, Ruben Nikolaevich Simonov, Ts.L. Mansurova, Yuri Alexandrovich Zavadsky, and others.
VAKHTANGOV, EVGENY BAGRATIONOVICH (1883-1922), an outstanding director, actor, teacher, who practically proved that “the laws of organic human behavior discovered by his teacher Stanislavsky are applicable to the art of any aesthetic direction” and to new stage conditions dictated by the scale of revolutionary events ... Vakhtangov created a new theatrical direction of "fantastic realism".
Studio youth and admission to the Moscow Art Theater. Vakhtangov was born on February 1 (13), 1883 in Vladikavkaz in the Russian-Armenian prosperous-patriarchal family of a tobacco manufacturer. Rejecting a commercial career and the legacy of his father-manufacturer, he became interested in amateur theater. The break with his father, who dreamed of a trading career for his son, meant for the young Vakhtangov a break with his environment. The theme of family hell, mutual torment sounded in one of the first directorial works of Vakhtangov, as a personal, deeply suffering theme (H. Hauptmann's Peace Festival, 1913).
In 1903-1909 he studied first at the natural sciences, then at the law faculties of Moscow University. In 1907-1909 he wrote essays and articles for the Caucasian newspaper Terek. He staged performances and played in student circles in Riga, Grozny, Vladikavkaz, Vyazma, and other cities (Uncle Vanya A.P. Chekhova, Summer Residents and At the bottom of M. Gorky, At the royal gates of K. Hamsun, etc.). In 1906 he organized a drama club for students of Moscow University. Passion for amateur theater largely determined further life and the work of Vakhtangov. Of amateur theater he endured a passion for studio and experimentation, a spirit of improvisation and selfless service to art.
In 1909, Vakhtangov entered the drama courses of A.I. Adashev, named after their director, where they taught V.V. Luzhsky, V.I. worldview and early theatrical views of Vakhtangov. Theater historians recognize Sulerzhitsky as the "midwife" of Stanislavsky's system. The unity of ethics and aesthetics in the theatrical art was confirmed in the practice of the theater by Stanislavsky, Sulerzhitsky, and their most faithful and talented student, Vakhtangov. After completing the courses in 1911, Vakhtangov was enrolled in the Moscow Art Theater. He played in episodes of performances (Leo Tolstoy's living corpse - a gypsy; William Shakespeare's Hamlet - an actor playing the queen; M. Meterlinka's blue bird - Sugar; Nikolai Stavrogin after F.M. Dostoyevsky's Demons - an officer, etc.). Serving in the theater brought him up in the spirit of the fundamental principles of directing the Moscow Art Theater, requiring an actor to reveal his “life human spirit”, The impeccable sense of the ensemble, understanding of the artistic integrity of the performance. Vakhtangov became an assistant to K.S. Stanislavsky in the development and testing of a new acting method, which was soon named "Stanislavsky's system".
“To expel the theater from the theater”. From 1911 Vakhtangov conducted experimental classes according to the "system" with a group of theater youth, which formed the core of the first Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. Vakhtangov shared and implemented the aesthetic and ethical program of its director Sulerzhitsky, which consisted in the following: the purpose of serving art is moral self-improvement; studio collective - a community of like-minded people; acting is the complete truth of experiences; the play is a preaching of goodness and beauty. In his diaries of those years, Vakhtangov wrote: “I want the theater to have no names. I want the audience in the theater to be unable to understand their feelings, bring them home and live them for a long time. This can be done only when the performers (not the actors) reveal their souls to each other in the play without lying ... Drive the theater out of the theater. From the play of the actor. Expel makeup, costume. " Stanislavsky himself emphasized the leading role of Vakhtangov in the study and propaganda of the "system". About the essence of the ongoing searches, he wrote: "... In our destructive, revolutionary aspiration, for the sake of renewing art, we declared war on any convention in the theater, no matter what it manifests itself in: in the game, staging, scenery, costumes, interpretation of the play, etc." ...
