Born on May 14, 1944 in Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo region. Wife - Shestakova Tatyana Borisovna, actress of the Academic Small drama theater.
From childhood, Lev Dodin began studying at the Leningrad Theater of Youth Creativity, which was led by the excellent teacher Matvey Grigorievich Dubrovin. Largely thanks to his influence, Leo developed a strong desire to devote himself to the theater. Immediately after graduating from school, he entered the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography, where he studied with the outstanding director and teacher Boris Vulfovich Zone.
The year of graduation coincided with the year of Lev Dodin's directorial debut. In 1966, his teleplay “First Love” based on the story by I.S. Turgenev. This was followed by productions at the Leningrad Youth Theater ("Our People - Let's Be Numbered" by A.N. Ostrovsky) and the Drama and Comedy Theater ("The Minor" by Fonvizin and "Rosa Berndt").
Lev Dodin’s collaboration with the Maly Drama Theater began in 1975 with “The Robber” by K. Capek. The production of the play “Home” by F. Abramov in 1980 gained all-Union fame and largely determined the subsequent creative fate of Lev Dodin. In 1983 he became artistic director Maly Drama Theatre. Over the years, the following plays were born: “Brothers and Sisters” by F. Abramov, “Lord of the Flies” by W. Golding, “Stars in the Morning Sky” by A. Galin, “Gaudeamus” by S. Kaledin, “Demons” by F.M. Dostoevsky, "Love under the Elms" by Yu. O"Neill, "Claustrophobia" based on the works of modern Russian writers, " Cherry Orchard"A.P. Chekhov, "Untitled Play" by A.P. Chekhov, "Chevengur" by A. Platonov, "The Seagull" by A.P. Chekhov, etc.
In total, Lev Dodin is the author of more than 50 dramatic and opera productions. His creative credits include the performances "Bankrupt" on the stage of the Finnish national theater, "The Golovlevs" at the Moscow Art Theater, "The Meek" on the stages of the Bolshoi Drama Theater and the Moscow Art Theater, as well as the opera "Electra" by R. Strauss at the Salzburg Musical Theater Easter festival 1995 (conductor Claudio Abaddo), "Katerina Izmailova" D.D. Shostakovich at the 1998 festival in Florence, “The Queen of Spades” by P.I. Tchaikovsky in Florence and Amsterdam in 1998 (conductor S. Bychkov), "Lady Macbeth Mtsensk district"at the festival "Florentine Musical May", "Mazepa" by P.I. Tchaikovsky at the La Scala theater in 1999 (conductor M.L. Rostropovich).
In the fall of 1999, at the Bastille Theater in Paris, L. Dodin staged new option"Queen of Spades", and in 2001 in the same theater "Queen of Spades" was restored.
Lev Dodin's performances were performed in 27 countries, including the USA, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Czech Republic, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Israel, Greece, Denmark, Ireland, Finland, Poland , Romania, Norway, Portugal, Canada, Holland, Austria, Yugoslavia, New Zealand, Belgium, Hungary. In the fall of 1999, a festival of performances by Dodin was held in Italy.
Maly Drama Theater under the direction of L.A. Dodina is one of the most popular theaters in St. Petersburg and “international” theaters in Russia, demonstrating the strength of Lev Dodin’s directorial talent and at the same time the fruitfulness of the Russian acting school. It is no coincidence that in 1992 the theater and the director himself were invited to join the Union of European Theaters, and in September 1998, the Maly Drama Theater from St. Petersburg was the first and so far the only Russian group to receive the status of the Theater of Europe, becoming the third in the world after the Parisian Odeon. and Milan's Piccolo Theatre.
The boldness of the outstanding director's production plans is based on the capabilities of a brilliantly trained troupe, many of whose actors are students of Lev Dodin. For 15 years now, Dodin has been cultivating in himself and his actors a passion for the truth - to live not by lies!
L.A. Dodin - People's Artist Russia, laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR (1986) and the Russian Federation (1998), the Prize of the President of the Russian Federation (2001). His theatrical activity and performances have been awarded with many domestic and international prizes and awards. Among them: Russian national independent award "Triumph" (1992), twice - National Award"Golden Mask" (1997, 1999), awards from the K.S. Foundation Stanislavsky "For outstanding achievements in pedagogy" (1996), "Golden Sofit" (1996), Laurence Olivier Prize (1988), French Theater and music critics(1992), the regional English theater award (1992), the Italian UBU award (1993, 1994), the Italian Abbiati critics' award for the best opera performance (1998), as well as the highest European theater award "Europe - Theater" (2000). The director was also awarded the French Order of Literature and Art of Officer Dignity "For his enormous contribution to the cause of cooperation between Russian and French cultures" (1994).
