Artistic Director of the Ashgabat Pushkin Theater: we are trying to develop a psychological theater
The State Russian Drama Theatre named after A.S. Pushkin is getting prepared for a big premiere. The Seagull (Chayka), drama by Anton Chekhov, will be staged for the audience of Ashgabat. Formerly, it was already in the repertoire of the Pushkin Theater, and it had a success. What a new reading of the drama? We can know it in May.
ORIENT visited the rehearsal of the performance and talked with Ashirmuhammed Rahmanov, director of the performance and artistic director of the theater.
- Why did you choose the Seagull?
- I really love this drama. Three years ago, I started thinking about how to perform it on our stage. I thought about acting roles. I was looking for an artistic solution of the performance and, finally, I think I found it.
- What your version of the Seagull will be about?
- Anton Pavlovich wrote about life, with all its absurdity, where there is indifference and there is no mutual understanding, about time you cannot stop, and about a person, of course. Well, about love and not-love also. Following the canons, our performance will be about all it.
- Will your version of the Seagull be experimental or academic?
- Most probably, it would be academic. However, there will be experiments. Our performance turns out to be multi-level. Multidimensional. I want it to be understandable even to an unprepared viewer. Though, at the same time, sophisticated aesthetes should be satisfied. In Drama Theater, as opposed to Music Theater, there are no exact and generally accepted criteria. We still aim to understand the other person, as well as ourselves. Once Stanislavsky formulated the formula “from the conscious to the unconscious”, and today science, as well as the psychological theater, are more and more interested in the unconscious. We are trying to develop psychological theater, as one of the directions of the performing arts.
- Would you, please, share your theater plans?
- As a director, I am planning to stage “Hamlet” and “King Lear”. After Chekhov, I would return to Shakespeare. I would say, not back to Shakespeare, but forward, to Shakespeare. Despite plots familiar to the viewer for a long time, from a distance, Shakespeare sees us today much deeper than many modern authors who are trying to analyze the state of a person.
Well, as an artistic director of the theater, I would really like our troupe to go for tour across the CIS countries and the cities of the Russian Federation. I would like to show our performances there, share experiences. Quite often, foreign guests visit our theater. And every time they give high and very warm praise to our performances.
***
Premiere of The Seagull drama at the State Russian Drama Theatre named after A.S.Pushkin will be held in mid-May. The exact date to be announced shortly. Follow up the repertoire of the theater.Andrey PAVLOV
