The theater festival "Golden Mask" has started in Moscow, which for the 24th time will show the most significant performances of Russian cities of all genres theatrical art- drama, opera, ballet, modern dance, operetta and musical, puppet show. This year, about 60 performances have been announced as nominees for the award. TASS chose the best productions not to be missed.

One-act premiere ballets at the Bolshoi Theater

February 9th three one-act ballets by Harald Lander, Jerome Robbins and Jiri Kilian will be shown on the New Stage of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre. This "Etudes", "Forgotten Land" And "Cell" respectively.

"Etudes" - the most notable work Danish teacher and choreographer Harald Lander. According to the press service of the Bolshoi Theater, he staged this plotless ballet in 1948 to the music of the 19th-century Western composer Karl Czerny, taking as a basis the development of classical ballet movements.

The performance "The Forgotten Land" staged by the Czech master Jiri Kilian is being staged on the Moscow stage for the first time. The ballet was created by Kilian in 1981 for the troupe of the Stuttgart Ballet to the music of Benjamin Britten's Requiem Symphony.

The Cage is a one-act ballet to music by Igor Stravinsky staged by the outstanding American choreographer Jerome Robbins, created in 1951. "To the daring music of Stravinsky, The Cage plunges into the world of insects, the world of natural selection, where a cruel instinct forces a female to perceive her partner as a victim," the Bolshoi Theater press service said.

Akhmatova at the Gogol Center

"Gogol-center" will present the performance "Akhmatova. A poem without a hero" on February 27. This is a performance by Alla Demidova and Kirill Serebrennikov, who is currently under house arrest. "A Poem Without a Hero" - a work by Anna Akhmatova, on the creation of which the poetess worked for more than 20 years; during the life of the author in the USSR, this work was not published.

Demidova in her book "Akhmatova Mirrors" notes that the more she delved into the work, the more clearly she understood that "it is probably not necessary to literally decipher it." "Specific persons are not so important in the Poem, the flavor of the time is important, because the Poem, among other things, included a huge layer of culture whole era, which for many of today's young people has become a long-gone story," Demidova wrote.

Alla Demidova, Svetlana Mamresheva, Alexander Boldachev, Daniil Zhuravlev and others are involved in the performance.

Voronezh Opera and Ballet Theater in Moscow

Musical Theatre them. K.S. Stanislavsky and Vl.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko will present on March 13 the play "The Motherland of Electricity" by the Voronezh Opera and Ballet Theatre.

This opera by Gleb Sedelnikov based on the works of Andrei Platonov tells about the events taking place at a power plant in the small village of Rogachevka near Voronezh. Platonov himself participated in the construction of the power plant and reflected his observations in the story "On the extinguished lamp of Ilyich."

The performance was directed by Mikhail Bychkov, artistic director of the Platonov Arts Festival and the Voronezh Chamber Theatre.

"Our production was born in the year of the centenary of the revolution of 1917. The spirit of revolutionary hopes, expectations that life would somehow miraculously turn to happiness, accompanied the early Platonov. But then he had his own internal evolution, which took place simultaneously with how it was transformed in the country the idea of ​​building a new world," says the director.

"Opera for violin and scientist" at the Center. Sun. Meyerhold

On the stage of the Center Sun. Meyerhold on March 13 will present the performance "Galileo. Opera for violin and scientist". This is a joint project of the "Stanislavsky Electrotheatre" and the Polytechnic Museum staged by artistic director"Electrotheatre" by Boris Yukhananov.

The score, consisting of five parts dedicated to various aspects of the work of the legendary scientist Galileo Galilei, was written by five composers: Sergei Nevsky, Kuzma Bodrov, Dmitry Kurlyandsky, Kirill Chernegin, Pavel Karmanov. Each of them, through music and words, broadcasts a fragment from the life of Galileo, whose role is played by the famous Russian physicist Grigory Amosov. Feeling through the centuries the scientist's faith in the power of insight, the audience will see how academic science and the humanism of art meet on the territory of Galileo, the press service said.

Turgenev at the Theater. Evg. Vakhtangov

March 14 Perm Academic Theater-Theater will present on the stage of the Theater. Evg. Vakhtangov's performance "A Month in the Village" based on Turgenev's play.

Written in the first edition in 1848, the play was published only in 1855, while changing two names: "Student", "Two Women" and, finally, "A Month in the Country". Turgenev himself noted that this comedy was never intended for the stage. Nevertheless, many theaters still turn to this work today.