The rehearsals of the performance “Peace Day by G. Hauptmann, which was supposed to officially open the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, went as a consistent development of the" system ". However, in the sharp interpretation of Vakhtangov, the teacher's ideas revealed unfamiliar facets: naturalism, exacerbated to hyperbole, psychologism, driven to a frenzy. The production was categorically rejected by Stanislavsky, although in this performance Vakhtangov for the first time most fully expressed himself, his personal pain. A distinctive feature of Vakhtangov's directorial decisions on the Studio stage is the contrasting separation of good and evil. In the Festival of Peace, the emotional center of the performance was a short and fragile idyll of friendship that reigned during a family meeting, where everyone quarrels and hates each other. A short-term idyll only set off mutual hatred, selfishness, and the disintegration of traditional ties. Vakhtangov analyzed these diseases of the time, mercilessly exposing the torn souls of the heroes. The unmerciful truth of the performance frightened and shocked.
"Is it art?"- a contemporary critic asked Vakhtangov and himself convincingly answered his own question: “But if all this was not achieved by shouting, not waving his hands, not goggling his eyes, this was achieved with an absolutely extraordinary simplicity of tone, such simplicity that was not achieved in the Art Theater, such simplicity, which is terrible and much more difficult than any kind of elevation. "
The effect of a sudden transformation, the leap from enmity and evil to the ideal of love and prosperity, became one of the important constructive methods of Vakhtangov's direction. The play The Flood (1915) by G. Berger was constructed by him as a triad: the first act is “the wolfish manners of business America”, representatives of different social groups of which are gathered together by the will of circumstances; the second act is a bright triumph of unity in the moments of the apparent threat of death; the third act is "back to square one" when the threat has passed. In the play Cricket on the Stove (1914, Studio Moscow Art Theater, staged by B. M. Sushkevich), in contrast to the complacent Dickensian cosiness, the figure of the evil manufacturer Teckleton, played by Vakhtangov in an acutely characteristic drawing, with an emphasized mechanistic movement and a dead face mask, appeared. This image went down in the history of the theater as a brilliant example of theatrical grotesque, and the performance itself, as a protest against the outbreak of war and a hymn to humanity. In Ibsen's Rosmersholm (1918), the asceticism of the external form (gray cloth, play of light, a minimum of accessories) and the tension in the inner life of the actors served to reveal the life-affirming theme - the heroes' daring breakthrough to freedom, albeit at the cost of death. In Rosmersholm, Vakhtangov's pre-revolutionary search for psychological realism was completed.
Simultaneously with the Moscow Art Theater and its First Studio, Vakhtangov conducted pedagogical work in a number of Moscow theater schools and continued to lead amateur circles. Stanislavsky valued "persistence and purity" in Vakhtangov and saw in his activities as a propagandist of the "system" a guarantee of the theater's renovation. In Vakhtangov's practice, the ideas of the studio were implemented - the ethical "justification of the theater" as the creation of life, the rules of impeccable discipline and corporate responsibility, hatred of empty acting. Among the youth groups, where in 1912-1922 Vakhtangov taught (drama courses by S.V. Khalyutina, the Jewish studio "Habima", the Second Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, the studio of A.O.Gunst, the studio of F.I.Shalyapin, the Armenian studio, B. Tchaikovsky and others), a special place belonged to the Student Drama Studio (Mansurovskaya), where in 1913 he began to rehearse the play by B.K. Zaitsev The Lanins Estate (premiered in 1914). This circle of intelligent youth was destined to further become the Moscow drama studio under the leadership of E.B. Vakhtangov (from 1917), the third studio of the Moscow Art Theater (from 1920), the State Theater. Vakhtangov (1926).
"The time has come". The October Revolution and the social changes it brought about had a profound impact on Vakhtangov. The director defines the beginning of a new stage in his work in the article "The artist will ask ...", written in 1919, which is one of the first manifestos of Soviet direction. “If an artist wants to create 'new', to create after she came, the Revolution, then he must create together with the People. Neither for him, nor for his sake, nor outside of him, but together with him, ”Vakhtangov writes.
Young revolutionary art in those years aspired to display modernity in generalized, metaphorical forms. Figures Soviet theater looking for a non-everyday language. Vakhtangov was also looking for such a language. Time demanded enlarged feelings and principles of expression capable of expressing the "music of the revolution." For Vakhtangov, such a principle is “fantastic realism,” which incorporates hyperbole, grotesque, and balagan beginnings. The post-revolutionary Vakhtangov dramatically changes his attitude to form. "The time has come to return the theater to the theater!" - proclaims the director, who had previously stated the exact opposite. The chamber psychologism of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater is being successfully overcome, and Vakhtangov's work is rapidly evolving. But modernity for Vakhtangov was never identified with direct associations, journalism. Such productions of Vakhtangov sounded deeply modern in new edition 1920s, as the Miracle of St. Anthony M. Meterlinck, Eric 14 Y.A.Strinberg, The Wedding of A.P. Chekhov.
