The play elephants on asphalt by roles. Elephants on asphalt. The Bolshoi Drama Theater named after Kachalov returns to Kazan. And they bring their performance "Golden Elephant" with which they won the hearts of Russians and left their mark on the cultural layer of Sochi. Here's how I saw it

MARCH 2016

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Some of these magical stories were written a very long time ago. Let's say, without exaggeration, about forty years (if not more) ago. It so happened that one day, still young and unintelligent, fate threw their author into a tiny garden, located with several of its trees and bushes next to the Lion's Bridge, which was thrown over the Griboedov Canal.

Oh, it was a wonderful time! Then people lived not in order to earn money, but in order to enjoy life: along the canal there were huge very beautiful poplar trees and boats and boats turned upside down, and the embankment was paved with the most beautiful black faceted paving stones in the world. Among other things, not far from the garden, along the embankment, the rails of the 36th, almost always empty, tram, also, apparently, walked around the city just like that.

This amazing oasis struck the author's imagination so much that he decided to stay in it as long as possible - he made friends and acquaintances nearby, and in general tried to visit here as often as possible, completely, however, not understanding what he was so irresistibly attracted to here. Until finally he made one very important discovery: it turned out that on one of the benches of the above-described garden, sometimes it is possible to compose small stories of predominantly magical content.

There were exactly five of them composed in those former times.

Then everything changed: the place of romantics was replaced by pragmatists everywhere. They replaced the strongest precious paving stones, on which more than one generation of Petersburgers walked and drove, with banal asphalt - as if they had rolled a big gray pancake around the city. Canceled walking unnecessary, by the standards of common sense, the tram. For some reason, most of the old poplars were cut down. The boats and boats that interfered with them were removed from the canal. And on the site of a cozy garden, they piled up a very ordinary house, as it turned out, that once stood here a very long time ago. (True, even now, having penetrated into his yard, one can find two or three preserved trees from the former ones and a few bushes that miraculously survived.) As a result of the destruction carried out by the pragmatists, life in the city became boring.

The next generation of Petersburgers may want to change it: they will return strong, faceted wonderful paving stones to their place. It will lay out romantic boats and boats along the canal embankment. He will start up the old unnecessary tram No. 36 and plant new trees in the place of the disappeared ones. It will be able to restore normal life according to the drawings saved by the author. fairy tales, to which several more were added over time, but written already in our uncomfortable times.

We want to bring to your attention one of these magical stories of the past.

Andrey Zinchuk

It was neither winter, nor autumn, nor spring, nor summer, but something like nothing else, when the sky is all in gray spots, which makes it seem that it will never end, and if it ever ends, then such a thing will come after it. or, God forbid, even worse!

There was an old house. There was a dark yard-well. A crushing repair was going on in the yard - a heavy roller roared back and forth on hot asphalt with a roar.

A little artist lived in the house, who was tired of the renovation. And then one day ... Once he took a mirror, caught a ray of cold sun with it and drew a bunny under his window - on the pavement, where there was a shadow - a big Elephant. He looked at him and smiled: the Elephant was lying with his four legs spread out to the sides, and seemed to be dreaming of something.

Then, snorting and spitting diesel fuel, a skating rink rolled up to the Elephant and wound it around his huge iron drum. And the Elephant rode the drum back and forth, back and forth, and the skating rink began to print big sunny Elephants on the pavement.

The elephants turned out to be similar to each other, like brothers, but at the same time a little different (the asphalt, like so much in this City, was laid at random). So, one of them turned out to be fat, the other thin, the third short, the fourth had a bad tail, the fifth, sixth and tenth looked quite decent, and the eleventh - the smallest - made, frankly, a frivolous impression. The twelfth was less fortunate than the others - he was left completely without ears.

And the driver at that time was turning the wheel of the unloved rink, pulling the poisonous Belomor and mumbling a cheerful song through his teeth. Finally, he noticed that instead of smoothly rolled asphalt, he gets the devil knows what (it doesn’t look like anything!), He stopped the skating rink and went up to the Elephant, who, during the journey along the hot asphalt, stuck so tightly to the drum that it seemed that there was no , no way to tear it off.

“Here I am, homeless child!” - said the Machinist and picked the Elephant with a tire iron. But only scratched the drum.

Then the Machinist pulled out of his pocket a puff, bought for dinner by his beloved wife, and thrust it under the nose of the Elephant. The elephant wagged its tail for joy, and the Machinist grabbed it by the tail and tore it away from the drum. The elephant flew through the air and plopped onto the asphalt. Then he got up, swayed and wandered along the wall, dissatisfied with the fact that he was not allowed to ride.