The director of the Perm version of Turgenev's play, Boris Milgram, has been looking for an approach to this play for many years: "I have been thinking about this play all my life. All the time I was looking for its codes and ciphers. And at some point I realized that this play could do amazing things with the audience - to excite the sensual nature of everyone, - notes Milgram, - In our performance we want to place everyone in an atmosphere of love, or rather, in the atmosphere of the emergence and birth of a feeling of love, when a person finds himself in a situation where feelings begin to grow so clearly that they control actions and thoughts."

The performance runs for 2 hours and 20 minutes with one intermission. The performance features compositions by Bach.

Alexandrinsky Theater on the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre. A.P. Chekhov

Moscow Art Theater A.P. Chekhov on the Main Stage on March 17 will present the performance of the St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater "Crime and Punishment".

The production based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky is the first work on the Alexandrinsky stage by the artistic director of the Hungarian National Theater Attila Vidnyansky. As the director himself noted, for Hungarians this novel is the main work of foreign literature.

“We are close to the questions that are raised in the novel, and the answers that Dostoevsky gives very powerfully and very unambiguously here,” the director notes. eternal questions existence, purpose of man. About freedom and about faith - in the first place. Loss of faith. I don't know how important this is for Russia. In the West, this is the most pressing problem. In Dostoevsky it is so subtly written, so many-sidedly revealed,<…>that in one way or another the novel concerns virtually everything essential in human life. You can read it all your life, and each time it will sound a little different."

Stephen Sondheim at the Taganka Theater

On March 22, the Taganka Theater will show the play "Sweeney Todd, the Maniac Barber of Fleet Street" based on the play by Hugh Wheeler. This is a production of one of the most striking works of the world-renowned classic of contemporary musical theater Stephen Sondheim in Russian theater stage. Alexei Frandetti, winner of the Golden Mask National Theater Award, worked on the premiere of Taganka.

The director notes that in the mid-70s, Stephen Sondheim showed incredible creative courage when "against the backdrop of unbridled Broadway fun, he created a musical that destroys all the usual canons of the light genre. This production is the first immersive musical in Russia, where the viewer is not only an observer, but and a full-fledged participant in the action, a performance where immersion in the events of the play takes place as realistically as possible, the press service of the theater noted.

The play premiered on January 27th. The performance was immediately awarded five nominations for the Golden Mask - 2018 award.

Molière at the Electrotheatre Stanislavsky

"Electrotheater Stanislavsky" will present the play "Tartuffe" based on the play by Molière on March 22. The great comedy of Moliere is one of the key texts of the world theater, a play with a grandiose stage history and a turbulent background, including a scandal and a two-time ban, the press service notes. Philip Grigoryan used Mikhail Donskoy's translation and invited Olga Fedyanina as a consultant playwright.

Actors instead of "sliding along convenient verses" have to talk "documentary", the press service noted. Choreographer Anna Abalikhina invites them to see the real space around - not the abstractness of the stage, but the duration of their movements, their physical presence in these walls and on these stages. "The absurdity, the painfulness of the situation, seemingly obvious to outsiders, should be reliable, not fantastic," the press service stressed.

In Moscow, at the Bolshoi Theater, on April 15, the ceremony of presenting the national theater award "Golden Mask" following the results of the 2016-2017 theater season took place. Here is a list of winners (laureates) in all categories.

DRAMA / LARGE FORM PERFORMANCE
FEAR LOVE DESPAIR, Maly Drama Theater - Theater of Europe, St. Petersburg

DRAMA / SMALL FORM PERFORMANCE
CHUK AND GEK, Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

DRAMA/DIRECTOR'S WORK
Yuri BUTUSOV, "Uncle Vanya", Theatre. Lensoveta, St. Petersburg

DRAMA / MALE ROLE
Vyacheslav KOVALEV, Ben, Exile, Theatre. Vl. Mayakovsky, Moscow

DRAMA/FEMALE ROLE
Alla DEMIDOVA, “Akhmatova. A poem without a hero, Gogol Center, Moscow

DRAMA/MASTER ROLE
Dmitry LYSENKOV, Svidrigailov, "Crime and Punishment", Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

DRAMA/SUPPORTING FEMALE
Anastasia LEBEDEVA, Manke, Drums in the Night, Theatre. A.S. Pushkin, Moscow

DRAMA
Dmitry DANILOV, The Man from Podolsk, Theatre.doc, Moscow


To the staff of the Gogol Center Theater under the direction of Kirill Serebrennikov - "For the creation of a space for creative freedom and a bold search for the language of theatrical modernity"

SPECIAL PRIZE OF THE JURY OF THE DRAMA THEATER AND PUPPET THEATER
Khabarovsk Theater for Young Spectators - "For the subtle and scenically expressive reading of Leo Tolstoy's story "Childhood" by means of a holistic ensemble of actors."