Having abandoned the poetics of intimate psychological and everyday theater, Vakhtangov preserved the laws of the art of experiencing and the organic nature of acting. In this direction, the most important searches for the director took place, including his latest masterpieces: Princess Turandot by Carla Gozzi and Gadibuk S. Ansky (S.A. Rapoport), staged in 1922.
Vakhtangov argued the need for a new stage language, corresponding to the time. With his work, the director proved that the art of experiencing, the truth of life and the truth of passions can and should be embodied in the forms of an over-everyday, grotesque, brightly theatrical performance.
The evolution that took place with Vakhtangov is most clearly seen when comparing two versions of the Miracle of St. Anthony he staged. The first edition of The Miracle (1918) was staged by Vakhtangov in the spirit of warm humanity, good irony and sympathy for common people... In the first version of the play, the director worked out in detail the picture of the life of the middle bourgeois, looking for expressive everyday details. After the revolution, the performance underwent a drastic revision. Vakhtangov washes away the previous half-tones, introduces only two contrasting colors - white and black, and graphically clear and sharp tones prevail in the performance. A minimum of everyday color. The director is not concerned with everyday life itself, but with its ironic comprehension. A whole palette of hypocrisy, money-grubbing, envy, and greed unfolded on the stage. The familiar picture was filled with new meaning. Vakhtangov dealt with the bourgeois world, with its distorted face and semi-automatic movements. Each of the acting figures was a sharply defined, extremely pointed and recognizable type. The crowd was a phantasmagoria. These were the shadows of people, phantoms, dolls, to whom everything human is alien.
“Everything was exaggerated,” recalls B. Zakhava, a student of Vakhtangov and a participant in the play, “sharpened, exaggerated, sometimes to the extent of cartoon or caricature, and therefore could easily seem deliberate, artificial and unjustified. We understood that there was only one way to avoid this: to justify and fill ... ”. In Miracle, the grotesque was affirmed as the meaningful motive of the entire performance. For Vakhtangov, this meant a shift of the image into a bizarre, fantastic plan, as well as the attitude of the actor to his hero, a dialogue with the image. In Chekhov's Wedding (1920), also staged at the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theater, Vakhtangov was able to see a "feast in the time of the plague", the world of philistinism and vulgarity, where the only living person was a fake wedding general, lonely calling for sympathy.
The art of the actor in the theatrical system of Vakhtangov. Vakhtangov found his actor in the person of Mikhail Chekhov, in whom he saw an ally for his ideas. Vakhtangov asserts the priority of the actor's personality over the image he creates.
The premiere of Eric 14 with M. Chekhov in the title role took place in 1921. The scenery of the artist I. Nivinsky made an indelible impression - beveled planes, sharp corners, zigzags of golden and silver lightning. The costumes are tailored in a cubist manner. Falling broken columns of a palace or prison, labyrinths of flights of stairs and, placed by Vakhtangov between two worlds - living and dead - Erik himself with huge Vrubel eyes and sad streaks of tears on his face. Against the background of the dead round dance of the courtiers, the deathly pale dowager queen (S. Birman), Erik-Chekhov looks like a weak, hunted child. But the director inexorably leads the actor to a tragic height. In this performance, Vakhtangov embodied the tragedy of royal power, unjust and hostile to the people even when the subjective ruler is full of goodness and nobility, as Eric appeared in the interpretation of Vakhtangov and the performance of M. Chekhov. In each of the performances, the confrontation between darkness and light, death and life was revealed with great expression. This tragic conflict reached its greatest strength in Gadibuk (Habima studio, 1922), where Vakhtangov managed to create a poem of triumphant love, using the new possibilities of theatrical direction of the 20th century.
Vakhtangov's last performance Princess Turandot K. Gozzi (1922) is still perceived as the most iconic. Turandot, for all its distance from the revolution, sounded like the "Anthem of the victorious revolution."