The driver climbed into the cab, backed up and drove off for lunch.

The rest of the Elephants rose from the asphalt themselves, without outside help, due to one of the main reasons for everything that happens in the world: out of curiosity. And out of curiosity, they dispersed around the City. Everyone chose a darker corner for himself and began to wait for the sunset - not without reason, he feared that the gloomy sun could easily deal with him - just catch his eye!

Elephants took to the streets at night. True, they faded a lot during the evening - after all, they had to illuminate the darkest corners - but, nevertheless, they remained quite pretty Elephants.

The lanterns came on. And then, when the dead of night came, and precisely at the time when the lanterns were most needed, they went out. And then the inhabitants of the City prepared, as usual, to swear, each in his own way:

- What darkness! one would frown.

- They lit it here! .. Not a single lantern! another would mutter.

- How can I get home? - the third would have lamented at this time and wandered in the dark in the opposite direction from his house. But this time there were no troubles: one of the Elephants blocked his way, and in the faintly flickering light, a belated passerby managed to read the name of a strange street and a strange house number. He immediately turned back, and the Elephant quietly trailed behind in the hope of gratitude.

The second Elephant perched at the drainpipe and watched the drops of night dew collect on its cold surface.

The third leaned on the embankment and started a long conversation with the fishermen about the delights of night fishing.

The fourth went to visit his brothers in the Zoo.

The fifth, sixth and tenth just wandered around the City. And the eleventh snored peacefully in the gateway near the janitor's pantry. The twelfth was lucky, as always, less than others - he had to reconcile two quarreling lovers. And then, as with capricious children, wander around the City all night long, so that they do not quarrel again or that someone does not offend them.

Here, now here, now in the street, now in the doorway, and even on the roof of the house dim lights flashed, and from them one could guess that the sunny Elephant was swaying through the City.

Distrustful townspeople reacted to these events in different ways. Basically, as is often the case, no one understood anything:

- Elephant? In the park? At night?! I do not believe! And I don't believe your word!

- On the roof? Saw? Whom? Like this? .. With these eyes of yours? Go sleep!

- At night? Elephant? Highlighted the house number? You'd better check your wallet, dumbass!

And by the morning - the case is ready - ominous rumors have blossomed that a gang of circus performers and illusionists are operating in the City.

These rumors also reached the Machinist's family. He was woken up by neighbors who brought the news that a group of malevolent persons had stolen his unloved skating rink from home! (Which was immediately checked out of the window by the Machinist's Beloved wife, and which, of course, turned out to be a 100% lie!)

By morning, not only the entire militia was put on its feet, but also - is it a joke? - and the city's Hunting Society. With guns. And - scary to say - networks!

And not a single crime was committed in the City that night! A shimmering mountain suddenly grew before the eyes of the robber, hiding in a dark corner - someone strong and fearless wandered the streets of the City in the dead time of dislike, at the hour of robbery. And, not feeling his feet under him, not understanding the road, the robber ran away, away from the place of the terrible meeting.

When in the morning the Elephants, tired of night duty, gathered together on the Main Square of the City, they were licked off the asphalt by an indifferent morning...

But in the evening they appeared again, and again wandered the streets, shone, put things in order and did not let boring sleepy citizens fall asleep. And among the citizens there was a rumor that the White Nights had returned to the City.

At the St. Petersburg Russian State Institute of Performing Arts (as the State Academy of Theater Arts is now called) at the Faculty of Puppet Theater (course of the Honored Artist of Russia Irina Kirillovna Laskari) they started rehearsing this story - restoration work began in the city according to the saved drawings of fairy tales!

In the Children's Library of History and Culture of St. Petersburg, on Marata Street, 72 (branch No. 2 of the Central City Children's Library named after A.S. Pushkin), for many years now live "TALES OF OUR CITY" - an amazing and magical joint project of the faculty of the puppet theater of the RGISI and Libraries (project coordinator — Mira Lvovna VASIUKOVA, head of the library).

The project manager, St. Petersburg playwright Andrey ZINCHUK, says:

“The children come to fairy tales that are written about our city, or fairy tales that were born directly in it, because it is they who are the living, secret, magical and immortal soul of St. Petersburg, touching which at least once, you can understand why and what makes our city so truly beautiful and unusual and how it differs from hundreds of thousands of other cities.”

