A Healthy Conservative

In late October the 6th Convention of Russia’s longest-living organization of arts workers, the Theatre Union of the Russian Federation (given its many name-changes inevitable in the sequence of stormy changes in the Russian history, the 20th convention of the STD, the Russian acronym for the theatre Union). Brief information in English about the union’s history, previously the All-Russia Theatrical Society established in 1877, its organizational structure, goals and forms of activities can be found at www.rtlb.ru/en_union/.

The Russian Theatre Union has 75 branches in different regions, so the Convention agenda was compiled in line with the framework of this event. It included reports about the work done since the previous convention, presentations of delegates, discussions, exchange of opinions, adoption of final documents and elections of the management, Chairman and Secretariat made up of 27 people – actors, directors, theatre critics, stage designers and producers from different Russian regions, who will now run the Union in the coming five years.

The seemingly flat accounts and data in their reports and adopted documents were nevertheless a reflection of sizeable work done by the STD. One of its aspects focused on the Theatre Union dialogue with the state. For instance, the Union succeeded in abolishing of a number of laws restricting creative efforts of theatre companies, adopting The Concept of Long-Term Development of the Performing Arts in the Russian Federation to the year 2020.

Aleksandr Kalyagin, an actor, director and artistic director of the Moscow theatre Et Cetera was elected Chairman of the Union (for the 4th time in a row).

Shortly before the Convention Aleksandr Kalyagin gave an interview to Andrei Vandenko, published in No.42 of Itogi magazine under the heading A Healthy Conservative, in which Aleksandr Kalyagin shares his view of the importance of the Theatre Union’s activities, the reasons why he again agreed to ballot for its Chairman and why the STD, unlike the rest of creative unions (of writers, painters, composers, architects and cinematographers) set up in Soviet times proved the most viable. Here are some excerpts of their conversation:

- San Sanych (the popular Russian form of addressing good acquaintances), I’ll bet that even with the wide range of your stage and cinema roles there wasn’t another one that you have been playing for 15 years?

- Do you mean to say I’m just “playing” the role of the chairman? At first, I, too, thought that I would just try on the mask of a clerk, turning into a culture bureaucrat. But quite frankly, if your heart does not pain for what you do, it would not do to try to tackle the job in our Theatre Union. I may sound swelling, but it is the ultimate truth. Working at the STD requires settling conflicts between managements and their troupes, filing requests to regional governors when it appears that a theatre may be closed because someone is eager to rob them of their property, renovation of Theatre Veterans’ Homes, and so on and so forth…

- In a word, Et Cetera…

- Well, yes. Lots of problems to be looked into and to be deeply involved in the process. At present we are preparing to render assistance to orphans from actors’ families. We have also obtained money from the Culture Ministry for the Union members who are badly in need of medical help, some for operations, and others for rehabilitation. It’s clear there’s not enough money to go round, but at least we have the annual quota for 400 people.

- Does it really the sort of things for you to look into? But please don’t give me the trite answer: “Who else if not me?”

- I will not say this but just let me try to explain a thing or two. It was Mikhail Ulyanov who nominated me for the post. He himself had been the STD chairman for 10 years. At first I used to spend days and nights at the Union’s headquarters (in Strastnoi Boulevard) trying to figure out how things were done at this non-creative kitchen.
There was no money at the cashier’s and after the 1998 default I had to send the entire central apparatus for an unpaid-for leave. Gradually we put together a professional team with light just shimmering at the end of the tunnel, even though we had lots of problems then. The question I was facing all the time was whether I could do the job that was giving me never-ending headaches? With time I learnt how to carry on. I have always been an actor with different situations arising in our trade whose definition was ranging from “sick and tired of it all” to “why not give it another try?” Managing the Theatre Union is for me a sort of a challenge, a test of whether I can make it. I repeat the business I started to be engaged in, was in disarray, and bring it all to order was not easy.
Communication with the bureaucracy of all grades indeed is a snag. No matter how I try, I fail to comprehend what makes them tick! They are always glad to meet you, with hand-shaking, promising every kind of assistance if not mountains of gold, and then … they vanish in the haze. They don’t answer telephone calls, hiding in the “no access” zone. And there’s no jumping over the heads of their assistants and secretaries. You keep on calling for a month, or two, or three, trying to get at least some answer – all in vain. And then, say, six months later you stumble upon one of these “out-of-reach” people at some VIP reception where they would give you a smile, looking quite honestly into your eyes as if nothing had happened…
At first I was nearly petrified by such an attitude. In all truthfulness I did not know what to do. It dawned on me later that his kind of people is baked out of some wrong dough. It is an illusion that we are all the same and speak the same language. Having said “a”, the bureaucrat does not think of saying “b.” Theirs is a strange alphabet we will never master! We will hardly realize what makes these “king’s men” move. Different worlds! I have an assistant who knows the apparatchiks’ games in and out. As for me, I still cannot assess the mysterious meaning of the phrase “a document must lie in peace for a while.” If it is done well, why can’t it be signed right off? Why wait?

