"Anna. Tragedy". A play by E. Gremina based on the novel “Anna Karenina” by L.N. Tolstoy.
Theater-festival "Baltic House".
Directed by Alexander Galibin, artist Nikolai Simonov.
The premiere based on “Anna Karenina” may interest St. Petersburg residents primarily because the creative duo of director Alexander Galibin and actress Irina Savitskova has returned to our city, to the Baltic House theater. Fifteen years ago, here, only on the Small Stage, their play “Frequin Julie” was staged - Galibin staged it, Savitskova played the title role. On the performance of the role of Strindberg’s heroine, the critic: “Irina Savitskova has a special gift - playing a tragedy in a drama.”
Alexander Galibin introduced the keyword “tragedy” into the title of his new play, arguing that he needed this genre, rare today, in which his actress was quite capable of existing. Here, by the way, it would be useful to remember that Savitskova’s first role on the professional stage was Electra - albeit not in an ancient tragedy, but in a play by Giraudoux the Son, but, nevertheless, in her performance there was a “funeral frenzy.” The critic concluded the portrait of a very young Savitskova with the words: “The modern theater has received its own actress - an extraordinary temperament, a unique attitude, an intellectual actress who has a great sense of stage structure of any complexity.”
I. Savitskova (Anna), N. Parashkina (Seryozha).
Photo - N. Filippov.
Theatrical versions of Tolstoy's novel created in the 21st century often bring to the fore not Anna, but Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin. The famous performance by Gennady Trostyanetsky at the Theater. Lensovet was called “Karenin. Anna. Vronsky"; The play by Vasily Sigarev, running in many Russian theaters, is called “A. Karenin." But Alexander Galibin, as you might guess, puts the heroine at the center of his stage composition and builds an impressively huge world of the play around her. Of course, there is no place for Levin’s story here and there cannot be; this half of the novel is not transferred to the stage. The entire interest of the authors of the play is focused on what happens to Anna. Or rather, even on what is happening inside Anna. I'm almost ready to risk it and say that “Anna. Tragedy is a monodrama: the viewer sees events and characters from within the heroine’s consciousness, the way Karenina herself sees the world around her.
In her eyes, Vronsky grows into a huge figure - the already slender and tall actor Alexander Muravitsky towers over his partner, his long overcoat hides the stilts on which he stands (the scene of the night meeting at the station). Anna sees her daughter-in-law Dolly (Alla Yemintseva) as an eternally pregnant, clumsy and pitiful woman, clutching an armful of rag dolls to her chest - numerous children (she loses some of them every now and then and is frightenedly looking for them). Kitty (Alexandra Mamkaeva) appears in her mind as an awkward young lady in a baggy dress - an annoying obstacle, nothing more. The image of her son seems to be “overshadowed” by Lydia Ivanovna, who has taken the life of the abandoned Karenin into her hands and does not allow the mother to see the child: actress Natalya Parashkina, before our eyes, transforms from Lydia Ivanovna into Seryozha, who, at the long-awaited meeting with his mother, is so carried away by devouring the cake she brought, that he completely forgets about her (similar to horrible dream). Alexey Karenin is designed in a grotesque way - he seems both sinister and absurd. A. Galibin’s tall stature is emphasized by a long robe, for some reason similar to a cassock. His hero is initially almost hidden from the audience by a faceless doll - a mannequin with which he is united into one whole. Mechanical movements, a thin voice that breaks into a squeal - the man-machine Karenin evokes fear and disgust in his wife... So, we look at the world through eyes that are already obscured by jealousy and illness - Anna is addicted to morphine.
I. Savitskova (Anna), A. Emintseva (Dolly).
Photo - Yu. Bogatyrev.