Director of the sketch of the future performance "ELEPHANTS ON ASPHALT" -
Natalya KHOKHLOVA (4th director's course of the Russian Academy of Arts, professor N. P. NAUMOVA),

Artist Laurita STRELKA (3rd year of production designers of the Russian Federation, professor V. G. KHOVRALEVOY).

Actors - 2nd year Ph.D. Russian Federation, Associate Professor I. K. LASKARI:

V. CHERNYAVSKY,
A. BULYGINA,
M. GELSHTEIN,
Yu. ZHURAVSKAYA,
P. GLAGOLEV,
P. ERYSHEV, D.
RABINOVICH,
M. TIMOFEEVA,
A. LARKIN -

All from the faculty of the puppet theater of the St. Petersburg Russian State Institute of Performing Arts.

Magazine "Koster" congratulates
ALL wonderful students and teachers of the Faculty of Puppet Theater RGISI
Happy International Puppeteer's Day on March 21

in the Children's Library of History and Culture of St. Petersburg on the street. Marata, 72

In the White Hall of the library, there are real theatrical scenery and real preparation for the event - a sketch of the future performance:

They let in the little spectators-schoolchildren who were waiting in front of the door of the hall:

Playwright Andrey Zinchuk and head. library Mira Lvovna Vasyukova- a few words about the continuation of the project "Tales of our city" (joint work of the library and the faculty of the puppet theater of the St. Petersburg State Academy of Theater Arts):

Before the performance, the traditional warm-up of the hands of puppeteers:

Children are happy to repeat it:

Well, now, actually, the show itself.
But if earlier students did stage readings, then today's show is already a sketch of a play based on Andrey Zinchuk's fairy tale "Elephants on Asphalt". Looking ahead, we note that after watching the work of the students, the head of the 2nd acting course, I. K. Laskari, suggested that the student director Natasha Khokhlova continue working on the performance in order to include it in the repertoire of her course.
Some of the most salient points:

If in a nutshell about the amazing events taking place in this tale, then this is the story of the Solar Elephants. The first of them was painted with a sunbeam on the pavement by a little Artist, and then rolled out on the hot pavement by the Big Roller, which is used to roll the pavement. The Solar Elephants imprinted on it as a result of exciting adventures conquered the City, and in the end arranged White Nights in it. Something like that ():

Applause:

Producer Natasha Khokhlova about this work:

Belated bows (the actors forgot about them from excitement):

Coordinator Vasyukova Mira Lvovna, head of the library

... about us, and the golden elephant is a myth that we live by

The topical comedy-joke "Elephant", written by playwright Alexander Kopkov in the early 30s and presented by the children's variety theater "Boys and Girls", combines a simple plot, humor and topicality, telling about how the collective farmer Mochalkin (Andrey Lyubomirov ) there was a dream to get rich, and he suddenly disappeared. Partly the reason for this was Guryan's older, very learned son Mitrei (Maxim Ivanov), who slipped a bourgeois book to the father. He did this so that the parent would hate the damned bourgeois, and the father saw something else: how, having money, you can have fun.

Guryan's family, collective farmers, are wondering where he could have gone. Martha's wife (Angelina Biryukova) saw only how the father of the family ran in boots along the beds to the Volga.

- We will find alive - we will warm it, and dead - we will bury it as a party member! - the chairman of the collective farm Ivan Davydovich (Artem Chizhov) speaks harshly, concerned about how the harvest will go.

And now Guryan appears, and in his bosom is a golden elephant. There is a commotion in the family: what to do with it? Son Mitreya offers to hand over to the police, the eldest daughter (Elizaveta Kurakina), who has sat up in the brides, to gouge out at least one diamond eye and sew an outfit. The discovery becomes known to the entire village.

“We are all relatives on the collective farm, which means we need to grow rich together!” — such is the verdict of the public.

When seating guests at the table with refreshments and last year's kvass, the hosts hope that they will forget why they came. Guryan talks about the find, that he wanted to give it to the bank, but the voice inside whispered "bury it in the ground."

“Don’t resurrect kulaks in the collective farmers,” his son advises him.

- I'll give it to the collective farm, but what honor do I have? Guryan exclaims.

- We will erect a monument on the grave, Semyon Yegorovich Tsaplin (Yegor Drozhzhin) will play the balalaika for you!

This does not suit the party member, and the guests are driven away.

Before they leave, shouting: “Well, you can’t run away empty-handed ?!”, they arrange a search in the Mochalkins’ hut, grab whatever they can get their hands on.