- But is it all worth fighting for? Maybe all the cinema and theatre unions should be closed as redundancies? In Soviet times they acted as a tool of control, but what about now?

- When I came to the Theatre Union, it had a membership of 25,000. Today the number is about the same. Unfortunately, some leave due to natural reasons, but new young people join the Union which has a meaning to them. We are not dismissing our creative functions; we hold regular seminars, master-classes and festivals. Every summer we arrange training classes at the international theatre school. Call it an alms-house, if you wish. There is in Russia a trade union of workers of art, but quite frankly, I don’t know how it functions and what it really does. What we do is for all to see. The STD case is unique in that both employers and employees are in the same game. The Theatre Union’s framework allows us to settle the inevitable conflict of interests.

- It appears that the latest attempts at that failed, if we were to judge by the riots at the Mayakovsky and Taganka theatres against their artistic leaders Sergei Artsibashev and Yuri Lyubimov.

- These are different cases, so the comparison is not quite correct. Moreover, they are more cases like theirs. For example, the conflict between the managing director, chief director and the company in the Nizhniy Novgorod Theatre of Young Viewer even ended in a hunger strike. I then met with governor Valery Shantsev, he was sitting here in this armchair… Similar contradictions made another troupe boil with anger in Chelyabinsk. In a word, confrontations are not so rare. I have already said it was not a dispute of business entities; what they focused on was about the morals and theatre ethics. I take actors’ rioting negatively. Any company should have one commander, its artistic director, who is entitled to be a dictator at times. Otherwise there will be no order, not a chance of putting a new production together, and no keeping a tight rein on the company. I have known many directors, so I can make comparisons. Oleg Efremov could hurt one so bitterly they would cry! Yuri Lyubimov could be even harsher. As for the expressive Andrei Goncharov, they said that even theatre mice were running from the stage for their lives. Anatoly Efros was a different kind, so gentle and delicate. So he never learnt how to run a theatre. He was great as an artist, but he was no manager, you see? If something is wrong with the business side, one has to have a word with the theatre manager, but as for claims on the artistic sort, it will be the chief producer, I can’t accept another approach. If you disagree – you leave. The way I left Yuri Lyubimov’s Taganka theatre. When there are frictions within a company, dissent is inevitable.

- But is it normal that no maîtres take care of who would follow their footsteps, and theatres of their glory die along with them?

- Wait a minute. How do you view it? Were Georgi Tovstonogov and Yuri Lyubimov to be always surrounded by an entourage of their loyal disciples, who would register their every sneeze, so that they would later develop their master’s creative styles? Heaps of crap! To copy is bad, to imitate is foolish. Every great master is inimitable. Someone can try to apply their methods, but they would do better finding their own path. So Big Drama Theatre in St.Petersburg would never be what it was under Georgi Tovstonogov, and no Taganka after Yuri Lyubimov. Just admit that it is what is given us. For sure, everyone saw in museums canvasses with the caption “Rembrandt’s School.” On the face of it, the paints are the same, the composition is good, and the plot is similar to the Master, but there’s no the divine light coming from what is painted or written, for all you can do.
How can this be explained? It’s the touch of a genius… In a word, there can be disciples, but to rear replacement equal to a genius is impossible.
The problem is that at some moment there happened a break-up of generations. Directors who matured in the 1990s never saw great examples. It’s just cinema classics can be viewed again any time to fill the education gap. What about the production that has already gone off the stage? The linkage of times was broken at the genetic level. This is how it is felt. Many novices never even finish this school, failing to master the basics of the trade…

- I wonder if Kirill Serebrennikov, Nina Chusova and people of their status are Theatre Union members?