The beginning of Elena Gremina's play finds the heroine at the pre-final moment of her life, when she is waiting and cannot wait for Count Vronsky to leave, rushing about, languishing from loneliness, despair and melancholy; then the plot makes a sharp leap back to the plot plot (“everything is mixed up in the Oblonskys’ house”), and passes through the key scenes of the novel, to eventually arrive at the very platform from which Anna Karenina threw herself under the train. The retrospective unfolding of the story deprives it of even the illusion of happiness: Anna, and the viewer along with her, experiences the meeting with Vronsky, love for him only as a starting point to decay and death. Only one moment of joy was given to the heroine after the ball, where she danced with the count for the first time. Anna-Savitskova, laughing frivolously, blows soap bubbles, then lies down on the floor and laughs for no reason, as if in oblivion. There is already something painful and frightening about this. All the heroine’s feelings are heightened, enlarged, cleared of halftones and nuances. These feelings are tragic, all-consuming and self-sufficient. The actress plays greedy love for Vronsky, painful longing for her son, and soul-corroding jealousy as a series of extreme, extreme states of the soul. The thin, flexible figure of Irina Savitskova - Anna never gets lost on the endless stage of the "Baltic House", the darkness is pierced by her fiercely burning gaze, her voice rings inner strength and the enthusiasm of the actress. The style of play would be more suitable for Phaedra or Medea than for Tolstoy's heroine.
There is one scene, at the end of the first act of the play, in which the way of existence is decisively changed and closer to psychological: this is Anna's dying monologue (when she thinks that she is dying from childbirth). Savitskova leaves the stage and in the darkness rises higher and higher along the aisles of the hall, as if breaking away from the ground where the heroine suffered so much. The audience hears her voice, which sounds different in this monologue. It is overflowing with tenderness, love, gentle modulations, complex modulations... The actress’s influence on the audience in this scene is enormous.
Alexander Galibin reads symbolic images from the novel, with the help of which he builds the building of his performance. The railroad is the leitmotif that connects all the scenes. Scenographer Nikolai Simonov designates the plan of the usual human life using wooden chairs with curved backs (the tablet is strewn with them) and suspends a massive railway bridge with intersecting beams above the stage - this heavy hulk is threateningly descending, ready to crush the fragile chairs, and indeed the entire fragile world of people. Two mobile flights of stairs are also made of iron. In one of the scenes, nameless characters—members of the Chorus—are seated on them. Each person holds a tin box filled with loose material. By rhythmically shaking the boxes, the Choir creates the sound of wheels clattering on rails. At this time, the fireman (Anatoly Dubanov) taps the ladders with a hammer, just like a trackman does when checking the condition of the railway track or parts of the rolling stock.
A. Galibin (Karenin).
Photo - Yu. Bogatyrev.
The character of A. Dubanov appears on stage in the very first minute of the performance and remains on it until the very end. Everyone who has read the novel remembers the haunting nightmare Anna (once Vronsky also sees him): a man with a beard, bending over a bag of iron, says something in French. The appearance of this mystical character is always accompanied by the motif of iron (the railroad, the sound of a hammer on iron, working on iron, the phrase “we must forge iron, grind”). All this is also in the play - the fireman pushes an iron wheelbarrow in front of him, drinks from a copper kettle, rattles and knocks with all kinds of pieces of iron and metal objects, even pushes - not iron, but glass - morphine bottles, but in a tin bathtub, and speaks (counts) French from time to time. It is clear that the authors wanted to make this hero a kind of messenger of Rock. However, unfortunately, there is actually nothing mystical in it. If the fireman had been solved exclusively plastically (which is possible, since the choreographer Edvald Smirnov composed entire choreographic scenes for the performance, both mass scenes for the Choir, and duets for Anna and Vronsky) and muttered only incomprehensible words in French, it might have a touch of creepiness. But Dubanov’s character is given the text “from the author” (he continually tells in an epic tone what this or that hero was thinking, although the heroes themselves talk about themselves in the third person in Tolstoy’s words). In addition, the stoker gives the audience historical information: statistics of female mortality from childbirth in the 19th century, the number of deaths in construction railway workers, scope of morphine and so on. And this objective information, presented in a completely intelligible “documentary” voice, does not fit in with the desired ominous image.
The chorus acts in the play as Anna's antagonist, the collective principle is opposed to her solo tragic part. It is associated with ancient Greek tragedy, but it seems that Galibin’s performance came from another archaic theatrical form - Russian folk theater (it’s not for nothing that the director once staged “Tsar Maximilian”). The choir members, dancing mockingly and mockingly, perform something like a buffoon rap: deliberately primitive rhymes that Elena Gremina skillfully composed based on the text of the novel. These chants, stylized as folklore, require a sharp, farcical solution - brighter than what came out in the monochrome performance.