A little later, Father Lukyan (Stepan Zhdanov) enters their house through the chimney. Having learned that the devil wanted to buy Guryan's soul for a million, he is ready to sell his own and exclaims:

- Millen? They won't let me, I know my priest's filthy soul! And don’t give the capital to the peasants, they will generally forget God with money. Let's build a church!

In thought, what to do, Guryan is ready to hang himself, rather than "give away the elephant without effect."

- People live on the same land, but happiness is different. For some, an elephant is happiness, but for me, at least die! he complains.

The decision comes unexpectedly: to build an airship and fly to a place where there is no crisis, for example, to Jupiter or America, where no one will definitely prevent you from becoming a bourgeois, Mr. Cooper.

Fly in a hot air balloon a better life not at all against and pop.

But the plans of the comrades who entered into an agreement were not destined to come true. The elephant ends up in the hands of the chairman, Ivan Davydovich, who intends to break off at least the tail for the needs of the collective farm. And the Guryan family will have to keep their word before the people's court.

“We will defend the court and live well,” he reassures the family.

And at that moment, an unloaded berdanka shoots, with which loved ones scared each other every now and then.

“The stick shoots for sin,” Martha sighs at the end of the performance ...

For a long time the play "Elephant" was banned "for slandering Soviet reality." Its author fell into disgrace and was repressed. In July 1941, Alexander Kopkov went to the front and died in September 1942. In the theatrical environment, interest in the work of Kopkov (he managed to write only two plays, the second - "Tsar Potap") resumed only at the turn of the century.

For senior group theater group "Boys and Girls" (Andrey Lyubomirov, Angelina Biryukova, Maxim Ivanov, Elizaveta Kurakina, Artem Chizhov, Elizaveta Polynskaya, Stepan Zhdanov, Yegor Drozhzhin, Victoria Yakovleva, Alina
Nikolaeva, Anastasia Gusakova, Artem Pirozhok) the play "Elephant" became a graduation. Each of the young actors played many bright and memorable roles in DET. Here's what the guys are saying.

Egor Drozhzhin:

- For me, for all the years in DET, the most memorable role is Makhita in the play "The Threepenny Opera". She made me feel like a different person. This hero has a different character than me, different behavior, he is guided by different principles. This difference is intriguing. And take on the role high level Perhaps the most difficult job for an actor. And I was helped to get used to the role by watching movies, photographs of the proposed era, of course, the actors playing with me on the set, the huge energy of our director. Olga Anatolyevna Kresnitskaya knows how to unite with a single creative work, and each of us becomes part of a collective process in which we are "tied" to each other, and we have no right to let the team down.

Andrey Lyubomirov:

- I can hardly name the exact number of roles played. At first they were minor, then they became more and more significant. At the beginning of the journey, it was difficult for me because of my lack of sociability. As I studied and communicated with the guys, I joined the team and became part of the DET. By graduation, I was entrusted with the main role of Guryan Mochalkin in the play "Elephant", which I am very happy about. My character is the owner of vices: stinginess, boasting, cowardice.

Getting used to the role was sometimes difficult. Olga Anatolyevna helped, guiding me. If the opportunity presents itself, I would like to replay all my roles again in order to play them even better. All the years in DET are wonderful, fruitful, full of joy and new emotions. It is a pity that the classes have come to an end. April 15 is our graduation party.

Elizabeth Kurakina:

- DET's theatrical life is an exciting, intense work on the role, on oneself. I remember very well the role of Polly in The Threepenny Opera. Firstly, it was my first major role, and secondly, this girl was close to me in spirit. But no matter how close the hero is to you, every time we all did a great job. And especially our mentor Olga Anatolyevna. Over the years, there was everything in DET, but as it should, only positive moments are more clearly remembered, which added a lot of bright colors to my childhood and youth. The knowledge that Olga Anatolyevna gave us will definitely help. The performance is life from the outside. Participation in productions helps to learn lessons for real life. We are DEATH actors, one family.

Angelina Biryukova:

- For 12 years, the Palace of Culture has become a second home for me, and Olga Anatolyevna has become a second mother. Over the years there have been a lot of wonderful moments, behind a lot of roles played. The most memorable? .. Probably the role of Martha. In the play "Elephant" I played the main role for the first time. It was not very difficult for me, because I had long dreamed of playing just such a role. This performance will be remembered for a lifetime, because it is the last. I will not go to study in the field of theater and cinema.

