The story begins with Vasilyev’s first performance abroad: Lermontov’s “Masquerade” in 1992 at the same “Comédie Francaise”, which, thanks to covid, could be seen online in 2020. The French public did not immediately accept the production, “Masquerade took almost thirty years to rank among the best major productions of the Comédie Française.
The book of the Doctor of Historical Sciences, researcher of theatrical art Natalya Isaeva is an in-depth analysis of Vasiliev’s work, not a success story, but a story about the director’s method of working with actors, his aesthetics, his victories and defeats.
But still, it is worth remembering how twenty years of creative “wanderings” of the director abroad began. Vasiliev graduated from the directing department of GITIS and was accepted into the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater under the direction of Oleg Efremov.
In 1987, Anatoly Aleksandrovich founded and directed the Moscow Theater School of Dramatic Art, and in 2001, the premiere of the play Six Characters in
author’s search “, a new theater building was opened on Sretenka. But the happiness did not last long, five years later, Vasiliev was dismissed from the post of artistic director of the theater that he created by the Moscow City Committee for Culture . .. This is how the years of wandering began, which Natalya Isaeva tells about in the book.In addition, her essays here are excerpts from the press about the director’s work and even letters from Vasiliev himself as comments on Isaeva’s text.
And yet this is the opinion not only of a professional, but also of a friend, who was the author of the director. He was, because he never saw the book, he passed away suddenly. The book ends with touching excerpts from the hero’s correspondence with the author.
Natalia Isaeva’s book on Anatoly Vasiliev is not only the vision of a professional, but also that of a friend.
In Moscow, Anatoly Vasilyev does not often work today, but this year the public will have the opportunity to meet the work of the master – at the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov, the premiere is scheduled: “The novice artistic director, as he calls himself, Konstantin Yuryevich Khabensky invited me to the house. The seagull will slowly creep backstage, the curtain will open and appear on the stage tablet, but – What awaits me on the sacred stage of the Art Theater through fifty years of engagement, marriage and divorce? In May-June 1973, Efremov accepted me into a group of trainees, exactly fifty years from this date to the premiere, the whole life, what will it be, the premiere, according to what text, who is the author? Not Russian, no! In Paris, in 1992, the Russian tragedy Masquerade by Lermontov was presented on the stage of the Comedie Francaise , so why not present the classic of the French avant-garde, the author of Western Pier, who has died, on the stage of the Moscow theater of AIDS at the age of forty-one, Bernard-Marie Coltes!.. This is what I will say: here is The West Dock is the hangar of the world ndo, a reality that does not exist, the place is conditional, epic, a meta-place, as the author’s story shows. It is not the state of climate and weather, there is no such real place with such space weather. As if Koltes did not write a play, but a poem in monologues, dialogues and scenes. The genre of this thing is a poem in a drama. A poem in drama form. Posting is impossible! Impossible – difficult! .. “
In a word, we are waiting.