Despite the austere beauty of the spectacle (it’s worth mentioning Denis Solntsev’s sophisticated lighting score), the performance is more impactful with its detailed musical score. The clang of iron, the crash, the knock, the nervous clanking of a bottle on the edge of a cup, the shrill sound of crossed blades, sharpened scythes, sharp screams - a world of unpleasant, irritating sounds plunges the audience into an anxious, unsteady state, drawing them inside Anna's troubled soul.
I didn't express myself correctly. Now there is no fear, there is discomfort before going out. Well, it’s like it’s freezing or hot there. I don't want to go out.
Previously, yes, there was a specific fear. I was afraid of people. Women who will be judged.As for my mother, now I understand that she is a mentally unhealthy moral sadist. But this understanding took 40 years (((.
As I explained. Well, it’s so heartfelt and intelligible that I’m the worst, but the “other children” are very good. And I grew up “a bastard, a fascist.” They never called me daughter or daughter. Like in the movie "Morozko"
-And the stepmother calls her a damned witch and a subterranean snake.Everything I did or didn’t do was a universal catastrophe. Although I was a quiet, domestic child, I studied well. I loved and pitied her very much in her endless howl about her own misfortune.
Now I understand that in addition to the inability to love main reason Her attitude towards me was that I was by nature a skinny child. And this was “a shame from people.” Like, she's a bad mother.
Until I was a year or a year and a half old, she fed me, as befits a sadist - she stuffed my mouth and covered my nose. I raised two children (thin ones, but what else could they be like?) so I’m scared to think about what happened. Your child is choking and has to swallow to breathe.
But she shows pictures of a fat baby with such pride. like - this is my merit.Then, apparently, it became inconvenient to strangle me, I became thin, and for that I received eternal hatred. My childhood memories consist only of her face, distorted with disgusted hatred. No one kind words, not a single warm hug.
She cursed me and wanted me to “suffocate when I was still little in diapers” for every bowl of soup she cooked, for every loaf of bread she brought into the house, for every piece of clothing she bought me with her “bloody pennies.”
All my life I have been cringing at those “bloody pennies”. I have always lived financially poorly, but if I bought something for my children, I was very happy about it, rejoiced at their joy and felt only shame that I could not overwhelm them with these rags.
But why hate your only child like that and reproach him with your pennies...She was not interested in me, but if she noticed in passing that I liked something, she made every effort to prevent me from getting it. I loved to read - it was an escape from reality. So she elevated this tendency of mine to the rank of some kind of shameful, terrible deviation. I was surprised and envious of the children whose parents forced them to read. Even at school I was ashamed to admit that fiction- my hobby, not washing floors from morning to evening. I hid it as a terrible moral deformity...
You can write a lot about this.
This is where most of my life has been lived. It was a lot of difficult and VERY scary things. But still, there was nothing worse in my life than my mother.
She taught me to hide my grievances and wounds. I hid from her like an animal, because... I knew she would finish it off. It will tear you apart. It will take a long time and hard to finish. And so that the initial wound will seem like nothing compared to her reaction.
I wrote a lot, sorry)))
The Journal of Neuroscience reports that scientists from the University of Newcastle (England) and University College London, in a joint study, found that for most people with healthy hearing, the most unpleasant sound is that made by a knife being used to scrape a glass bottle. Just like Vladimir Semenych Vysotsky: “I don’t like...<...>when iron hits glass.”
When the activity of information exchange between the parts of the brain responsible for the perception of sounds and emotions increases, a feeling of disgust or disgust in relation to what is heard may arise. As a rule, this nervous process occurs when someone scrapes a piece of chalk or their fingernails across a modern blackboard.
When we hear unpleasant sounds, the auditory cortex and the amygdala in the temporal lobe interact more intensely than usual. As a result, the central nervous system “produces” negative emotions. The amygdala (amygdala) is such a “cunning” organ in the human head, where fear and pleasure, aggression and anxiety, as well as memories of certain experienced emotions are formed.
To find out what's going on in nervous system When people listen to unpleasant sounds, British scientists used a technique to scan the brain. It turned out that when listening to the opposite, the amygdala becomes very active, processing signals arriving along the auditory nerve into certain emotions. From the point of view of neurobiology, this process is very simple, even primitive.
Professor Tim Griffiths from Newcastle examined 13 volunteers using a magnetic resonance imaging scanner to find out how their central nervous system reacted to different sounds.