The director was led to a new aesthetics not by intuition, but by a clear understanding of the purpose of theatrical art, which he considered in close connection with revolutionary reality. “This revolution requires us good voices, scenic, special temperament and everything else that relates to expressiveness. "
Vakhtangov keenly felt the poetics of the play theater, its open convention, improvisation. In such a theater, there is much from the ancient origins of the stage, folk merrymaking, open-air and booth shows. The game seems to be charged with the air of 1920s Russia. And the paradox is that 1921, hungry and cold, and as if not at all conducive to fun. But in spite of everything, people of this era are filled with a romantic mood. The principle of "open play" becomes the principle of Turandot. The play of an actor with a spectator, with a theatrical image, with a mask becomes the basis of the performance. The performance is a holiday. And the holiday is also a holiday, that everything changes places. And Vakhtangov's artists play tragedy with comedic means. The performance was conceived as an experiment in the field of acting technique, complex according to the assignment: the students had to simultaneously play themselves, and the actors of the Italian comedy of masks, acting out Gozzi's fairy tale, and, finally, the characters themselves. The play was built and rehearsed improvisationally, included reprises on the theme of the day, pantomime interludes, deliberate ironic outlets and roles, subject to the maximum acting sincerity and the truth of the experience. The director insists and seeks from the performers a true reincarnation and a true experience in the role. But Vakhtangov himself did not believe that Turandot is an invariable stage canon, believing that each time the form of the performance must be found anew.
The performance became a huge not only artistic, but also a social event. His merits were first appreciated by Stanislavsky, who saw that Vakhtangov's work had a great future. Early death from an incurable disease in 1922 interrupted creative way Vakhtangov, but his theatrical discoveries in the field of modern directing, acting and pedagogy gave a whole aesthetic direction, called "Vakhtangov".
7. Theatrical activity G. Ibsen: work in line with the national-romantic tradition, socio-psychological drama, symbolic drama. General characteristics of creativity.
Ibsen, Henrik Johan (1828-1906), Norwegian playwright and theatrical figure, one of famous classics Western European theater of the 19th century.
The life and work of Ibsen are full of the most amazing contradictions. Thus, being a passionate apologist for national liberation and revival national culture Norway, he nevertheless spent twenty-seven years in self-imposed exile in Italy and Germany. Studying national folklore with enthusiasm, he consistently destroys the romantic halo of folk sagas in his plays. The plot structure of his plays is built so rigidly that sometimes it borders on tendentiousness, however, they are by no means schematic, but lively and multifaceted characters. Ibsen's latent moral relativism, combined with the "iron" and even tendentious logic of the plot's development, makes it possible to interpret his plays in an extremely diverse way. So, Ibsen is recognized as a playwright of the realistic direction, but the Symbolists consider him one of the most important founders of their aesthetic trend. At the same time, he was sometimes called "Freud in drama." The gigantic power of talent allowed him to organically combine in his work the most diverse, even polar ones - themes, ideas, problems, means of artistic expression.
Born March 20, 1828 in the small Norwegian town of Shien in a well-to-do family, but in 1837 his father went bankrupt and the family's position changed. The abrupt transition to the lower social classes became a severe psychological trauma for the boy, and this one way or another was reflected in his further work. Already at the age of 15 he was forced to start earning his living - in 1843 he left for the tiny town of Grimstad, where he got a job as an apprentice pharmacist. The practically beggarly life of a social outcast forced Ibsen to seek self-realization in another area: he writes poetry, satirical epigrams on respectable bourgeois Grimstad, draws cartoons. This is bearing fruit: by 1847 it became very popular among the radical youth of the town. He was greatly impressed by the revolutionary events of 1848, which covered a significant part of the Western Europe... Ibsen complements his poetry political lyrics, and also wrote the first play of Catilin (1849), imbued with tyrannical motives. The play was not a success, but strengthened his decision to pursue literature, art and politics.
In 1850 he left for Christiania (from 1924 - Oslo). His goal is to enter the university, however young man captures the political life of the capital. He teaches at the Sunday school of the workers 'association, participates in protest demonstrations, collaborates with the press - the workers' newspaper, the journal of the student society, takes part in the creation of a new social literary magazine "Andhrimner". And he continues to write plays: Bogatyrsky Kurgan (1850, started back in Grimstad), Norma, or Love of Politics (1851), Midsummer's Night (1852). During the same period, he met a playwright, theater and public figure Björnstierne Björnson, with whom he finds a common language on the basis of revival national identity Norway.