The head of the children's variety theater "Boys and Girls" Olga Kresnitskaya:

- We always select the repertoire for the existing cast, literally by the number of actors. And, of course, according to their knowledge, skills and creative experience. The main thing is to bring everything together. It is noted that in the process of creativity, the guys are friendlier than sometimes in ordinary communication. Each of them is individual. I love individuality, dissimilarity in people, so I “sharpen” their creative style.

In the 30-40s of the last century, the author of the play "Elephant" was banned, this fact was worth paying attention to. It is difficult to play something that did not fit into the generally accepted framework, but these frameworks are strong and tough, with a mark of quality, as they say. And they are still present in the lives of many people. And the "Elephant" is actually a protest that did not become happiness and the road to the fulfillment of a dream. And the life of the protagonist should return to the right track ...

Comedy is hard to do. For children, this is another step in skill and creativity. They got the job done, which made me very happy. It is wonderful that they have the desire and desire to please others.

Editorial note . The premiere of "Elephant" was a great success. The performance could not fail, because the young actors created a kind of "gift for the collection of elephants" that their leader collects. (In the collection of Olga Anatolyevna there are more than a thousand elephants from the most different materials and corners of the world).

Good luck, our children!

May all your bold plans come true!

The Bolshoi Drama Theater named after Kachalov returns to Kazan. And they bring their performance "Golden Elephant" with which they won the hearts of Russians and left their mark on the cultural layer of Sochi. And here is how the correspondent of the portal “First Kazansky” saw this action.

The Bolshoi Drama Theater named after Kachalov returns to Kazan. And they bring their performance "Golden Elephant" with which they won the hearts of Russians and left their mark on the cultural layer of Sochi. And here is how the correspondent of the portal “First Kazansky” saw this action.

Scenario for builders of collective farms

A lot has been written and said about the time of merciless dispossession and collectivization, but repetition, as you know, is the mother of all ignoramuses. In one of the dense collective farms of the distant region, disaster struck: a party comrade by the name of Mochalkin disappeared. He left at night for the fence of his native village, and only in the dense forest they saw him. And the fugitive was laid by his own wife. While the entire collective farm was deciding and thinking what to do with the brat, and where to look for him, when there were not enough people even for an urgent harvest, the general village deserter suddenly showed up. Yes, not one, but with a million in the armpit. The family were so delighted with the appearance of the father in their own house that they almost strangled him for joy, and they did not shoot him inadvertently. Guryan Mochalkin began to tell his household how he found the cave with the treasures of Stenka Razin, and in the darkest corner stood a huge golden elephant with eyes made of precious stones. The mercenary neighbors unexpectedly found out about the royal find and trumpeted about the gold-diamonds throughout Ivanovo. An angry collegiate meeting was not long in coming. Gathering in a flock and grabbing a button accordion and banners like "Hammer and Sickle" for intimidation, the disgruntled comrades went to the house of the newly-minted millionaire - to dispossess the kulaks. Guryan is not a bastard, he is not drunk, he quickly realized what was happening. Having safely hidden the treasure of medieval ancestors, he ordered the stove to be heated, and hotter, in order to engage in the manufacture of a fake of the golden national collective farm property in home-hut conditions. But no matter how hard Mochalkin tried, his deceit was revealed. The people were indignant because they deprived him of the people's freebie. And then the village "Rockefeller" decided to run away, or rather, fly under the cover of night with his golden pet, until the deprived fellow villagers, angry, turned him into food for local pigs. Having built, again at home, a steam plane, such as Balloon, Guryan went with his belongings from gold to the distant planet Neptune, to hide from collective farm persecution. And everything would be fine, because the sly one ascended over the roofs and did not fly far. Pulled him suddenly back to the ground from the cherished floating basket. He stepped outside, and flew down, but without the elephant. The precious elephant waved his trunk and disappeared behind the clouds, and Mochalkin landed exactly in a dunghill, breaking through a pigsty in flight, killing a collective farm hog, and leaving the sow ahead of schedule a widow and forever a stutterer. Miraculously, he remained intact, but while he was saying hello to the earth, he decided to have bees for himself in order to feed his family and speculate with honey in the city on weekends. Here he is, a Soviet entrepreneur, no longer a millionaire, but Guryan Guryanovich Mochalkin.