Back in 1967, L.A. Dodin started teaching acting and directing. He trained more than one generation of actors and directors. Now he is a professor at the St. Petersburg Academy theatrical arts, heads the department of directing, regularly conducts master classes in theater schools Great Britain, France, Japan, USA, is a permanent member of the jury of a professional competition literary works"Northern Palmyra" and a member of the jury theater award St. Petersburg "Golden Soffit".
Lives and works in St. Petersburg.
On Friday, the MDT Theater of Europe will host the premiere of the play “King Lear” directed by Lev Dodin. Izvestia special correspondent Arthur Solomonov met with director Lev Dodin in Turin at the presentation of the Europe to Theater Award.
news: Peter Brook has an article: “King Lear” - is it possible to stage this play? Why do you think Brook wrote about this particular play as the most difficult to stage?
Lev Dodin: Brook also says that “King Lear” is the peak, the path to which is paved with the corpses of directors and actors.
Izvestia: Aren't you afraid to add to the list of dead?
Dodin: I’ve been afraid for three years now, while rehearsals have been going on. There is always the danger of being much smaller than even the most private question that is raised in King Lear. In addition, our heads are filled with prejudices, false ideas about the play, which have nothing to do with the real space of content. And when you break through to it a little, you see very interesting relationships and patterns.
Izvestia: If you ask - which ones, will you say that this question is premature?
Dodin: Of course. The performance is only in the process of formation. We held two dress rehearsals with the public, and each was strikingly different from the other.
Traditionally it is believed that this is the tragedy of one man - Lear. This always seemed wrong to me, because the heroes are connected cruel system the interdependence of fathers and children, and I think that responsibility in this story is distributed quite differently from what is commonly believed: bad daughters and noble father. Where does a noble father get such bad daughters? And if he is so good, then maybe they are good too?
We first did a direct interlinear translation to get to the simple meanings. And we rehearsed for a long time, word by word. And then we realized that we couldn’t go back to Pasternak’s translation from the interlinear translation, because we knew a whole series other meanings that Pasternak either removed or presented differently. He was influenced by his own powerful genius, the Russian poetic tradition and, of course, the puritanical Stalinist era. We were afraid to go into fluttering conditionally sublime feelings. And my namesake Dina Davydovna Dodina made new translation, in which the relationship between prose and poetry, the comic and the tragic is interpreted differently.
We really wanted to first force ourselves to hear the simple and crude meanings of Shakespeare’s words, and then convey them to the audience. Killing poetry - that was one of our aspirations. Kill poetry in order to break through to poetry.
Izvestia: Here in Turin, at a meeting with the public, you said that one of the landmark events in your life was a heart attack, after which you reconsidered your attitude towards many things. In "King Lear", in essence, we are talking about the fact that a person does not own anything except himself, that his only property is himself.
Dodin: I always thought a lot about death, but when you touch it... I felt bad, they were already taking me to the hospital, and I called the theater on my mobile and assured that I would soon return to rehearsal. And when the doctor came up to me in the hospital and said: “A blood test showed that you had a heart attack,” rehearsals, performances, everything became unimportant. You found yourself close to death... For a person who is engaged in creativity, such an experience, I think, is necessary. I have always been sure that Chekhov's illness was not an accident. On the one hand, he is a doctor, on the other, he is a patient. And both know that the disease is fatal, but life is wonderful.
Izvestia: You repeat the word “disease” quite often. Nietzsche has a phrase: “A person’s health is determined by how much pain he can take on and overcome.” Are these words close to your heart, or did I miss the point?
Dodin: No, to the point. Art deals with human diseases. Life is also a kind of disease. Man is initially sick with death. Everything determines this. Both fascism and communism are actually about man overcoming his mortality. But - by bestial means. Why does a person like to kill others? This delays his stay in this world. Why is NOT showing strength the same as showing true courage? By not showing strength, you make it clear that you are aware that you are mortal. And with any violence we remove the thought of our weakness and, as a consequence, of our mortality. By admitting the thought of our weakness, we show strength. This ideology is difficult to access, but it is determined by the logic of European development. Why does Europe seem weak to us and we sometimes patronizingly pat it on the shoulder? Why didn't they shoot at Arabs during the Paris riots? It was a show of strength.