DRAMA/ARTIST'S WORK
Ksenia PERETRUKHINA, Breath, Theater of Nations, Moscow

DRAMA/COSTUME WORK
Elena SOLOVIEVA, King Lear, Gran Theatre, Novokuibyshevsk

DRAMA/ LIGHTING WORK
Stas SVISTUNOVICH, "Governor", Bolshoi Drama Theatre. G.A. Tovstonogov, St. Petersburg

DOLLS/PERFORMANCE
AND THE DAY LASTS LONGER THAN A CENTURY, Museum of the History of the Gulag and the Creative Association "Taratumb", Moscow

DOLLS/DIRECTOR'S WORK
Vladimir BIRYUKOV, Parrot and Brooms, Doll's House Theatre, Penza

DOLLS/ARTIST'S WORK
Emil KAPELYUSH, Yulia MIKHEEVA, The Snow Maiden, Puppet Theatre, Kostroma

DOLLS/ACTOR WORK
Natalia PAVLENKO, Marina DYUSMETOVA, Ekaterina ROMAZAN, Señora Tepan - "Picnic", Theater of Puppet and Actor "Skomorokh" them. R. Vinderman, Tomsk

COMPETITION "EXPERIMENT"
I am BASE, Uppsala Circus, St. Petersburg

OPERA / PERFORMANCE
BILLY BUDD, big theater, Moscow

OPERA / CONDUCTOR'S WORK
Oliver von DOCHNANY, The Passenger, Opera and Ballet Theatre, Yekaterinburg

OPERA/DIRECTOR'S WORK
Kirill SEREBRENNIKOV, Chaadsky, Helikon-Opera Theatre, Moscow

OPERA/MALE ROLE
Evgeny STAVINSKY, Mephistopheles, Faust, Novaya Opera Theatre, Moscow

OPERA/FEMALE ROLE
Nadezhda BABINTSEVA, Lisa, The Passenger, Opera and Ballet Theatre, Yekaterinburg

BALLET / PERFORMANCE
SUITE IN WHITE, Musical Theatre. K.S. Stanislavsky and Vl.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Moscow

MODERN DANCE/PERFORMANCE
IMAGO-TRAP, Provincial Dances Theatre, Yekaterinburg

BALLET / CONDUCTOR'S WORK
Teodor KURENTZIS, Cinderella, Opera and Ballet Theatre. P.I. Tchaikovsky, Perm

BALLET-MODERN DANCE/ WORK OF A CHOREOGRAPHER-CHOREOGRAPHER
Alexey MIROSHNICHENKO, Cinderella, Opera and Ballet Theatre. P.I. Tchaikovsky, Perm

BALLET – MODERN DANCE/MALE ROLE
Nurbek BATULLA, "The Call of the Beginning", the Creative Environment Foundation for Cultural Initiatives and the Theater Project "Stone. Cloud. Bird, Kazan

BALLET – MODERN DANCE/FEMALE ROLE
Anastasia STASHKEVICH, New Girl, The Cage, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow

OPERETA-MUSICAL / PERFORMANCE
SWEENIE TODD, THE MANIAC BARBER OF FLEET STREET, Taganka Theatre, Moscow

OPERATA-MUSICAL / CONDUCTOR'S WORK
Alexander NOVIKOV, The Nameless Star, Musical Theatre, Novosibirsk

OPERA-MUSICAL/DIRECTOR'S WORK
Alexei FRANDETTI, Sweeney Todd, Maniac Barber of Fleet Street, Taganka Theatre, Moscow

OPERATA-MUSICAL/MALE ROLE
Pyotr MARKIN, Sweeney Todd, "Sweeney Todd, Maniac Barber of Fleet Street", Taganka Theatre, Moscow

OPERATA-MUSICAL/FEMALE ROLE
Anastasia ERMOLAEVA, Yam-Yam, Mikado, Musical Comedy Theatre, Yekaterinburg

OPERETTA-MUSICAL/BEST SECONDARY ROLE
Evgenia OGNEVA, Mademoiselle Ku-Ku, The Nameless Star, Musical Theatre, Novosibirsk

WORK OF A COMPOSER IN A MUSICAL THEATER
Alexey SYUMAK, Cantos, Opera and Ballet Theatre. P.I. Tchaikovsky, Perm


Anna NETREBKO and Yusif EIVAZOV for the unique creative duo in the performance of the Bolshoi Theater "Manon Lescaut".