The most disgusting sound for most participants in the experience was the sound of “iron on glass,” and the most pleasant was the gurgling sound of boiling water (or water in a Jacuzzi or fountain). It has been established that they all lie within the frequency range of 2−5 kHz, which also includes the sounds of human speech. The human ear is most sensitive by nature to this range. Sound engineers know that excessively raising the frequency of 3 kHz with an equalizer greatly tires the ear.
Understanding what processes occur in the brain when listening to different sounds will allow doctors to understand the symptoms of diseases and disorders that are expressed in low sound tolerance. These are diseases such as autism, hyperacusis and misophonia.
The most pleasant were applause, children's laughter, the sound of thunder and the sound of flowing water in a river or waterfall. Apparently it is no coincidence that ancient Arab architects attached great value acoustics and were fond of building fountains and artificial waterfalls.
What is the reason?
One explanation is that humans inherit this response from their ape ancestors. It is possible that the terrible sound was similar to a danger warning signal or the sound made by some kind of predator.
In 1986, scientists Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand conducted a study. They recorded the sound of a toothed garden tool scratching a board. High, mid, and low frequency components were then removed from the recording to determine which part of the sound caused the unpleasant response. Removing highs and lows didn't help make the sound more enjoyable for people. Only when the mid frequencies were removed did the sound become more tolerable. It is at these frequencies that primates emit danger signals.
However, this hypothesis was later questioned. In one study, the grinding sound was played to tamarin monkeys. The first sound was a grinding sound high tone, and to others - “ White noise" of the same sound intensity. The monkeys responded identically to both sounds. Humans preferred “white noise,” which means either the monkeys did not respond to the warning signs or the reaction had a different origin.
There is also a physical hypothesis.
Scientists from Austria and Germany have found physiological basis the fact that the scraping of nails on a blackboard is unpleasant for the vast majority of people. The reason turned out to be the peculiarities of the shape of the human auditory canal.
Musicologists Christoph Reuter from the University of Vienna and Michael Oehler from the German Macromedia University of Media and Communication conducted an experiment on a small group of volunteers (the exact number of participants is not given in the note).
They were all allowed to listen to the scraping of nails and the creaking of chalk on a blackboard. At the same time it was assessed as psychological reaction to unpleasant sounds, and physiological - the galvanic resistance of the skin was measured in volunteers (this parameter changes, for example, during fear, which is why skin galvanometry is used in a “lie detector”).
Half the participants were warned what sounds they would hear, and the rest were told that modern music would play.
A psychological reaction of irritation and displeasure was observed in all experimental subjects, but in the group expecting music it was somewhat less pronounced. Skin resistance changed in all cases, from which the researchers concluded that the response to grinding has a physiological basis.
The researchers then found that the sound of fingernails scratching on a blackboard had a frequency between two and 4 kHz. Based on the shape of the human auditory canal, the ear is most sensitive to this particular frequency range. That is, sounds of this frequency should be the most annoying, which was confirmed.
| Comments: 0 |
The profound indifference and perhaps dislike of music in some people may be due to the inability of the pleasure center in their brain to respond to musical stimuli.
How many times is the chorus in your favorite song repeated? How many times have you listened to this chorus? Repetition in music is not just a feature of Western pop songs - it is a global phenomenon. Why? Elizabeth Helmut Margulies shows us basic principles effect of “attachment to the familiar,” explaining how through repetition we cease to be passive listeners and become active participants in the musical process.
Why does melody have such a strong impact on us from birth? Melodies penetrate us to the core and can evoke feelings of love, sadness, faith and hope. But how is the melody structured? In this film, composer Howard Goodall will examine all the major components of a melody. Why are certain types of melodies characteristic of all musical cultures on earth? Is it possible to write beautiful melody at random? And if not, what do composers rely on when composing their melodies?
Alexey Paevsky
How do we hear music? What is happening in our brain at this time? What does the brain of an improvising jazz player look like? What is the "Mozart Effect"? What makes us tremble with delight at the sounds of our favorite melodies? Chief Alexey Paevsky will talk about this, Chief Editor portal Neuronovosti.Ru, scientific editor of the portal Indicator.Ru, honorary editor of the MIPT magazine “For Science” and scientific journalist with 10 years of experience.
Evgenia Timonova
Everything is like animals
Women believe that it is not worth paying for men - it spoils them. And they themselves constantly pay and pay. For everyone. Double the price. Millions of years. Well, males, how are we going to give it back?