Izvestia: We are now in Turin at the ceremony of presenting the Europe to Theater Award, which you received some time ago. You were one of the first in the perestroika era who again drew attention to the Russian theater and increased its authority. Remember the wave of criticism that hit you - accusations of capitalizing on a national misfortune, trading in our vices, and that you present an unsightly image in the West modern Russia... How do you feel about this period now?
Dodin: I have a wonderful attitude towards this period in the life of our theater. A huge review in the Libération newspaper of the premiere of Claustrophobia in Paris was called “Free Children of a Free Russia” and was jubilant: “ New Russia wonderful, as we expected." And I regard the slander that you remembered with great sadness - young people, also children of the new time, found themselves dissolved in the most terrible prejudices of the past. And just as Mayakovsky discovered the mug of the tradesman, I discovered with horror in young critics there is the mug of a Stalinist theater official.
I often read reviews about Europe and see what a stock of zoological hatred we have for the big European culture. I read interviews with some young deputies, and my hair stands on end from what they say... I am afraid that we have missed a stage in our development, and a very dangerous period is approaching.
Izvestia: Is your viewer changing?
Dodin: The audience is very good. Very young people come to the hall - the generation that has not yet been poisoned. They look perfect.
I accidentally overheard a conversation between young guys after the performance: “Listen, f..., “Uncle Vanya” - what a performance! I decided to f..., “Demons” to watch.”
Izvestia: Do you like that such a viewer comes?
Dodin: Of course. “B” and “x” will disappear over time, but “Uncle Vanya” and “Demons” will remain. For example, punks began to go to Chevengur.
You know, I increasingly think that along with false concepts, true ones are devalued. Let the false ones be devalued, and the true ones remain. Kindness, humanism, love for a person, tenderness, care for him, hatred of what humiliates him.
news: You rarely hear in lately so that someone pronounces these words without irony.
Dodin: Why should I be shy? These concepts make life meaningful. Everything else is a physiological process. This is also a Soviet legacy, Lenin’s contempt for the intelligentsia, for the “kind” person.
Izvestia: In your play “Demons” there is a scene “At ours”, which brilliantly shows how the word influences reality, how it begins to guide life.
Dodin: Yes, it was important for me that this scene be read that way. Now false words have filled our lives. And, by the way, today one of the popular youth movements is called “Ours,” but that’s the name in Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed” of the association, the result of which was a banal murder. You might think this is the name modern movement given by someone very well-read, smart, cynical, with great mockery of our society, which does not remember its history.
Izvestia: You pronounce the word “Soviet” with contempt. Does this word contain any positive charge for you?
Dodin: None.
Izvestia: But you too soviet man.
Dodin: I’m struggling with this. Of course, this is youth, love, parents... Whole life. But we are talking about a certain type of consciousness, and I hate it. For example, during the period of Hitlerism, many Germans probably experienced happiness, love, the birth of children, committed scientific discoveries. But this cannot whitewash Hitlerism?! And during the period of Stalinism, one hundred million were killed in our country. And this was not a consequence of war or plague, it was a policy to destroy one’s own people. We were destroying ourselves.
Izvestia: Did your parents perceive the USSR in the same way?
Dodin: My mother was a very sincere communist; she joined the party in 1944, while pregnant with me. When they told her that she could wait, she replied: “Without me there will be no victory.” But she had an epiphany in the seventies, and it was terrible tragedy, which brought my mother to the brink of mental illness. She was wonderful person, who passionately believe in communism, and then passionately hate communism and themselves in it.
Izvestia: What recent event was the most joyful for you?
Dodin: There hasn’t been a joyful event for a long time. Loved ones are sick. Joy is difficult. It’s more difficult than before, when joy was resistance to a terrible time, perhaps unconsciously. They ban the performance that you have been nurturing for years, and at night you have such fun in spite of everything. Nowadays work gives me joy. No matter how we played the premiere today, there were still a lot of happy moments during rehearsals.
RBC sent a request to the press service of the Ministry of Culture.