SPECIAL PRIZE OF THE JURY OF THE MUSICAL THEATER
Performance "Cantos", Opera and Ballet Theatre. P.I. Tchaikovsky, Perm (Alexey SYUMAK, Semyon ALEKSANDROVSKY, Ksenia PERETRUKHINA, Lyosha LOBANOV, Ksenia GAMARIS, musicAeterna choir and Teodor KURENTZIS - "For artistic integrity and the creation of an innovative form musical performance ensemble of authors and performers.

THE WORK OF A LIGHTING ARTIST IN A MUSICAL THEATER
Alexander NAUMOV, "Salome", Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

COSTUME DESIGNER WORK IN MUSICAL THEATER
Tatyana NOGINOVA, Cinderella, Opera and Ballet Theatre. P.I. Tchaikovsky, Perm

ARTIST'S WORK IN MUSICAL THEATER
Paul STEINBERG, Billy Budd, Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow

On November 2, nominees for the Golden Mask national theater award (season 2016/17) were announced in Moscow. Maria Revyakina, general director of the award and the festival, and Igor Kostolevsky, president of the award, started the press conference with the main, global one - with words about the general atmosphere of inexplicable distrust towards culture and its figures growing in society. The Seventh Studio case became an expression of this "trend of the season". Moscow was represented at the press conference of the country's largest theater festival by Alexander Kibovsky, head of the capital's department of culture. But the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation at the start of the new season of the Golden Mask was not present at all.

… About the nominees - they are also participants in the Golden Mask festival in Moscow (February-April 2018), festival tour programs, broadcasts of its performances in cinemas of the Russian Federation and on the Internet (both forms of expansion of the Mask to the whole country in the spring of 2018 will be expanded ).

The expert councils of the "Golden Mask", "dramatic" and "musical", traveled to 173 cities of Russia last season and watched about 800 premieres.

updated

The living classic Anatoly Vasiliev, nominated with the play "The Old Man and the Sea", announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy from the nomination for the "Golden Mask". “I chose the path of exile,” he said in his address. And about the nomination of Kirill Sebebrennikov, he noted: Serebrennikov does not need the “Mask”, but freedom: “He deserved it!”

Other nominees: "Uncle Ivan" And "Drums in the Night" Yuri Butusov, "Oedipus Rex" Rimas Tuminas, "Ivanov" Timofey Kulyabin, "The Dragon" Konstantin Bogomolov, "Governor" Andrew the Mighty "Democracy" Alexey Borodin, "Man from Podolsk" Theatre.doc (play by Mikhail Ugarov and Igor Stam based on the play by Dmitry Danilov is an anthropological study of a factory town near Moscow and privacy, into which the militant new time invades on a grand scale), "Chuk and Gek" Alexandrinsky Theater (in the play by Mikhail Patlasov, Gaidar's story is connected with documents from the 1930s and the reality of the Gulag). The play by Mindaugas Karbauskis based on the play by Marius Ivashkevicius was nominated in 7 nominations "Exile": a chronicle of the fate of a Lithuanian emigrant in London, but also a parable about the fate of all those who met the collapse of the USSR at the age of 30, left or stayed ...

Kirill Serebrennikov, despite the crazy twists and turns of the "Seventh Studio case," is nominated as a nominee by both expert councils. In drama - as the director of the performance of the Gogol Center "Akhmatova. A poem without a hero(co-authored with Alla Demidova). In the opera - as director of the opera Alexander Manotskov "Chaadsky" based on "Woe from Wit" ("Helikon-Opera").

In the "musical" nominations "Masks" - the world (for the composer Gleb Sedelnikov - posthumous) premiere of the opera "The birthplace of electricity" based on texts by Andrey Platonov (director Mikhail Bychkov, Voronezh Opera and Ballet Theatre), "Passenger" Moses Weinberg (staged in Yekaterinburg - the first in Russia), "Billy Bud" And "Manon Lescaut" Bolshoi Theatre, Cantos Teodor Currentzis and director Semyon Aleksandrovsky from Perm.

In the "dance" nominations - "Cell" Jerome Robbins (Bolshoi Theatre), "Cinderella" Perm Opera (the action of the performance by Alexei Miroshnichenko and Teodor Currentzis was postponed to 1957), new job Tatyana Baganova and her "Provincial Dances" "Imago Trap".

