Oriented on making people closer

Olga Amalina, who once performed at the Pushkin Drama Theater in Ashkhabad, celebrated the anniversary on May 20. Olga Mikhaylovna, who was born in that same victorious May, also has the title of Honored Artist of Russia. She worked in the theaters of Smolensk, Astrakhan, Simferopol, and now she serves for the Ivanovo Drama Theater.

The actress is known not only to Ashgabat, but also to Almaty theater-goers. In Uzbekistan, she starred in the film Rodivshisya v grozu (Born in a Thunderstorm). The story of the birth of the Uzbek national theater and the love of the Russian girl Natasha from the family of Old Believers and the Uzbek artist Muzaffar was filmed by Latif Fayziev 55 years ago.

Here is a review of the “Soviet Screen” about this picture: “Actors of the Uzbek national theater are the heroes of the Rodivshisya v grozu film. Civil war is the action time. Theater masks and guns – Is there can be anything more incompatible? But all the poetry of the film is in these conflicts of opposites.”

The authors of the review about the black-and-white film emphasize, “The characters of heroes are as devoid of halftones as the colors of the film. Everything is sharp, distinct and static. ” And the assumption is made: “Perhaps the style of the film is somehow inspired by the plays that have been performed on the stages of the folk theater in those years?”

Evgeniy Mishkov, one of the youngest actor, shared his memories of the filming that could help to understand the atmosphere in which the film was made:

“I was a 14-year-old student in a music and art boarding school, which was located in Beshagach in those years next to the Art School named after Benkov. Someone from “Uzbekfilm” came to our school and was looking for a teenage boy to voice one episode in the Rodivshisya v grozu film. Natasha brings Muzaffar to her village for the first time. On the fence, there is a Russian guy. Seeing Natasha and Muzaffar, he whistles and sings a chastushka that is of hurt for the guest:

“Natasha thought, she wondered - With whom will I be married in church? No one was attracted ... Sart was finally found! ”

I was offered to sing chastushka. I remember well the sign in one of the corridors - the crew of the Rodivshisya v grozu film and the studio where I sounded this episode. After the movie was released on cinema screens, I watched it only once at the Chaika cinema on Chilanzar.”

It was also a magic time for Olga Mikhaylovna as well. She started to act in films, when she was a student still. “We spent all the time at the movie studios,” the actress told me last anniversary when she was interviewing the newspaper “Rabochiy kray”. “By the way, it was a quite good way to earn good money. But I had never had been dreaming of a cinema career. I think that I do not film well – I look much better in a real life and on stage, rather than in a film.”

In one of scenes, Muzaffar says to his lover: “What if all this is a continuation of the play?” And that phrase can be the key to the whole movie. And the episodes of the film with theatrical stages seem to mix up with the episodes from the performances. So, in short, the film is about the theater, and all the story is of special meaning for the theater actress, of course.

... Olga Mikhaylovna arrived in Turkmenistan from Alma-Ata (she worked for the Lermontov Theater). During the hottest season, artists of the Pushkin Theater of Ashgabat were on tour, and it was a kind of “escape” for the actress. She says that the climate was very hot to get used with as she was born in a Baltic state.

She remembers with pleasure how her father, who was not only a famous volleyball player (who, by the way, trained the national team), but also an experienced fencer – he assisted with fencing scenes in the Romeo and Juliet at Opera House in Riga. Under the clang of metal, the future Honored Artist of Russia and Turkmenistan, who was observing passions in the tagedy written by Shakespear, started to be engaged in the theater playing. So, sometimes a theater doesn’t begin with a hanger ...

“Swords sound like the clinking of a glass, Since childhood, I have been fond of hearing ...”

The lines that the character of Andrei Mironov merrily and lively sings, the actress of the Ivanovo Drama Theater – our heroine – can start her own biography. Olya was good not only in fencing, but also in vocal and in dancing. Now she recalls with a laugh that she was already singing at the age of two, and she could not be taken away from the tree: “Ded Morozs, Santas, my mother’s acquaintances, said: “Take this child away, as she doesn’t let us do the job”. Then, already at school, there was a good theater led by professionals. She received her very first role – Shura Tychinkin in Sombrero.

After graduation of the school, she studied at the choreographic school. She dreamed of ballet and even played the Little Mermaid on the stage of the same Riga Theater. But then it didn’t work out. However, she felt quit at home on the stage of a drama theater. She graduated from the Shchepkin Higher Theatre School, GITIS – the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts, where, being a student, played in the play “Madame Bovary” by Flaubert on the stage of the Maly Theater.

Olga Mikhaylovna Amalina played dozens of bright roles. She played almost everything she wanted. “Perhaps, only the role of mother Courage remained in dreams,” says the actress (a play by Bertolt Brecht – notes by Ed.)

Amalina does not agree with the statement that an actor can not go on stage only in case of death: “Sometimes you go to a performance and think: “Well, what would happen if the play will be canceled today? I just don’t want to play! ” It is not true that "going to work is like going to holiday”. But, after you came to your work, then you start to get used. Also, it was like this, of course: if I had not even been in the theater for a day, this time was considered to be aimlessly lived. ”

Theater is a theater. And personal life is personal life. “There is a family, there is a home, there are a lot of interesting things, and interesting friends,” Olga Mikhaylovna says. “And theater is my work, this is my profession. I cannot do anything else”.

Here, it seems to me, the actress is a bit insincere. She is also a teacher – her students are well acquainted with the Ivanovo theater-goers. Amalina, according to colleagues, perfectly teached the stage movement, put on tricks. Also, over the life, she was engaged in fencing, swimming, gymnastics, and figure skating.

However, in childhood, Amalina, as she herself admits, was a coward. “All it was due to the rich imagination. I immediately imagined what would happen if I made something wrong. And such implements as a balance beam, rings, parallel bars require your mind to be “switched-off”. Therefore, probably, the actress likes more to be a fan of athletes in swimming, biathlon, gymnastics.

“I don’t watch hockey because I’m so nervous, I have no words,” Olga Amalina says. “Pressure is jumping,” her husband Alexander Krasnopolsky adds. And there is a reason: our first conversation with the artist five years ago took place on the eve of important match with the Canadians who defeated the Russian team ...

To recover and to have a good relax, Olga Mikhaylovna goes “silent hunting” (the actress loves to pick porcini mushrooms, orange-cup boletus, autumn honey mushrooms), fishing, and stays at the Actor sanatorium in the beautiful city of Ples on the Volga River, glorified by Levitan. Though, this summer, it is not clear yet if the sanatorium will take visitors. But it is there that a wonderful weather, a favorite vacation, and friends. And if anything, the actress is always ready to take a punch and to give a rebuff – in life and on stage. This is her nature ... These days Olga Amalina receives congratulation messages on her anniversary. We conveyed to her warm wishes from Ashgabat residents as well.

Leonid Kiyashko, Guild of Interethnic Journalism of Russia, city of Ivanovo