The MDT actors found it difficult to comment on what happened. Anzhelika Nevolina said that she knew absolutely nothing, Ksenia Rappoport said that she was “not aware of the situation.” Adrian Rostovsky reported that he learned about thefts at MDT from funds mass media. “I had never encountered this news before. The only thing I’ve encountered is the constant long-term construction, like the whole theater,” he said.
An RBC source familiar with the investigation materials said that the thefts were committed at the design stage. According to SPARK, in 2015 the Stroysoyuz SV company entered into an agreement on the construction of a new stage of the Academic Maly Drama Theater - Theater of Europe for 2.5 billion rubles. The competition documentation is available on the government procurement website. The customer of the work was the state institution North-Western Directorate for Construction, Reconstruction and Restoration. The parent company according to SPARK is the Russian Ministry of Culture.
Construction of the new MDT stage should be completed by the end of 2019. The contract provides for reconstruction, creation of underground parking, rehearsal rooms, technical and storage facilities.
The artistic director and director of MDT is Lev Dodin. The theater’s website states that the authors of the concept of a new stage on the site of a two-story building of the former fodder yard of the Semenovsky regiment are Dodin himself and main artist Theater Alexander Borovsky.
Later, the RBC law office “Kachkin and Partners” stated that the author of the concept and architectural design of the new MDT stage was the Mamoshin Architectural Studio.
Initially, the contractor for the new stage was the Stroysoyuz SV company, but in December 2016 a contract was signed with it for 2.5 billion rubles. was torn apart due to missed deadlines, reports 78.ru. Stroysoyuz SV sued the Ministry of Culture and as a result received 200 million rubles. The next contract was signed with Transept Group for 2 billion rubles. Work began in the spring of 2017.
In November 2017, the North-Western Directorate for Construction, Reconstruction and Restoration of the Ministry of Culture announced a tender to select a new general designer (the previous designer, the TDM company, went bankrupt), explaining this by introducing “some changes to the project.” It was planned to spend 38 million rubles on the development of documentation.
According to the SPARK database, in 2018, the theater administration, acting as a customer, entered into contracts with contractors for 20.5 million rubles. In addition to the main activity listed in the database, which is the performing arts, the theater has a license to sell alcohol. Lev Dodin, in addition to his posts in MDT, is a co-owner of a regional charitable public fund"Friends of the St. Petersburg State Academic Small Drama Theater under the direction of Lev Dodin."
Scandals involving allegations of embezzlement in Russian theaters
Maly and Bolshoi theaters in Moscow
In 2006, investigative authorities charged the director of Teplotekhnik LLC, who participated in the reconstruction of the State Academic Maly Theater in Moscow, with fraud. According to investigators, the company carried out work on relaying a section of the heating main and installing underground chamber wells. The contractor who did not complete the work in in full, nevertheless received all the money under the contract. The accused in the case was the managing bishop of the Union of Evangelical Christian Churches of Russia, Alexander Semchenko. He was given a written undertaking not to leave the place and the case was investigated for the next seven years.
In 2013, the Ministry of Internal Affairs spoke about the theft of 90 million rubles allocated for the repair of the State Academic Academy Bolshoi Theater(SABT). Back in 2005, the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Directorate for Construction, Reconstruction and Restoration” and the same LLC “PO Teplotekhnik” signed a contract for work on major renovation theater power supply facilities. According to the investigation, despite the unfinished repairs and violations of technical regulations, the work acceptance certificate was signed and 90 million rubles were transferred to the contractor.
The criminal cases against Semchenko were combined, and he was placed under house arrest. A year later, the investigation into the case of theft during work at the Maly Theater was discontinued, and the bishop was released from arrest on his own recognizance.
"Gogol Center"
In May 2017, searches were carried out at the Moscow Gogol Center theater, as well as at the home of its artistic director Kirill Serebrennikov, and the Investigative Committee announced fraud. After the search, the former general director and chief accountant of the Seventh Studio project, Yuri Itin and Nina Maslyaeva, were detained. Subsequently, Serebrennikov himself, the ex-director of the Gogol Center Alexei Malobrodsky, and the former head of the Ministry of Culture department Sofya Apfelbaum were detained.
According to investigators, a criminal group created by Serebrennikov stole budget funds intended for development in 2011-2014 cultural project"Platform" based on the production company "Seventh Studio". Maslyaeva confessed, and the amount of damage, initially estimated at 68 million rubles, increased to 133 million. The investigation of the case continues. The accusations caused a wide resonance, and many public and cultural figures in Russia and abroad spoke out in defense of Serebrennikov and other accused.