- They cooperate with us if they are willing to and can afford it; from time to time we invite them… But you see, the thing is that some often tend to come when they need help or face problems they cannot solve themselves. You may laugh, but myself, already a Union member, used to take it with a grain of salt for quite some time, thinking I was a self-supporting person who had no special need to get help from anyone except close relations. Until I decided to open my theatre, having learnt that the final permission was to be given by the Theatre Union chairman, then Mikhail Ulyanov. I immediately ran off to the Union. I recall that Mikhail Ulyanov was very busy and could not see me right off, but later he helped me of course.

- And I presume the Union must have helped you to get a new building for Et Cetera?

- I did everything myself. Even though Ksenya Sobchak wrote in “Russian Pioneer” that Kalyagin hurried to sign a letter against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, thus obliging them to build a theatre for him. What rubbish! It is like mixing up the dates of birth and death. If I’m not mistaken, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003, and the verdict was announced even later, where as Et Cetera had been going on for about 20 years by then. So, what must I do, tearing my shirt into pieces to make them believe me?
Do you think I haven’t fought enough wars? More than enough! At the beginning and later. And what has this given me? Nothing but pain and frustration. Our profession teaches one to come to terms with the play, director and partners. I keep heaps of different letters. Would you like to see the one I wrote to Moscow’s Mayor Yuri Luzhkov to defend Anatoly Vassiliev? Yuri Luzhkov then told me: “You’re putting it in such a heartfelt way, Kalyagin! You nearly had me crying!”

- And that was why with tears in his eyes, he sacked Anatoly Vassiliev, who was then the artistic director of his School of Dramatic Arts Theatre …?

- Once at a reception in the Kremlin Anatoly Vassiliev asked me to introduce him to Yuri Luzhkov. But when the man noticed us he turned away demonstratively. Nothing doing! A stupid situation. Some people in his entourage may have wounded the Mayor up, telling him that some nights the building was empty instead of staging performances every night. I tried to explain him that this “School” was a unique entity, a creativity laboratory, like the schools of Jerzy Grotovski or Jean Vilar… What I heard in answer was a facility like that should not waste time standing idle because the money invested in its construction should be repaid with a profit. Everyone has their own logic. I repeat: I cannot comprehend a bureaucrat’s psychology.

- At times I fail to comprehend that of an actor. Just make it clear to me why a respected actor Vladimir Mashkov had to hold forth at a recent pro-government party United Russia convention? Was he forced to do it or did someone press a knife to his throat?

- But why don’t you believe people can be sincere at the spur of the moment? I have read some remarks about this on Internet blogs. Opinions differed. I would be hard put to judge a colleague, but personally I would not have been able to speak about the things he spoke the way he did. It would have taken different words without tearing my shirt in peaces in public the Mayakovsky style.

- But you are also a member of United Russia?

- But is this a stigma? If I am a party member, is it necessarily for me to climb the career ladder, being nothing but a piece of shit? This kind of pseudo-intelligentsia’s cynicism is absolutely not my line of thinking, even though I understand its origins. We in Russia have for many decades lived wrapped in falsehoods and lies , so the absence of trust and nihilism have become some sort of a protective reaction each and every human being shows against it. Something needs to be done. You can’t keep going on like this endlessly. I was asked to enroll in the USSR Communist Party, but I declined, even though in Soviet times to refuse such an invitation was much more complicated than today. But how long should we whine and cry about everything’s being so bad?? It’s time we toiled.

- Like a galley-slave?

- Honestly? I would be delighted to be an idle man, but you know, it would be a prick to my conscience.

- Is a candidate for the Russian Theatre Union chairmanship approved in the Kremlin?

- How long did you think before asking that? A heap of crap!

- But ours is a controlled democracy…

- Never have we asked someone to approve what we do! It would have been insulting! Were the Theatre Union unable to solve such issues on its own? I mean, if previously we managed ourselves, why can’t we keep doing our work? By the way, let me mention actress Aleksandra Yablochkina who headed the Russian Theatre Society for 46 years, and actor Mikhail Tsarev – for 22 years…

- In other word there’s something to strive for?

- I have no claims to be at it for the rest of my life, God forbid, and this is absolutely clear to me that it takes a creative personality rather than a manager to run an organization like the Theatre Union. And then it takes experience and years of labour. Mind you, for some reason or other in the times of actress Maria Savina, managing directors of Emperor’s theatres did not vie for this job, realizing that it should be done by an actor or stage director.