This stormy activity of the playwright in 1852 led to his invitation to the post artistic director the newly established first Norwegian National Theater in Bergen. He remained in this post until 1857 (succeeded by B. Bjornson). This turn in Ibsen's life can be considered an extraordinary success. And it's not just that all the plays written by him in the Bergen period were immediately staged on the stage; practical study of the theater “from the inside” helps to reveal many professional secrets, which means it contributes to the growth of the playwright's skill. During this period, the plays were written by Fru Inger of Estroth (1854), Feast in Sulhaug (1855), Ulaf Liljekrans (1856). In the first of these, he switched for the first time in his drama to prose; the last two are written in the style of Norwegian folk ballads (the so-called "heroic songs"). These plays, again, did not enjoy much stage success, but they played a necessary role in the professional development of Ibsen.
In 1857-1862 he headed the Norwegian Theater in Christiania. In parallel with the leadership of the theater and dramatic work, he continues active social activities, aimed mainly at fighting the working Christian theater of the prodat direction (the troupe of this theater consisted of Danish actors, and the performances were in Danish). This stubborn struggle was crowned with success after Ibsen left the theater: in 1863 the troupes of both theaters were united, the performances began to run only in Norwegian, and the program developed with his active participation became the aesthetic platform of the united theater. At the same time, he wrote the plays The Warriors in Helgeland (1857), The Comedy of Love (1862), The Struggle for the Throne (1863); as well as the poem On the Heights (1859), which was the forerunner of the first truly principled dramatic success, Brand's play (1865).
Various activities Ibsen in the Norwegian period was more likely due to a complex of the most difficult psychological problems rather than a principled social position. The main one was the problem of material prosperity (especially since he got married in 1858, and a son was born in 1859) and decent social status - here, undoubtedly, his children's complexes also played a role. This problem naturally merged with the fundamental issues of vocation and self-realization. It is not for nothing that in almost all of his subsequent plays, one way or another, the conflict between life position hero and real life... And another important factor: best plays Ibsen, who brought him the world well-deserved fame, were written outside his homeland.
In 1864, having received a writing scholarship from the Storting, which he sought for almost a year and a half, Ibsen and his family left for Italy. The funds received were extremely insufficient, and he had to turn to his friends for help. In Rome, for two years, he wrote two plays, absorbing all previous life and literary experience - Brand (1865) and Peer Gynt (1866).
In theater studies and ibsenistics, it is customary to consider these plays in a complex manner, as two alternative interpretations of the same problem - self-determination and realization of human individuality. The main characters are polar: the inflexible maximalist Brand, ready to sacrifice himself and his loved ones for the sake of fulfilling his own mission, and the amorphous Peer Gynt, who readily adapts to any conditions. Comparison of these two plays gives a clear picture of the author's moral relativism. Separately, they were regarded by critics and the audience very controversially. Thus, the frantic fanatic Brand (whom the author leads to collapse in the finale) was received by the Scandinavian audience with undoubted sympathy, and the play itself has always enjoyed success with revolutionary-minded romantics.
The situation with Per Gynt was even more paradoxical. It is in this play that Ibsen demonstrates his break with national romance. In it, the characters of folklore are represented by ugly and evil creatures, the peasants - by cruel and rude people. At first in Norway and Denmark, the play was perceived very negatively, almost as blasphemy. G.H. Andersen, for example, called Peer Gynt the worst book he ever read. However, over time, the romantic flair returned to this play - of course, mainly due to the image of Solveig. This was largely facilitated by the music of Edvard Grieg, written at the request of Ibsen for the production of Peer Gynt, and later acquiring world renown as an independent musical composition... Paradoxically, but true: Peer Gynt, in the author's interpretation protesting against romantic tendencies, still remains in the cultural consciousness the embodiment of Norwegian folk romance.
Brand and Peer Gynt became for Ibsen transitional plays that turned him towards realism and social problems (it is in this aspect that all of his further creativity). These are the Pillars of Society (1877), Dollhouse(1879), Ghosts (1881), Enemy of the People (1882), Wild Duck (1884), Rosmersholm (1886), Woman from the Sea (1888), Gedda Gubler (1890), Builder Solness (1892), Little Eyolf (1894) , Yun Gabriel Borkman (1896). Here the playwright raised topical issues contemporary reality: bigotry and female emancipation, rebellion against the usual bourgeois morality, lies, social compromise and loyalty to ideals. Symbolists and philosophers (A. Blok, N. Berdyaev and others) much more, along with Brand and Per Gynt, appreciated other plays of Ibsen: the dilogy of Caesar and the Galilean (Caesar's Apostasy and Emperor Julian; 1873), When we, the dead , Awakening (1899).