Puppet Theater named after Obraztsov
In September 2010, they came to the Moscow Puppet Theater named after Sergei Obraztsov with searches. Soon, on suspicion of theft of at least 11.8 million rubles. ex-director of the theater Andrei Luchin was detained. Fraud charges were also brought against his wife, who was a senior economist at the theater.
According to the investigation, in 2008, the couple, when preparing competitions for the right to conclude government contracts with the theater, registered controlled enterprises that won the competitions. As a result, the theater signed nine contracts worth more than 18.5 million rubles with front companies. Alexander Avdeev, who served as Minister of Culture at the time of Luchin’s arrest, stated that the theater director could have become a victim of imperfect laws.
In 2012, the Simonovsky District Court of Moscow sentenced Luchin to five years of suspended imprisonment; his wife received four years of suspended sentence.
Mariinsky Theater
In 2012, the Accounts Chamber amounted to more than 290 million rubles. during the construction of the second stage Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. The audit showed that construction funds were used ineffectively. However, no charges were brought as a result of the investigation. The cost of the project for the second stage of the Mariinsky Theater more than doubled during construction, to 22 billion rubles.
Chekhov Moscow Art Theater
In January 2009, a criminal case was opened on suspicion of attempted fraud at the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov. The head of the Installation and Construction Department, Tatyana Shishkova, stated that the theater management invited her to participate in a scam with money allocated for the reconstruction of the building on Kamergersky Lane. According to investigators, the first deputy artistic director of the theater Igor Popov, deputy director Oleg Kozyrenko and chairman of the competition committee Evgeny Yakimov were going to participate in this scam.
The Prosecutor General's Office twice refused to approve the indictment, and at the end of 2010 it became known that the investigation had been terminated at the request of the theater's artistic director Oleg Tabakov and most of the creative troupe in connection with the reconciliation of the parties. It was also reported that the suspects admitted their guilt and repented.
Drama Theater in Pskov
In the high-profile “case of restorers”, in which Deputy Minister of Culture Grigory Pirumov was involved, there was an episode related to the theft of funds allocated for the renovation of the Drama Theater in Pskov. According to investigators, in 2012 Pirumov created a criminal group of employees of the Ministry of Culture and private enterprises, which entered into contracts for restoration work at inflated prices and appropriated the surplus. In total, the group members were accused of stealing 164 million rubles.
At the beginning of 2017, Pirumov admitted his guilt, and soon the defendants paid the amount of damage. As a result, the cases of some were separated into separate proceedings and the defendants were given suspended sentences.
Pirumov himself was sentenced in early October 2017 and immediately released due to serving his sentence in a pre-trial detention center. The remaining defendants in the case also received sentences that allowed them to be released in the courtroom.
Dzhigarkhanyan Theater in Moscow
In 2017, a scandal broke out in the family of actor and director Armen Dzhigarkhanyan. Amid family disagreements, searches took place in the accounting department of the Moscow Drama Theater under the leadership of Dzhigarkhanyan. According to sources, checks revealed thefts in the theater, which was previously run by the artist’s wife Vitalina Tsymbalyuk. It was reported that the theater accountant was under suspicion.
"Center for Drama and Directing" in Moscow
In May 2016, it became known about a criminal case initiated against former director Moscow theater "Center for Drama and Directing" by Dmitry Palaguta. According to investigators, the head of the theater fictitiously hired an accountant who did not appear there and did not perform job responsibilities, and Palaguta himself received the salary. The damage was estimated at approximately 1 million rubles.
Altai Youth Theater
In August 2014, law enforcement agencies brought charges of theft of property against Tatyana Kozitsyna, who had recently been fired with scandal from her post as director of the Altai Youth Theater after 16 years of work. She was charged with theft of a company laptop and phone worth 17,654 and 7,192 rubles. respectively. Subsequently, the charge was reclassified from theft to negligence.
Famous theater and theater actors came out in defense of Kozitsyna. public figures, including directors Kirill Serebrennikov, Ivan Vyrypaev, Alexander Kalyagin and others. In November 2014, the case against her was closed for lack of evidence of a crime.
Biography
Lev Abramovich Dodin is a Soviet and Russian theater director. Performances “Home” (1980), “Brothers and Sisters” (1985), “Stars in the Morning Sky” (1987), “Demons (1991), etc.