The full list of nominees is on the festival website. In the coming weeks, the traditional programs “Mask Plus” and “Children's Weekend” will be added to it, then the schedule of film broadcasts of the performances of “Masks”-2018 in Russian cities and on the festival website. But it is already clear from the list of nominees that the Golden Mask has retained its professional and civic dignity. And the breadth of view: "archaists" and "innovators" are represented in all categories.

“Governor”, ​​Bolshoi Drama Theatre. G.A. Tovstonogov, St. Petersburg.

BDT artistic director Andrey Moguchiy staged a play based on the story of the same name by Leonid Andreev. In 1905, the Governor-General of St. Petersburg, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, gave the order to shoot a crowd of striking workers. His retribution was death at the hands of the SR militant Ivan Kalyaev. When the duty of a state person goes against the dictates of conscience, personal tragedy can grow to universal proportions.

“Kuzmin. Trout breaks the ice”, “Gogol-center”, Moscow


Photo: Ira Polyarnaya

The performance by Vladislav Nastavshev is part of a cycle dedicated to poets Silver Age. The name is borrowed from the last collection of the poet and composer Mikhail Kuzmin. The life of the artist, refracted in his work - the torments of same-sex love, creative throwing, the search for the meaning of life - turned into an aesthetic surreal spectacle in the best traditions of this theater.

"Oedipus Rex", Theater. Vakhtangov

Photo: Valery Myasnikov

This is a joint production of the theater. Vakhtangov and the National Theater of Greece. Rimas Tuminas staged the performance, observing the canons of classical ancient tragedy: the choir, as expected, comments on what is happening, and in the original language - in Greek. The director managed to prove that ancient myth can, retaining all its architectonics, turn into more than modern history about the nature of power and the vicissitudes of fate.

"Drums in the Night", Theater. Pushkin, Moscow


Photo: Galina Fesenko

The play of the same name by Bertolt Brecht will be exactly 100 years old this year. It is not often staged on the Russian stage. Perhaps because the playwright himself did not have a very high opinion of his first dramatic experience. Yuri Butusov, to whom Brecht is very close with his rebellious worldview, decided to turn the “shortcomings” of the play into the merits of the performance, choosing for this a rock cabaret genre that is rare today. Chamber at first glance, the story of a soldier who escaped from the battlefield under the skirt of his bride, turned into a manifesto of a person who does not want to become a hostage to the system.

“Crime and Punishment”, Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg

The Hungarian director Attila Vidnyansky is convinced that this novel by Dostoevsky is of paramount importance for the entire Western civilization today, when a person realized that, having abandoned faith, he did not find anything to replace it, and therefore did not become happier. Why do scoundrels enjoy all the blessings of life, while good and noble people are forced to drag out a miserable existence? This question in our time is much more acute than a century and a half ago, and the theater cannot but try to find its own answer to it.

“Antigone”, Bashkir Drama Theater named after M. Gafuri, Ufa

Photo: Roman Shumnov

Ancient mythology has become one of the leitmotifs of this competition. Antigone is a young girl who dared to go against the order of the ruler of the country and bury her rebellious brother in the way that the laws of her ancestors command. Director Farid Bikchantayev shortened the distance between the myth and the realities of today, but did not make a performance on the topic of the day - about the crisis of power and the inescapable confrontation between the ruler and subjects. He is concerned about a much deeper problem - the immutability of universal, not momentary values, which alone can stop humanity, which is on the verge of chaos. For this production, the famous play by Jean Anouilh was translated into the Bashkir language. The performance comes with Russian subtitles.

“Democracy”, RAMT, Moscow

The play by English playwright Michael Frein is not a docudrama in the full sense of the word, but it is based on a real political scandal that erupted in 1974 around German Chancellor Willy Brandt. His assistant Günther Guillaume, a man privy to almost all the secrets of the state, turned out to be a spy for the Stasi, the political intelligence of the FRG. For the artistic director of RAMT Alexei Borodin, the lessons of history are not an empty phrase, his “political theater” is a space for an equal dialogue in which it is important to hear and try to understand a point of view that is different from your own.

Ivanov, Theater of Nations

Timofey Kulyabin - this enfant terrible Russian theater- keeping intact the text of the Chekhov play, he changed the living conditions of the characters, modernizing everything he could reach. Chekhov's characters fry kebabs and listen to pop music that is now fashionable, managing to tear their own and other people's lives to shreds with despair, which, in general, is not characteristic of us today. From the director's point of view, Ivanov's tragedy is not that he does not know why he lives, but that he cannot spit on this question and live for his own pleasure.