Meanwhile in the auditorium

From the beginning of the performance, quiet horror reigned. At the sight of the Soviet theme actively developing on the stage, the audience was extremely wary of the continuation of the frightening prospect of another "Baba Chanel". The costumes were somewhat reminiscent of sketches for the Threepenny Opera outfits, but with a large touch of leather and fur steampunk. The situation was significantly relieved with the appearance of Mochalkin's "Ostap" in an incomparable performance by Mikhail Galitsky (I still wonder why he is only the People's Republic of Tatarstan, and not the Russian Federation - unfairly). Comrade artist, frankly, saved the day! But the adventures in the fairy tale did not end there. The eldest son of Mochalkin is a scientist in the institutes and fighting for a just cause. Moreover, to such an extent that he is ready to give the people his enterprising father with all the giblets. A kind of overgrown Pavlik Morozov. But a portion of cuffs from Guryan quickly puts the brains in place. The younger son, on the contrary, honors the parent, loves and unquestioningly obeys everything without hesitation. More precisely, he simply has nothing to think about, since a flashlight shines through from one ear through the other. The daughter dreams of marriage and new bots. At what it is not entirely clear what is nicer to her. Based on the plot, it becomes clear that the latter. Mochalkin's wife also does not shine with an IQ level, but this does not prevent her from loving her unlucky family man and taking care of him. The villagers are an insolent and brutal crowd, lazy and greedy for someone else's good for nothing. We settled very comfortably on what anyone has, then certainly in common. And let the Negroes work in the banana grove, not the plantations of America, but here we have a collective farm of great loafers.

Verdict

The play turned out to be very lively, light and unpredictable, telling that if a person has a head on his shoulders and at least some share of ingenuity, then he will not disappear anywhere: even on Jupiter, even in overseas America. As a result, the audience gave a standing ovation, but the curtain was still not lowered. The actors did not want to say goodbye to the audience. For they will see each other in the old place in the new environment only next year. And now that's all, the theater is closed for repairs, there will be no performance, the troupe has gone on tour.

Data:

1) The play by Alexander Kopkov "The Elephant", written in 1932, almost at the same time as the books by Ilf and Petrov, for unknown reasons, is a rarely shown theatrical work.

2) The Kazan Academic Russian Bolshoi Drama Theater named after V.I.Kachalov was founded in 1791 as a public theater that gave regular performances at rented venues. In 1802, a wooden building for the theater was built, and in 1849-1852. Kachalovsky already has a permanent stone building.

Increasingly, life, and not only theatrical, gives me reasons to remember that my literary specialty is the Soviet 1920s. The desire to analyze in hindsight - and along the way, an attempt to make forecasts for the near future (well, or vice versa ... tasks can be prioritized in different ways) - how changes and hopes lead to stagnation, terror and war, reasonably encourage us to turn to the period of the first ( and the last, I would clarify ...) decades of Soviet power. As for theaters, they show an active, increased attention to dramaturgy, in general to the literature of the 1920s, looking for rare works, which may not deserve special reverence in themselves, or are valuable in the context of historical and literary, but with difficulty adapted to today's artistic standards. Extremely weak plays by Andrey Platonov are staged, and in unimaginable numbers; the opuses of authors whose names have long been forgotten - although they once thundered - are also staged.

Kopkov is from this series, and it’s not that his “Elephant” (1932) is completely “lost”, but the few productions on the periphery did not make the weather, and for a full-fledged “return from non-existence” the play objectively lacks a lot: it’s in the spirit time worked out "booze" satire on irresponsible fellow citizens, who are prevented by "remnants of the past" from building a "bright future", but the satire is honest, and therefore ambiguous, double-edged. According to the plot, Guryan Mochalkin, not at all an anti-Soviet, on the contrary, a collective farmer and a candidate for party membership, even finds the "treasure of Stenka Razin" - the golden elephant! - and tries to hide it, makes a clay model with the expectation to deceive fellow countrymen, and not to make the gold public property, but to appropriate it, to keep it. His obtuse wife and cunning daughter support him, the "ideological" son is not very good, but when the scam with the dummy fails, the "ideological" son-scientist makes a "holder" at the sight of his father's Berdanka, on which Mochalkin expects to fly to America, and if in America crisis, then to where there are neither collective farms, nor crises, even to Jupiter. He didn’t fly far, but he landed, he didn’t kill himself.