Alexander Markov
Biologists have reconstructed the evolutionary history of lethal intraspecific aggression in mammals by comparing data on the causes of death in 1024 species with the structure of the evolutionary tree. It turned out that there is a “phylogenetic signal” in the data on the level of aggression, that is, species partly inherit their aggressiveness from ancestral species. This makes it possible to predict for each species the expected level of aggressiveness based on its position on the evolutionary tree, and then compare it with the empirically established one. Humans are one of the most aggressive branches of mammals. Expected level of lethal aggression for Homo sapiens, calculated based on our position on the evolutionary tree, is about 2% (two murders for every hundred deaths).
Belarusian television showed a film that stated: the opposition did not want to win presidential elections, but only tried to organize riots and even terrorist attacks. The authors explained the behavior of the ex-candidates by the fact that they were working off millions in Western grants. Europe, meanwhile, is preparing to apply sanctions against Minsk.
On the First Channel of Belarusian Television on Sunday evening the film “ Square. Iron on glass" The tape told about the events of December 19 in Minsk.
“The former contenders for the presidency decided to take by force what they did not get in the elections,” says a voice-over at the beginning of the film, most of which was devoted to “preparation of terrorist attacks.”
In particular, a video was shown of the seizure of stun guns, knives and gas cartridges on the borders with Russia and Ukraine.
In addition, the authors published some records telephone conversations: a mother calls the police and reports that her 16-year-old son tied himself with explosive packages and went to the square - “help me catch him.” The Belarusian newspaper “Nasha Niva” suggests that these conversations are fake and they were recorded by order of the KGB.
The film also showed fragments with the participation of Russian citizens Maxim Breus and Alexey Evdokimov, who were charged last week in the case of unrest in Minsk; the names of the Russians were not previously disclosed.
Neklyaev was beaten by his own people
The film claims that the beating of Belarusian presidential candidate Vladimir Neklyaev was initiated not by police officers, but by his fellow opposition members - Andrei Sannikov, Vitaly Rymashevsky and Nikolai Statkevich.
Let us remind you that on December 19, Neklyaev led a column of his supporters, which was moving towards Oktyabrskaya Square. Neklyaev was beaten and with a traumatic brain injury was taken to the hospital, where he was detained by police officers.
Sannikov allegedly received more than half a million dollars for his election campaign, and Neklyaev received $1 million 668 thousand 550 in cash alone. Its sponsors are the American National Endowment for Democracy, as well as a certain European foundation.
They called names
The film also refutes the words that the storming of the Government House on December 19 was carried out by policemen dressed in civilian clothes, as the opposition claims.
The names of the participants in the assault have also been revealed: this 49-year-old Oleg Fedorkevich, 20-year-old Nikita Likhavidi, Sannikov’s press secretary Alexander Otroshchenkov. In conclusion, the authors of the film say that today more than 100 riot participants have been identified, and 40 of them have already been arrested.
Opposition data
Meanwhile, according to human rights activists, 25 people are accused in the criminal case of mass riots in Minsk.
Compared to last week, the number of suspects has also increased by five people - now there are 13, reports the website of the Viasna human rights center. Of the 25 accused, 23 are in custody, two are under recognizance not to leave. Among those arrested in the KGB pre-trial detention center are four ex-presidential candidates - Sannikov, Neklyaev, Statkevich, as well as Ales Mikhalevich, the site reports.
They demanded sanctions
The events that took place on election day and the reaction of the authorities to opposition rallies did not leave foreign observers indifferent. On Monday it became known that Germany, Great Britain, Sweden and Poland insist on the EU applying sanctions against Minsk. This was reported to RIA Novosti by a source in the EU Council.
According to the agency’s interlocutor, only Italy among EU members is against the use of so-called “restrictive measures” against the Belarusian authorities, but there are also those, like Portugal and Spain, who support a “balanced approach” so as not to destroy those positive developments , which were achieved earlier in the policy of rapprochement between Belarus and the EU.
Permanent representatives of 27 European Union countries at a meeting on Friday in Brussels launched a mechanism for preparing a decision on the application of sanctions by this regional organization against officials Belarus.
It is expected that a decision on sanctions will be made at the first scheduled meeting of EU foreign ministers in the new year, scheduled for January 31.