“Warrior Girl-Dzhyrybyna”, Olonkho Theatre, Yakutsk

Photo: Vasily Krivoshapkin

Director Matryona Kornilova transferred the ancient epic of the Sakha people to the dramatic stage, thereby demonstrating the simple truth about the new, which in fact is a well-forgotten old. An ordinary girl receives an unusual, invincible power as a gift in order to protect her world from evil and deceit - the performance is solved in the fantasy genre that is so popular today, but relies on the language and symbolism traditional for the Olonkho epic.


Photo: Yulia Kudryashova

Another work by Yuri Butusov, nominated for the country's main theater award. The play about the collapse of hopes, about the fall of idols, a rather harsh comedy, gaining the height of tragic hopelessness by the end, became for the director material for a tragic farce about the impossibility of happiness for people, allowing his life to pass them by.

“Fear Love Despair”, Maly Drama Theater - Theater of Europe, St. Petersburg


Photo: Viktor Vasiliev

Little people in whirlpools great history- a theme in which Lev Dodin is looking for more and more angles and turns. The composition of two Brechtian texts - "Fear and Despair in the Third Empire" and "Conversations of Refugees" - is based not on a fascinating plot, which is not in it, not on dynamic action, which is also completely absent, but on the internal drama of tiny confessions of tiny characters, life who grind the unstoppable millstones of Life.

Nomination “Performance of a small form”

"Suchilischa", Drama Theatre. A.P. Chekhov, Serov

Photo: Ekaterina Chizhova

The play by Andrey Ivanov is seemingly simple, like an arithmetic problem: a girl from the bottom, selling fish in the market, plus a “high-browed” vocational school teacher equals ... not at all what the viewer implicitly expects. A standard melodrama with a lining of profanity is immersed by director Pyotr Shereshevsky in a multi-layered cultural context - from Greek tragedy to Lermontov and from a medieval picaresque novel to a Boccacia erotic novel. Which will not prevent someone from seeing in it just a modern variation of the already completely not scandalous “Little Faith”.

“Thunderstorm”, Youth Theatre, Krasnodar

Photo: Marina Bogdan

To look not just at the classical, but at the textbook, memorized to the holes of the play with a fresh look is a task that is as fascinating as it is difficult to accomplish. The young director Daniil Bezsonov, a student of Sergei Zhenovach, found the courage to do this. Perhaps because even today there are people who are dying to find out why people still don’t fly.

“A Month in the Village”, Theatre, Perm

The weightless lace of Turgenev's most famous play is essentially materialized by Bach's music: a lady bored in a country estate is turned into a retired opera diva, and in the most dramatic places the action is slowed down by violent mass waves. Well, the element of music is something akin to female passion, the indomitability of which the director Boris Milgram so admires.

“King Lear”, theater-studio “Gran”, Novokuibyshevsk

In this theater, they prefer not to modernize classical texts, trusting in the timeless wisdom of their authors. Shakespeare's heroes, balancing on the verge of reason and madness, themselves bridge the gap between always and today.

"Exile", Theater. Mayakovsky

Photo: Evgenia Babskaya

Director Mindaugas Karbauskis and playwright Marius Ivashkevičius tried to elevate a completely “documentary” everyday life plot to the heights of a philosophical parable. A person who has left his homeland, but has not yet managed to take root in that “paradise”, where he desperately aspired, feels like a stranger on both banks of the river own life. And not to perish in its unsteady depths is possible only if you find the strength not to become a stranger to yourself.

“Shop”, Tatar Drama Theatre, Almetyevsk

Photo: Evgeny Mikhailov

The play by Olzhas Zhanaidarov is based on real events: the owner of a grocery store on the outskirts of Moscow turned her saleswomen, who came to work from Central Asia, into slaves. Director Eduard Shakhov leads the viewer through all the circles of this almost endless hell, and he himself decides that in front of him is a hyper-black horror story or a psychological drama.

“Chuk and Gek”, Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg


Photo: Anastasia Blur

The story of Arkady Gaidar (published in 1939), recognized classics Soviet children's literature, director Mikhail Patlasov intertwined with the memories of prisoners of Stalin's camps. The local history of two kids who went from Moscow to Siberia to their father, who works in a geological expedition, turned out to be embedded in the global history of the country on the basis of a common time.

“Tartuffe”, Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, Moscow

Photo: Olympia Orlova

Philip Grigoryan turned the caustic, sharp, victorious Molière comedy into an apotheosis of hopeless hopelessness. It is impossible to defeat his Tartuffe, and if it is possible, then there is no one to do it anyway. And the fact that the old plot is placed in the realities of the Russian Empire of the epoch of decline does not alleviate the feeling of helplessness engendered by the performance in the face of overwhelming evil. Giving negative answers to questions that have a positive answer is almost main feature postmodern on the national scene.