Sergei Barkhin designed the space, as one would expect, with an eye on the architecture and design of the constructivism of the 20s, the name Melnikov is present as an element of the red and white decoration, reminiscent of the "book" of the Mosselprom house. Appropriate accessories - sickles and hammers, hats and budennovkas - are included in the kit. A somewhat redundant, overloaded soundtrack (there are few phonograms - the characters themselves, for any reason, are taken to sing in chorus) is deliberately composed of conditionally Soviet hits from songs of the civil war to marches from films of the second half of the 1930s, which, probably, confuses few people, but in my opinion, it introduces some chronological confusion, because there is a big difference between the period of the civil war, the time of the "great turning point", industrialization and collectivization, and between the "great turning point" and the "great terror" there is a huge difference, although it is with the so-called . The "great turning point" is associated with the appearance of the abbreviation SLON. Chronological nuances in working with Soviet literature of the 1920s-1930s is a serious problem for both literary critics and historians, and for, in particular, theater practitioners today.

Guryan Guryanych Mochalkin from Kopkov's "Elephant" - a rural, collective farm version of Semyon Semenych Podsekalnikov from Erdman's "Suicide", a rural "philistine" who is not against the Soviet regime, but also to act, all the more, he is not ready to sacrifice something for the new world, but he would sit out, lie down; Mochalkin was also more fortunate, he has in his "asset" not just liver sausage, but a million worth of gold. But what shines for him with this gold on "collective farm land" is also clear. The Podsekalnikovs and Mochalkins were ridiculed by playwrights until the turn of the playwrights themselves came (Erdman thundered to Siberia, Kopkov died at the beginning of the war). And yet, today's righteous desire to replace the original accusatory pathos of these purely satirical plays with a humanistic message, well, at least in the subtext, runs into resistance from the material: the ambiguity, suspicious in the 1920s and 30s, today turns into the opposite side, but does not disappear and so easily you won't discard.

What is valuable in Yanovskaya’s performance is that one wants to sympathize with Mochalkin, but it’s impossible to consider him an innocent victim, at least I didn’t succeed, despite the repeated reminder of another SLON, the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp, artificially introduced into the source text, which sounds (on a phonogram recorded personally by Henrietta Naumovna) as an epigraph and then repeated constantly throughout two acts; despite the seemingly piercing, despite the fact that, honestly, a rather predictable finale with a shot from an unloaded Berdanka (however, Guryanych and his wife fall "shot" to immediately rise up with a question - that is, not to complete death seriously, their martyrdom is quite "farce"). Still, it’s clear as broad daylight - give this guryan, “with an elephant”, the opportunity to realize his dreams - and it won’t seem enough, it’s still not known which prospect is scarier, the one that came soon (and they didn’t shoot any more , and those that denounced them, which is typical!), Or the one about which Mochalkin dreams, overturning one mug of moonshine after another “for dreaminess”.

Communicating with Ginkas after the premiere, I had the opportunity to tell Kama Mironovich that in the Vilnius Museum of the Holocaust, where the staff, admittedly, had heard little about Ginkas, the laminated pages of the book of Myronas Ginkas’ memoirs of the Kaunas ghetto were exhibited in a place of honor - in response, Ginkas told me an even more surprising story, which he himself learned relatively recently: in the 1920s, Ginkas’ own maternal grandfather wrote a utopia in Yiddish, published in Kharkov, and later translated into English (a fact in the book of interviews between Ginkas and Yanovskaya “What was it " was not included, because the edition came out earlier). Kama Mironovich himself cannot judge the literary merits of his grandfather's opus, not knowing the language, but something else is important here: the 1920s are the time of utopias, and by no means dystopias, and it is impossible, wrong to ignore this fact, referring from today to prosaic masterpieces or dramatic "non-masterpieces" by Andrey Platonov, which is simpler for authors, but of the same era and thinking in the same categories. Accused later of being "anti-Soviet", they were not conscious "anti-Soviet", nor were they "prophets"; they were, each on their own artistic level, honest chroniclers, and at the same time, enjoying relative creative freedom for the time being, they did not adapt to ideological clichés, and the clichés themselves were still in the process of crystallization (that's why the end of the 1920s and the middle of the 1930s -x is not possible).

The genre of dystopia in its modern sense, for example, dates back to Zamyatin's "We", and this is 1920 - in 1931 Zamyatin left the USSR forever, but having lived in Paris, he did not renounce Soviet citizenship. In fact, one can dig deeper, recall Bryusov’s “Republic of the Southern Cross” and go on through the centuries, however, the canon of the dystopian genre in its current perception, initially as precisely “anti-Soviet”, was just being formed in the 20-30s: “Oh marvelous new world", "Blinding Darkness", "1984" - and even later spread widely, when the "leftists", not without prompting from Moscow, quickly saddled this trend directed against them, the dystopia became "humanistic", that is, anti-bourgeois, aiming at capitalism, a consumer society ; all these "Bradburys" went sideways. But at least even Stanislav Lem, his "Solaris", "Magellan Cloud" - are they utopias or dystopias? In general, Soviet science fiction of the 1960-80s, the fantasy of the socialist camp, this endlessly replicated "Strugatsky" the world - is it "anti-" or what, after all, it quite officially existed "under the guise" of "humanism" and "anti-bourgeoisness"?!