Lev Abramovich Dodin was born on May 14, 1944 in Stalinsk (now Novokuznetsk). His father worked on a geological expedition. Mother was a pediatrician.
After the war, the family moved to Leningrad. Lev Dodin became interested in theater at school. Together with Sergei Solovyov, a future film director, he acted out sketches. Then the guys organized the film studio “Detyunfilm” and made films. In 1956, they enrolled in the Theater of Youth Creativity - Tyuta Theater at the Palace of Pioneers, where Matvey Grigorievich Dubrovin, a student of Meyerhold, taught.
After graduating from school, Dodin entered the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography. Here he was lucky enough to study with the outstanding director and teacher Boris Vulfovich Zone.
After college, Dodin began working on television, then he moved to the Theater for Young Spectators under Zinovy Yakovlevich Korogodsky. His first independent work in the Youth Theater - “After the execution, I ask...” There was a very good atmosphere in the theater. Dodin liked working there. He started teaching. A student of his first class, Tatyana Shestakova, will become the director’s wife.
However, after the production of Ostrovsky’s comedy “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!” His relationship with Korogodsky became complicated, and Dodin, who wanted independence, chose to leave. After this, he spent ten years in “free swimming.” As Dodin says, “it was quite difficult to survive. Sometimes there was no salary. But I did only what I wanted, and the way I wanted. Each performance was done as if it were the last, because it was still unknown what would happen next, and all the ideas - if you had them - had to be embodied in this particular performance.”
The famous theater teacher A. Katsman invited Dodin to work together on the acting course at LGITMiK. In 1979, the students staged the play “Brothers and Sisters” based on the novel by Fyodor Abramov. Together with a teacher-director, the aspiring artists spent the summer in Pinega, Abramov’s homeland, trying to be as accurate as possible in showing the life of the northern Russian village. The student performance at the Educational Theater on Mokhovaya Street was a success, exceptional even for that time rich in theatrical achievements. This one is unusual academic work became the basis for the plays “Home” (1980) and “Brothers and Sisters” (1985; the play was performed for two evenings at the Maly Drama Theater). The theatrical trilogy based on the novels of Fyodor Abramov was awarded the USSR State Prize. The premiere of “House” was not only a theatrical event; spectators and critics perceived the performance as something important in their personal lives and in the life of society. Everything here was real people, destinies, events.
In 1981, Dodin staged “The Meek One” based on Dostoevsky at the Bolshoi Drama Theater (second edition - Moscow Art Theater, 1985). In this performance, Oleg Borisov played one of his best roles. As critics note, “the study of the borderline states of human consciousness will for a long time become one of the leading themes of Dodin’s work.”
At the Moscow Art Theater he creates a complex play “The Golovlev Gentlemen” based on Saltykov-Shchedrin, in which actors of different generations played I. Smoktunovsky, A. Georgievskaya, V. Kashpur, G. Burkov, E. Vasilyeva... In the final round dance the “wights” twirled around a hero seeking forgiveness and peace.
With a new acting course, Dodin staged Rasputin’s “Live and Remember” (the story of a Great Britain deserter hiding near his native village Patriotic War). IN working together The ideas and principles of the theater-house were formulated, the main composition of the troupe of the Maly Drama Theater was formed, which Dodin headed in 1983.
The social melodrama Stars in the Morning Sky (1987) became a real sensation. “We staged the story that Galin composed very freely,” recalls the director. - And Galin, a wise author, did not interfere with anything. Even then we did not make a performance against the authorities. We made a play about what is inside people, what can happen between people, and what people can bring each other to because of the universal loneliness that always surrounds a person, and especially in our lives.”
The nine-hour play “Demons” was performed at the MDT in the winter of 1992, during a difficult time for the country. This theatrical poem, imbued with mournful tragic harmony, is one of the highest achievements of Dodin’s art.
Many of Dodin's performances are permeated with the subtlest religious feeling. “The worst thing is to be an atheist, that is, not to think about anything; religion is a property of the existence of the soul. And theater is a journey in the soul, an exploration of one’s own, someone else’s, human soul,” says Lev Abramovich.
The play “A Play Without a Title” is Dodin’s third experience of working on Chekhov’s dramaturgy. Before that there was “The Cherry Orchard” and two years of experience working on “Three Sisters,” which never made it to the premiere.