“Breath”, Theater of Nations

The British playwright Duncan Macmillan called the play "Lungs". The director Marat Gatsalov called his performance "Breath", shifting the focus from the object to the process and conveying the main meanings with the help of plasticity, almost plastic drama. He and She, having lost themselves, each other and any connection with the real world, do not live, but talk about life, imitating in words actions that they are no longer able to perform.

“Man from Podolsk”, Theatre.doc, Moscow

Photo: Aizhan Zhakipbekova

A man from Podolsk, whose name is of no interest to anyone, is detained without explanation, dragged to the station and started a lengthy interrogation, from which a normal person's head will spin. No, not from the cruelty of the interrogators, but from the absurdity of the questions they ask. A docudrama wrapped in shreds of the theater of the absurd, a satirical pamphlet and non-committal banter about the viciousness of the punitive system that stifles any sprouts of free thought. And all in order to try to prove to the viewer the meaninglessness of his one and only life.

"Rosencrantz and Gildernstern", theater for young spectators named after. Bryantsev, St. Petersburg

Photo: Natalia Korenovskaya

The famous play by Tom Stoppard, who took it into his head to look behind the scenes of the life of Shakespeare's characters, was rethought by Dmitry Volkostrelov in the realities of the Soviet 80s, or more precisely, as part of the duel for the chess crown between Karpov and Kasparov, which, in anticipation of Perestroika, was perceived by many as a confrontation between the “old” and "new". The match, which had lasted five months, was stopped for the fortieth draw. Stoppard's characters sitting at the chessboard don't know this.

“I am here”, the theater “Old House”, Novosibirsk

Photo: Victor Dmitriev

Freedom in the realities of the totalitarian system in the current "ZM" has become meaningful. Director Maxim Didenko assembled his performance from the texts of the poet-conceptualist Lev Rubinstein. The meditative action, the genre of which is designated as a “program of joint experiences”, is not an illustration of the original source, but conducts a sophisticated aesthetic dialogue with him about how the suppression machine works.

“Life”, Drama Theatre, Omsk

Photo: Andrey Kudryavtsev

Vladimir Nabokov considered the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" the most striking and complex work Tolstoy. An unremarkable little man lives his unremarkable life - director Boris Pavlovich turns a simple collision at first approximation into a multi-way game that Death plays with every person.

“Childhood”, Theater for Young Spectators, Khabarovsk


Photo: Natalia Ivatsik

Tolstoy's story became the starting point for a joint immersion into the depths of the memory of a childhood gone forever. Director Konstantin Kuchikin pushed off from the sacramental “we all come from childhood” and intertwined in one space the memories of Tolstoy's heroes with the memories of the people who created this performance.

"London", Drama Theatre, Novokuznetsk

Photo: Frol Podlesny

A plumber from a small town, by the will of fate, ends up in ... London. The journey, like an odyssey, is equated by director Sergei Chekhov with initiation, since it changes the hero's attitude not so much to life as to himself. Homesickness will bring him back, but he will return home not as a frightened provincial, but as a citizen of the world.

The famous play by Henrik Ibsen “Ghosts” has been turned into a promenade performance. The viewer finds himself in a 19th-century mansion, in which a certain respectable family “lives” and gets the opportunity to become a witness to the life that is usually hidden from prying eyes.

"Galileo. Opera for Violin and Scientist” Stanislavsky Electrotheatre and Polytechnic Museum, Moscow


Photo: Olympia Orlova

Boris Yukhananov invited not an actor, but a real scientist to play the role of Galileo, and spun a mystery around the play by Bertolt Brecht on the theme of martyrdom for science. And the musical score of the opera was created by five composers at once.

“Alien Invasion Museum”, Mutual Action Theatre, Moscow


Photo: Dmitry Blueglass

“Science” fiction is a rather rare genre on the theater stage. Alien landing in Tomsk region in 1989, served as an intricate intellectual attraction for fans of conspiracy theories.

Lesosibirsk Loys, Poisk Theatre, Lesosibirsk

A performance for those who are sure that with the Internet, the theater is not needed. Schoolchildren living in the city, which is 400 km from the mainland, themselves told the playwrights about their life, places and fears. Director Rodion Bukaev transferred all this to the stage. And the viewer has the opportunity to “enter” the performance from his mobile device.