An impartial analysis makes it possible to understand that in all these works, Ibsen's personality remains the same. His plays are neither tendentious social ephemera, nor abstract-symbolic constructions; in them in full extent there are social realities, and extremely semantically loaded symbolism, and surprisingly multifaceted, whimsical psychological complexity of the characters. The formal differentiation of Ibsen's drama into "social" and "symbolic" works is rather a matter of subjective interpretation, biased interpretation of the reader, critic or director.
In 1891 he returned to Norway. In a foreign land, he achieved everything he aspired to: world fame, recognition, material well-being... By this time, his plays were widely seen on the stages of theaters around the world, the number of studies and critical articles devoted to his work was beyond counting and could only be compared with the number of publications about Shakespeare. It would seem that all this could cure the severe psychological trauma he suffered in childhood. However, the most recent play, When We Dead Awake, is filled with such a piercing tragedy that it is hard to believe in it.
The history of life
Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov - Russian Soviet theater director, actor, teacher. Founder and head of the Student Studio (since 1926 - the Vakhtangov Theater). Performances: The Miracle of St. Anthony (1916; 2nd edition - 1921), Eric XIV (1921), Gadibuk (1922), Princess Turandot (1922), etc.
Evgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov was born on February 1, 1883 in Vladikavkaz in the family of a tobacco manufacturer. His father, a domineering and proud man, saw his son as the heir to the cause. But Eugene was carried away by the theater. At first, he performed in home performances, later he began to attend a gymnasium drama circle, the Vladikavkaz Music and Drama Society.
After graduating from the gymnasium in the spring of 1903, Eugene fails in exams at the Riga Polytechnic College and enters the Moscow University at the Faculty of Natural Sciences (then he will transfer to the Faculty of Law). But he is more interested in literature and theater.
This was the heyday of the Art Theater. The Mkhatov luminaries - Kachalov, Leonidov, Moskvin - became Vakhtangov's favorite artists for life.
In 1905, Vakhtangov married Nadezhda Baytsurova, also a theater-goer. She became a real keeper of the family hearth, a loving mother to their son Sergei.
In 1909 Vakhtangov entered theater school at the Moscow Art Theater, immediately to the second year. On March 15, 1911, Vakhtangov was admitted to the Moscow Art Theater, and after a few months Stanislavsky instructed him to teach a group of actors. Evgeny Bagrationovich speaks enthusiastically about the Stanislavsky system. But his diary also contains the following entry: “I want to form a studio where we would study. The principle is to achieve everything by yourself. The leader is everything. Check the K.C. system. on ourselves. Accept or reject it. Correct, add or remove a lie. "
In 1913, Vakhtangov headed the Student Studio. The first performance, "The Lanins' Estate" by Zaitsev, failed, and for the next two years the students refrained from the temptation to play in public.
Vakhtangov is fruitfully working in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. On its stage, he staged four significant performances: The Festival of Peace (1913), The Deluge (1915), Rosmersholm (1918) and later - Eric XIV (1921). Hauptmann's "Holiday of Peace" was played with the utmost nakedness of the human psyche, as if trying to get to the deepest depths of consciousness. Everything was sharpened, exaggerated, taken to the extreme. However, after watching the run-through of the play, Stanislavsky was unhappy: Vakhtangov introduced fierceness and excessive passion into the play.
In August 1914, Germany declared war on Russia. Theaters are emptying catastrophically. The first studio is showing the peaceful "Christmas" play "Cricket on the Stove" based on a story by Charles Dickens. Vakhtangov, who played the role of the manufacturer Teckleton, was the only actor who brought harsh and harsh tones into the lyrical scale of the performance. The Apollo magazine singled out as the most essential in Vakhtangov's acting personality a fiery temperament, but a hidden temperament. He does not break out even in the most dramatic moments, he concentrates in gesture, in facial expressions, in the drawing of the role.
