I don't want to learn, I want to be creative: Kazan Youth Theater has staged a hip-hop comic in the style of Steampunk, but has radically updated the textbook play "Nedorosl", creating a performance that makes teenagers think about the future.
Director Norets-turned a textbook play, well-known to everyone in the school curriculum, into a hip-hop music comic. It is clear for what purpose - to contact the" target audience " - teenagers from 12 years and older.
No less significant contribution to the new reading of Noretz himself, who took on the duties of a set designer and designed the spectacle in the steampunk style. The features of this style stem from the following fantastic assumption: steam engines and other retro technologies have not disappeared, but have reached the highest development.
The speculative idea of steampunk will be replaced by a clear, visible understanding of it after watching "Nedorosl". Noretz developed the assumption of the existence of retro technology by theatrical means and created an artistically integral alternative world, where technological progress proceeds differently-there are no computers, mobile phones and artificial materials. But there are shimmering beer mugs, a mechanical exercise machine, a treadmill that is set in motion by rotating the handle, a mysterious video mod that occasionally switches the action to a cartoon format, as well as numerous interior items constructed from iron pipes and pressure gauges.
In all this, Norets is not a pioneer - in such aesthetics, many performances for children and young people have already been staged in Moscow. But the Kazan people have not seen such a thing yet.
If you are a theater-goer, you will always enjoy the creative personality of the favorite actors of the Kazan Youth Theater. However, some of them will have to be recognized with difficulty because of steampunk, which turned them into cyborgs-robots that combine mechanical and biological principles. First of all, this affected the actors who play positive characters, which are the most sketchy in Fonvizin - not so much live and act, but rather talk at length on moral and political topics and teach lessons in noble virtues.
For example, Pravdin (Pavel Gustov) has a bulky installation of lenses and light filters on his face; Starodum (Mikhail Merkushin) shakes a powerful iron hand; the brave officer Milon (Kamil Gataullin) glitters with a brass shoulder (he is the only one of all who is not afraid of friendly pats from Starodum); Taras Skotinin, Mitrofan's uncle (Ilfat Sadykov), appears in the image of a zombie rugby player, who has increased the volume of the body monstrous size; math teacher Tsy Firk Eun (Ilnur Garifullin) steps across the stage with a stiff, wired leg that looks like a bioprosthesis.
Without difficulty, in the role of Eremeyevna, Mitrofan's mother, in a cap decorated with gears, you can recognize Galina Yurchenko, and in Mrs. Prostakova with an iron index finger-the beautiful Elena Nenasheva. And only Vyacheslav Kazantsev, who plays henpecked Terenty Prostakov, is dressed plainly - in pants with suspenders and a shirt front, his bare shoulders, apparently, hint at how psychologically the dominant spouse is able to undress a man.
Most of the actors, apparently, enjoy frolicking in the proposed steampunk circumstances, especially a lot of applause (during the show on January 10) was broken by the duo of mathematician Tsy Firk Yn and literacy teacher Kuteikin (Niyaz Zinnatullin), then Adam Adamovich Vralman (Alexey Zilber) joined them and gave the heat.
But Pavel Gustov did not change his reserved, thoughtful manner of playing in a hip-hop performance. "At first I wasn't very comfortable with the metalwork on my face," he says, " but then I got over that part of the look. There was no great resistance. I believe that the theater as an institution, in principle, should not create a separate way of communication with teenagers."
But what stood out from the general dashing mood was the noble intonation, full of reverence for the original text of Fonvizin, with which Mikhail Merkushin uttered the remarks of Starodum (an honest businessman of the XVIII century). And this is not surprising, since the actor believes that the play of Norets should be called something else, so that " poor Fonvizin does not turn over in his grave, and the audience would understand that this is not the same "Nedorosl", but a play written by today's nedorosl".
Meanwhile, in the play, there is a separate, by the will of the director, acting ensemble, representing the "younger tribe" - this is the tailor Trishka (aka DJ Tri-fun; Yaroslav Katz), the nedorosl Mitrofan (aka rapper Mi-fun, Valery Antonov) and Sofia (Maria Mukhortova), who does not behave sedately, as befits a marriageable girl, but indulges with friends in the fun of adolescence on the shore of Lake Prostoe. All of them are opposed to the adult world, which is absurd in its pragmatism, and they do not look grotesque at all. Sofia is even romantic, despite the steampunk outfit: she is wearing a Victorian-era blouse, a corset that emphasizes femininity and grace; a skirt with a bustle in the form of multiple assemblies that give the figure pomp and volume.