“I am Basho”, “Upsala Circus”, St. Petersburg

Photo: Vasily Ostroukhin

The play by Yana Tumina, last year's ZM laureate, is woven from the haiku of the Japanese poet and thinker Matsuo Basho, which are played not so much according to the canons drama theater, how much according to the principles of the so-called “new circus”. The production involves circus performers and children with special needs.

Performance "Ivanov" at the Theater of Nations

Sergey Petrov/Theater of Nations

The first and second capitals are constantly ahead of the rest of Russia in terms of both the number of Golden Mask nominations and the number of prizes received. This year the situation has not changed - and why? - and out of fourteen contenders for the victory in the category "Drama / performance of a large form", twelve productions were created in the theaters of these two cities.

Of course, the most eminent ones are represented - for example, the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater with The Dragon, Oedipus Rex of the Vakhtangov Theater, the Governor of the Tovstonogov Theater or Crime and Punishment from Alexandrinka. However, it is very difficult to single out someone specific - in this nomination, Akhmatova. A poem without a hero" and "Kuzmin. Trout breaks the ice”, staged at the Gogol Center, Ivanov by the Theater of Nations, Uncle Vanya by the Lensoviet Theater and Democracy by the Russian Academy of Theater Theater.

Among opera and ballet performances, the competition is not weaker at all, but Moscow and St. Petersburg have found themselves in a dominant position here too.

So, out of nine opera productions, six are presented by the theaters of these two cities, primarily Bolshoi and Mariinsky. However, Helikon-Opera has two performances in the category, Turandot and Chaadsky. The situation is the same in ballet, but here everything is more harmonious - out of seven performances, only four will come from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Mariinsky Theater (The Seasons) and the Bolshoi Theater (The Cage) as well as the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater (Second Detail and Suite in White) presented their productions.

Rest of Russia

Performance "Warrior-Dzhyrybyna" in the theater "Olonkho", Yakutsk

Theater "Olonkho"

In the category "Drama of the big form" only two performances not from Moscow and St. Petersburg got to the "Mask". These are "Antigone", staged at the Bashkir Drama Theater named after Gafuri, and "Warrior-Dzhyrybyna" of the Yakut theater "Olonkho".

Most of the regional theaters are presented in the nomination "Drama / Performance of a small form" -

groups from Krasnodar (“Thunderstorm” of the Youth Theater), Khabarovsk (“Childhood” of the Youth Theater), Omsk (“Life” of the Drama Theater), as well as from Almetyevsk, Perm, Novosibirsk and other cities are noted here.

As already mentioned, there are almost no regional theaters in the opera - the performances "Cantos" of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theater and "Passenger" of the Opera and Ballet Theater from Yekaterinburg participate in the competition. Other cities of Russia played a little bit only in ballet - here is Cinderella from Perm (which has a total of eight nominations for the award), and two productions of the Yekaterinburg theater - Naiad and the Fisherman. Suite" and "Snow Queen".

"Akhmatova" Serebrennikov staged himself, giving the main and only role. In addition, for his work on Akhmatova, the director was also nominated in the Drama/Director's Work category. But "Kuzmin", which is based on the last, 11th book of poems of the Silver Age poet, is the work of the Riga director Vladislav Nastashev, who has three more performances on his account at the Gogol Center: "Mitina's Love", "Medea ", "Without fear".


Director Anatoly Vasilyev at the closing ceremony of the A.P. Chekhov Theater Festival at the Vakhtangov Theatre, July 2017

Vladimir Vyatkin/RIA Novosti

Anatoly Vasiliev's play "The Old Man and the Sea", the result of cooperation between the Chekhov Theater Festival and the Vakhtangov Theater, was presented in several "Masks" nominations at once - for example, in "Drama / Large Form Performance" and "Best Director of a Dramatic Performance".

But immediately after the festival shortlist was announced, Vasiliev wrote open letter, in which he declined the nomination.

The director also pointed out that since 2008 he has not participated in the cultural life of the city and has been in "voluntary exile", but works mainly abroad - in France, in Italy. In addition, Vasiliev recalled that he was never returned the studio on Povarskaya - although they promised.

“Another reason is not worth talking about at all! Forgive me, but Kirill Serebrennikov needs not the Golden Mask, but freedom! He deserved it, ”Vasiliev wrote.

As a result, The Old Man and the Sea remained on the list of Golden Mask 2018 nominees, but, as the press service of the festival explained to Gazeta.Ru, this only means that the performance was nominated for an award. But the production will not claim victory, the jury will not watch it within the framework of the festival, and no screenings are planned during the Golden Mask.