Key scenes are played in the water. The certainty of sand, water, rain, and the naked body creates a sense of the natural beauty of the natural world, in sharp contrast to the unnatural, ugly, meaningless human life.
In “Chevengur” metaphysical waters will splash on the stage again, Hamlet’s questions of the meaning of existence will be discussed by barefoot, ragged, dark and obsessed people. “Pathos is a lie for Platonov. Dodin famously captures it with humor, writes art critic Ninel Ismailova. - In general, no one knows how, like Dodin, to mix all the colors, high and low, tragic and comic, lyrical-romantic and crudely naturalistic for a single image of the performance. “Chevengur” by Dodin - philosophical aphorism theatrical means. It contains the motives of all Platonov and all Dodin. Here there is selflessness, and cruelty, and strength, and blindness, and heaps and loads, and water, and fire, and earth, and stones, and people, and the passions that devour them, and life, and death.”
“Theater of Europe” - such an honorary title International Union Drama theaters were honored in 1998 by the Maly Drama Theater at its XVIII General Assembly. Countless reviews of foreign magazines and newspapers were full of enthusiastic headlines: “Deep acting”, “Burning dramatic trepidation”, “Triumph of the Russian theater”. Prior to this, the status of “Theater of Europe” was given to the Parisian Odeon and the Milanese Piccolo Teatro.
Dodin undoubtedly belongs to a very small group of true followers of Stanislavsky. In one of his interviews, he said, “You may not like Stanislavsky’s thoughts, but they, like Einstein’s laws, act objectively. And when an artist plays correctly, he plays according to Stanislavsky, even if he doesn’t like him - this is the whole paradox... His main discovery is that theater is a search for an ideal, an eternal striving for perfection.”
Dodin for a long time refused to stage plays in the West. Finally, he decided to experiment and at the Salzburg Easter Music Festival in 1995, together with the famous director Claudio Abbado, he showed the opera “Electra” by Richard Strauss. The performance was a success.
Now one production follows another “Katerina Izmailova” in Florence, “The Queen of Spades” in Florence and Amsterdam, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” at the Florence Musical May festival (conductor S. Bychkov), “Mazepa” at La Scala (conductor M. Rostropovich), a new version of “The Queen of Spades” in opera house Bastille, "The Demon" at the Chatelet Theater...
The director invariably turns to Russian classics, as he believes that “abroad, as well as at home, the public is attracted by an encounter with genuine art.”
Dodin presented Chekhov's The Seagull at the Third World Theater Olympiad in Moscow. And again water is his element. As critics noted, the director created one of his most pessimistic performances. In it, from the very first moments, everyone is tired, devastated by life, as if the waters of a witch’s lake flooded the will, desires, aspirations and hopes. “If we talk about the genre, then I’m more of a philosopher, thinking mainly about myself, about my understanding of good and evil, about what is fair and what is moral, and what is mean and cruel,” says Dodin. “But since I am a theater director, I translate these thoughts into the fabric of performances.”
The boldness of Dodin's production plans is based on the capabilities of a brilliantly trained troupe, many of whose actors are his students. Lev Abramovich is a professor at the St. Petersburg Academy of Theater Arts, heads the department of directing, and regularly conducts master classes at theater schools in the UK, France, Japan, and the USA. The outstanding director Dodin tirelessly cultivates in himself and his actors a passion for the truth - to live not by lies!
Artistic director of the Maly Drama Theater, one of the most famous and revered Russian theater directors in the world. In 1966 he graduated from the directing department of LGITMiK, worked at the Leningrad Youth Theater, the Liteiny Theater, staged small stage BDT. Since 1975 he has worked at MDT, and since 1983 he has become its artistic director. World fame came to Dodin after the epic production “Brothers and Sisters” (based on Fyodor Abramov’s trilogy “Pryasliny”), work on which lasted ten years. The director has worked and is working with many leading scenes in the world. At the Moscow Art Theater he staged “The Golovlev Lords” based on the novel by Saltykov-Shchedrin with Innokenty Smoktunovsky (1984); Strauss's opera Elektra for the Salzburg Festival; " Queen of Spades» Tchaikovsky in Dutch Opera. Each new job Dodina in MDT - be it "Cunning and Love", "The Cherry Orchard" or "Hamlet" - becomes one of the main events of the season in St. Petersburg. Lev Dodin's performances are regularly nominated for " Golden mask"and almost always become laureates.