- And how has the Theatre Union succeeded in evading the likes of conflicts that tear apart the Cinematography Union?

- It may be there are more wisdom people in our Union. We knew better than to divide, instead of preserving what we have. Healthy conservatism runs supreme in our Union, even though, for example, our organizational creativity department is headed by Dmitry Mozgovoi, who is about 30.

- What a telling name! (Mozg is the Russian for brain, thus Mozgovoi is “a wise person”).

- By the way, yes, even though we invited Dmitry for other reasons… Well, to end this theme I will tell you that through the years of my chairmanship there was not a single attempt to dissent or flare inner conflicts. I was told that when Mikhail Ulyanov headed the STD, some of his opponents tried to set up the Moscow theatre union out of spite for the national one, but it was an aborted attempt. Since then we have lived peacefully. I hope it will be this way in future…

The full text of the interview in Russia can be found at www.itogi.ru/kultura/2011/42/170810.html.

KALYAGIN, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich

Born in 1942 in Mamlyzh (Kirov region) to the family of Aleksandr Kalyagin, Ph.D (History) and Yulia Zaideman, a teacher of French, who had been evacuated to Mamlyzh in the years of WWII.

In 1959 Aleksandr Kalyagin graduated from No.14 medical school and for two years worked as an Emergency Ambulance paramedic. In 1962 he joined the Department of Acting at the Boris Shchukin Theatre School at the State Evgeny Vakhtangov theatre. Upon graduation he worked at the theatres Taganka, the Maria Ermolova theatre and Sovremennik.

In 1970 he began to act at the Maxim Gorky MXAT theatre, working there for about 30 years. His better-known roles at the period were assigned ton him by stage director Oleg Efremov (1927-2000). These included Pyotr Poluorlov (Mikhail Roshchin’s Old New Year, 1973), Trigorin (Anton Chekhov, The Seagull, 1980), Lyonya Shindin (We, the Undersigned, 1973), Vladimir Lenin (Mikhail Shatrov, This Way We’ll Win!, 1981). The latter role brought him the State Award of the USSR in the field of literature and the arts and the title of Merited Artist of the Russian Federation in 1983.

While at MXAT Aleksandr Kalyagin was lucky to work under Anatoly Efros (1925-1987), whom he regarded as a great director and his tutor since his student’s years. Then he played Orgon (Molière, Tartuffe ou L’Imposteur, 1981) and Fyodor Protasov (Leo Tolstoy, The Living Corpse, 1983).

In 1992 Aleksandr Kalyagin appeared in the role of Consoler in the production The Gamblers XXI based on Nikolay Gogol’s story (directed by Sergei Yurski) at the first Soviet non-repertory theatre ARTisans’ ARTel (Association). The production became the hit of Moscow’s 1992 theatrical season.

The same year he and a group of graduates of the Department of Acting he headed at the MXAT Training Studio set up his own theatre in Moscow, giving it the name Et Cetera. In 1996 the theatre that previously had not have their own stage, inhabited one of the facilities in Novy Arbat Street, and in 2005 a special building was erected for the theatre in downtown Moscow near metro stations Turgeneskaya, Chistiye Prudy and Sretensky Boulevard. At Et Cetera Aleksandr Kalyagin holds the posts of an artistic and stage director and actor. In 2003 the role of Father Ubu in the production by Bulgarian director Aleksandr Morfov of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi he received the national theatre award Golden Mask in the nomination Best Male Role.

Right after graduation of the theatre school Aleksandr Kalyagin began to take cinema roles in more than 60 films. He became best-known for the roles of Babbs Baberley (Hello, I’m Your Aunt! based on Brandon Thomas’ play Chareley’s Aunt directed by Viktor Titov, 1973); Mikhail Platonov (An Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano based on the writings of Anton Chekhov, directed by Nikita Mikhalkov, 1977), Pavel Chichikov (a TV series based on Nikolay Gogol’s Dead Souls directed by Mikhail Schweitzer, 1984).In 1979 the opinion poll carried out by magazine Sovietsky Ekran called Aleksandr Kalyagin “the year’s best cinema actor.”

Kalyagin is the winner of many creative and state awards, a member of Public Chamber of the Russian Federation and Chairman of the Theatre Union of the Russian Federation since 1976.

The web-sites below contain detailed information about Aleksandr Kalyagin in Russian: www.et-cetera.ru, www.kalyagin.ru.

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