At this time, Evgeny Bagrationovich feels the first disturbing shocks of the disease - stomach ulcers. He drinks tea with soda and puts on a play by the Swedish writer Berger "The Flood", with a rather schematic development of action in the genre of melodrama. In the director's notes to the first act, Vakhtangov writes: “All are wolves to each other. Not a drop of compassion. Not a drop of attention. Everyone has their own gesheft. Tear from each other. Scattered. Drowned in the case. Nothing human remained. And so not only today, so always, all my life. "
In his work with the studio, he invariably relied on the Stanislavsky system, but used it in different ways. If in the Student Studio he sought the truth of feelings from the performers, then in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater he taught to reveal this truth through an expressive form. In the words of P. Markov, "he gave a psychological grain to the stage setting."
Mikhail Chekhov wrote that Vakhtangov had a special sense of the actor. His pedagogy consisted “in the ability to penetrate into someone else's soul and speak its language. He, as it were, invisibly stood next to the actor and led him by the hand. The actor never felt violence from Vakhtangov, but he also could not evade his directorial plan. Fulfilling the tasks and plans of Vakhtangov, the actor felt them as his own. " When the actor dropped his tone, Vakhtangov whistled with two fingers in his mouth.
In the summer of 1915, after the tour of the First Studio, Vakhtangov, together with Nadezhda and his son Serezha, rested in Evpatoria. Soon, dachas and resorts will be replaced by hospitals, recreation with fun games - treatment and surgery.
The next production of the First Studio was Ibsen's "Rosmersholm". The work on this performance took two years (1916-1918). Critics called Rosmer's main character the Hamlet of a new era.
When the dress rehearsal of "Rosmersholm" took place at the beginning of the 1918-1919 season, Vakhtangov was in the hospital. He was not even informed about her. The conspiracy of silence is explained by the fact that the artist's plan did not meet with understanding among the students. "The play gives the impression of torturedness", "Idealism and mysticism!" - were critical reviews... The path of the ultimate, heightened psychologism was traversed here to the end.
Work on the play "The Miracle of St. Anthony" by Maeterlinck at the Student Studio began in the fall of 1916. However, this performance, interpreted by Vakhtangov as a satire, brought to the grotesque, was not successful. The student studio was going through a period of schism.
On January 2, 1919, Vakhtangov leaves for the Zakharyino sanatorium in Khimki. Doctors insist on stomach surgery. Evgeny Bagrationovich agrees, without telling his wife and son anything - he does not want to worry them. At the end of January, he returns to Moscow, goes headlong into business, manages to complete the production of "The Flood" in his studio - for showing at the People's Theater, and in March - again the sanatorium "Zakharyino" and again the operation.
A few days later, he learns that twelve of the most gifted students have left him. The blow is cruel. Vakhtangov is shocked and confused. It took a while to gain strength ...
Vakhtangov wants to do as much as possible. In 1921 he worked in his studio on "Princess Turandot", "Gadibuk" - in the Jewish studio "Habime", "Eric XIV" - in the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater. The third studio showed the second edition of the play "The Miracle of St. Anthony", work on Chekhov's "Wedding" was nearing completion. These five performances, staged by Vakhtangov during the last two years of his life, brought him worldwide fame. Here the main philosophical problem of Vakhtangov's work arises - the question of life and death.
Vakhtangov attributed the "wedding" to Chekhov's "big plays" and was going to solve it on the same large scale as "Three Sisters" or "Uncle Vanya" were solved at the Moscow Art Theater. Simultaneously with The Wedding, Vakhtangov was finishing a new version of The Miracle of St. Anthony.
The word "grotesque" immediately flashed in enthusiastic reviews of the performance. Vakhtangov writes: “Household theater must die. "Character" actors are no longer needed. All who have the capacity for specificity must feel the tragedy (even comedians) of any specificity and must learn to identify themselves grotesquely. The grotesque is tragic, comic. " Vakhtangov is carried away by the theater of the grotesque, tragedy - psychological drama seems to him vulgar, everyday theater - doomed to death.
In "Eric XIV" by Strindberg, staged on the stage of the First Studio of the Moscow Art Theater in the spring of 1921, Vakhtangov goes from condensed psychologism to generalization. He was looking for a stage expression of the theme of Eric's doom (as a theme of the doom of royalty in general). Pavel Markov wrote that in "Eric" Vakhtangov "threw on the stage the anxiety that filled the life of those years."