Nevertheless, in practice, performances based on Soviet plays and prose of the 1920s today - contribute to this and the contradictions of the era embedded in them by the most serious authors - consistently, persistently try to rethink the material as an anti-utopia through the prism of later historical and artistic experience; to see in it prophecy, warning, skepticism and fear - and not a dream, not faith. So Semyon Semenych Podsekalnikov in Sergei Zhenovach in "The Suicide" turns out to be an unexpectedly cute "little man" in his own way, from whom everyone wants something, but he just wants to live quietly and eat liver sausage at night:

In the same way, Guryan Guryanych Mochalkin, in the play by Henrietta Yanovskaya, just dreamed of using the find (not stolen, not obtained by scams, like, for example, another "anti-hero" of that time, Ostap Bender, who became an idol over the years, but only discovered at the bottom well with gold), without harming others - and thus called into question the ideological and economic foundations of the new world, for which he must be held responsible: an unloaded Berdan rifle, which fell into the hands of the "ideological" son of the Mochalkins, shoots at Guryan Guryanych by the end of Yanovskaya's performance and to his wife. However, after the shot, they will still rise and be surprised at what happened, in order to fall again, already completely - Yanovskaya's farce does not irrevocably translate into tragedy, deftly balancing on the verge.

Without the actor Taranzhin, it is difficult to imagine many of Ginkas's performances, from "The Happy Prince" to "On the Road to ...", but Alexander Taranzhin did not receive such a significant and complex role as Mochalkin in my memory, and fantastically plays it from a farce-cartoon games to tragic pathos, never falling into vulgarity, the risk of which persists throughout the entire performance. Arina Nesterova (Mochalkin's wife), Sofia Slivina (daughter) and others are all on top; the head of the collective farm Kuritsyn, performed by Igor Balalaev, is very funny (he sticks out from all the cracks, a spy; he often speaks out loud remarks to enhance the "spectacular estrangement", although in recent years this technique has been used too often); and the priest Lukyan, who appears from the stove in the second act, who wants to sell his soul to the devil (following the example of Mochalkin, as he believes), I did not immediately recognize, despite the fact that he seemed familiar to me - then it dawned on me, this is Sergey Aronin! I still did not appreciate his directing work very highly (but I still haven’t seen the “Flying Monakhov” staged by him at the Moscow Youth Theater based on A. Bitov), ​​but as an actor, although I have been watching him since GITIS, Aronin in “The Elephant” is his father Lukyan simply struck me, and if in the image created by Taranzhin the farcical beginning is transformed into a dramatic one, gradually reaching tragedy by the middle of the 2nd act, then in the role played by Aronin, the comic and tragic coexist simultaneously: what lies ahead for Guryan, Father Lukyan already went into civilian life, "survived the revolution", but the consequences for his psyche and worldview turned out to be almost more catastrophic than for the Mochalkin family - an attempt to appropriate the golden elephant.

Of course, Mochalkin will not fly to any America, especially to Jupiter - even if a high-quality "holder" was made by his learned son Mitya (Anton Korshunov) under the gun of a Berdan. Mochalkin's land will be pulled back - collective farm, Soviet, this is according to the play, but according to the play, and in life ... Is it in the collective farms (which they don’t even remember now ...) the source of evil, in the Soviet one (and it also disappeared. ..) power? Yanovskaya, it seems, with the "Elephant" mentally returns to her old works of the 1980s - to "The Heart of a Dog", where (there are very interesting reflections on this in the book "What It Was") it was not Preobrazhensky or even Sharikov, who became a victim of professorial experiments, but fanatically believed in the new world, Shvonder; and especially to the play "Goodbye, America!" according to "Mr. Twister" by Marshak, where the beautiful-hearted foreign tourists fell into the Stalinist hell, skillfully pretending to be an earthly paradise. With the difference that the characters borrowed from Marshak's satire voluntarily arrived in the USSR from America, and the hero of the "Elephant" tried from the USSR to America, but it would be nice to fly away from here ... But this is just a utopia: Russia is the birthplace of elephants, but Guryanych believes in miracles, Guryanych goes to heaven ... and as a result, he is shot along with his wife.