Students from 16 cultural schools and universities from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Saratov, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, Ufa, Novosibirsk and Khabarovsk arrived in the Volga city for the 15th Festival “The Future of Theater Russia” (BTR-24).
BTR has been performed in Yaroslavl, the city where the first Russian professional theater was created, since 2009. The founders of the festival are the Russian State Academic Theater named after Fyodor Volkov and the Yaroslavl State Theater Institute named after Firs Shishigin. The festival is supported by the Russian Ministry of Culture and the government of the Yaroslavl region.
As the festival organizers point out, Yaroslavl is the birthplace not only of Russian theater, but also of the first public theater in Russia, since Fyodor Volkov created public theater. This year 21 student performances were shown to Yaroslavl residents. In addition, other venues were added to the traditional stage of the festival in Volkovo: the educational theater of the Yaroslavl State Theater Institute Firs Shishigin and the stage of the Yaroslavl Regional House of Actors Sergei Puskepalis.
“I’m happy that this festival has been going on for 15 years now, which is a huge amount of time these days. I am proud of my colleagues who preserve it. This is very important both for us and for the students,” said Igor Zolotovitsky, rector of the Moscow Art Theater School. – Children from all schools will be able to show their best work. And here there is no difference between “brand” universities and universities in provincial cities; this is great.
An armored personnel carrier is not only an opportunity to show off, but also an opportunity to gain experience from professionals.
It was the students of the Moscow Art Theater School, who did not lose a single one of the 15 armored personnel carriers that passed by, who opened the festival program on the stage of the Volkovsky Theater. The first performance was the musical performance “The Secret of Boo-Dooby-Doo.” Behind this clearly childish name are hidden, as the students themselves pointed out, “therapeutic” stories for children.
“I am glad that the forum will open with a performance by the Moscow Art Theater School, but the main thing here is that it corresponds to the word “opening,” Igor Zolotovitsky noted. – This is a performance created by the guys themselves. Now we say that they should diversify and be able to perform different genres on stage. The production “The Secret of Boo-Dooby-Doo” consists of five operas that the boys wrote, and they themselves act and sing in them. And, most importantly, this is such a family-friendly story, with an age of 6+.
In general, for seven days Yaroslavl viewers watched dramas and comedies, traditional and innovative productions for children and adults. And the main thing is that everything presented was done with soul, enthusiasm and total dedication of the young actors.
But an armored personnel carrier is not only an opportunity to show off, but also an opportunity to gain experience from professionals.
“Every time we prepare for the festival, we come up with something new,” noted Valery Kirillov, artistic director of the Fyodor Volkov Russian Drama Theater. – The student must leave here with professional baggage, having acquired new knowledge. For example, this year our friend Fabio Mangolini, an Italian specialist in commedia dell’arte, came to us. His experience (and he worked a lot in Europe and America) is certainly in demand. I would like our young people and theater students to have the confidence that they are needed in the profession.
The master class by Fabio Mangolini, professor of plastic arts at commedia dell.arte, caused a stir among the BTR participants. Fabio taught to create vivid images through plastic expression, to convey the emotions and mood of a character through body movements and gestures. The teacher played several games to help everyone better understand and implement the ideas of commedia dell’arte.
– The festival is developed on the basis of already established traditions. And among them is the educational project “Shishiginskaya Intensive School”. It appeared in 2022 and is named after Firs Shishigin, the founder of the Yaroslavl theater school, an outstanding director and teacher, said Tatyana Erokhina, rector of the Yaroslavl State Theater Institute. – Within the framework of this project, we bring together students from provincial theater schools who will be able to familiarize themselves with new methods and practice them on their own. This facilitates the exchange of experiences. This year the intensive is dedicated to stage speech, a very important component of interpretation.
From the theater stage to the stock market
In 2021, on the initiative of Sergei Puskepalis, then artistic director of the first Russian theater, BTR launched a special project: “All-Russian Actors Exchange”. Its goal is to help theater school graduates find employment in the future. After all, theater directors from many Russian cities come to the festival. By attending performances, they can evaluate the potential of young actors and invite them to work.
– This is a very important project. Not even the main theater universities can boast of having a 100% employment rate,” commented GITIS rector Grigori Zaslavsky. – We are interested in the fact that by choosing the most talented people from all regions of Russia, we will give someone back. And so that for them such a return is not a symbol of some kind of failure. I am glad that the initiative of Sergei Puskepalis, who was then supported by the Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova, to create the All-Russian Actors Exchange, is continuing to be implemented.
At the “All-Russian Exchange of Actors – 2024” artistic leaders, leading directors and directors of theaters of the country once again came.