Absorbed in work, Vakhtangov watched his health sporadically, at one time he was engaged in yoga gymnastics, switched to diet food, but then he broke the regime - he constantly smoked, up to a hundred cigarettes a day, sat after the performance at theatrical parties, still fascinating the youth with his songs, parodies, and mandolin. And it happened that he played cards with passion all night long.
In December 1921, at the insistence of relatives and friends, a council of doctors was convened: Vakhtangov had especially severe pain... The council is going to the theater on Arbat. Doctors pass a sentence - cancer, but they hide it from the patient. Evgeny Bagrationovich, feeling himself, repeats in surprise: "It's strange, strange ... It's strange that they didn't find anything from me, after all, here's a tumor, I feel it, but they can't find it ..."
The tragedy of Vakhtangov's fate echoed in the tragic collisions of the performances, in the sufferings and torments of the characters in the play "Gadibuk" by S. An-sky. One of the sources of the tragic grotesque turned out to be "strange" pictures by the artist Nathan Altman. He brought them from Petrograd and showed them to Vakhtangov. Characters from the world ancient legend appear in unusual angles: crippled, unhappy people look from the cardboard, their gestures are cutting, the rhythms are convulsive.
The performance was in Hebrew. Back in 1920, Vakhtangov, according to M. Sinelnikova, wanted to stage a play in which people “would speak completely incomprehensible words, but everything would be clear” - thanks to the action built by the director.
On January 31, 1922, the premiere of Gadibuk took place, and on February 13, Vakhtangov took the stage for the last time - he played Frazer in The Deluge. The doctor told Nadezhda Mikhailovna that her husband had no more than two or three months to live. However, until February 16, Vakhtangov rehearses new role- master Pierre in the play by N.N. Bromley "Archangel Michael". This "ladies'" tragedy seemed vague and pretentious to many. But Vakhtangov was attracted by the modernized form of the play, and the broken dialogues, and the twisted images - in a word, the pathos of negation with which this work was imbued. The performance turned out to be gloomy and cumbersome. Vakhtangov did not complete this work - due to his illness, the play was produced by director B. Sushkevich.
Vakhtangov's last performance has long become a legend and a hallmark of his theater. In "Princess Turandot" by Gozzi, he saw the continuation of the tradition folk theater"Comedy of masks", theater of improvisation, born in the squares of Italy.
Vakhtangov was in a hurry to finish the performance, worked day and night. February 24, 1922 - the last rehearsal in the director's life. He feels very bad. He sits in a fur coat, his head wrapped in a wet towel. At four o'clock in the morning, the installation of the light was completed, and the command of Evgeny Bagrationovich was heard: "The whole play from beginning to end!"
After the rehearsal, he was taken home in a cab. He did not appear at the theater again. The directors of the play — Zavadsky, Zakhava, Kotlubai — visited the patient every day, receiving instructions and comments on the release of the play.
February 27 "Turandot" is shown to Stanislavsky and his comrades from the Moscow Art Theater. Studios don't play seriously old tale Gozzi - they throw blankets over themselves as raincoats, wrap their heads with turban towels, hang towels instead of beards: Vakhtangov continues the principles of Stanislavsky's Twelfth Night and goes beyond the teacher. The director managed to connect the performance, witty and graceful, rare in elegance, foaming with gaiety, with the unsettled, but full of hopeful life of the twenties. It was optimism and faith in the strength and energy of life that made up the main content of Turandot. “Over the 23 years of the Art Theater's existence,” Stanislavsky said in his address to the troupe, “there have been few such achievements. You have found what many theaters have been looking for for so long and in vain. "
After May 24, the director's health deteriorates sharply. He does not recognize those close to him; forgetting himself from morphine, he presents himself as a commander ...
Vakhtangov died on Monday May 29, 1922 at 10 pm. He lay among the flowers in the shoes of Princess Turandot. IN last moment suddenly it turned out that the prepared slippers did not fit, and Nadezhda Mikhailovna, seeing the princess's shoes accidentally left by someone, in a hurry put them on Evgeny Bagrationovich's feet ... They buried him in the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent, in the row where the artists of the Art Theater are buried.
In 1926, the Vakhtangov studio became the State Theater named after Yev. Vakhtangov.