D. Krymov about “Requiem” and hope for tomorrow.
– Can you name the moment or chain of moments when you came up with the idea for Requiem?
– In my professional biography, there is this type of performances that do not have a unified plot – they consist of separate, more or less related scenes that are united by a certain theme. Mostly a rather pessimistic theme. Although the performance itself can be funny.
So, certain beads are constantly rolling in my head and it only takes one moment, for example, Tomas saying, “maybe one more performance in Klaipėda?” (Tomas Juočys, manager of the Klaipėda Drama Theater, author. past), and those beads start moving towards each other like pieces of iron under the influence of a magnet. As if by itself, some kind of plot without a plot, some form, theme – appears as if by itself. The beads are strung together. I have a lot of loose beads in my boxes when someone asks for a necklace – then I start putting them together.
That’s how Requiem came about.
– How would you describe your Requiem to a future viewer?
– One thing to come up with Requiem, and quite another to write it. When any composer with enough ambition and courage to write a piece Requiem subject, he takes up, he thinks on the level of Mozart. But when they start writing, something happens to everyone. Except for Mozart. They find themselves on a much lower level than Mozart. There are some pitfalls in that. An artist understands more than he can do. Everyone likes Mozart or Faure, great composers who wrote Requiem. Take it and create the same one! But for some reason it doesn’t work. The question is why? This question is very interesting. It is very difficult not only to come up with a work, but also to implement it, because in order to do it well, you need to come up with it correctly. All the circuit I’m putting together right now – I have to be sure in advance that it has exactly what it needs. I also need my orchestra players and actors to believe in it. There are many people involved in the creation of a performance and it is necessary that they all be united in that musical desire to realize what is conceived.
I always wanted to create a play whose core was not the plot, but musicality, it’s like an ideal. I want the viewer to be amazed at the end of it and think “oh, I got it!” or “I didn’t get it, but I felt it!”. It’s interesting. Telling a story is hard, but telling a story without a story is even harder.
– Already last year, when talking about your first play “Fragmentas” created in Klaipėda, you used musical terminology. In your biography – scenography, art, and the theater itself seems to a large extent to be a story in images, why the language of music impresses and why exactly Requiem?
– Speaking seriously, what I create is a picture – a picture of our time. Even musical Requiem. After all, what is Mozart? Requiem? It is an explanation to the soul where it should go after the death of the body. This is her confidence and encouragement – after all, it’s her first time, she’s lost, she doesn’t know what to do. So Mozart’s music soothes her, as if to say, “now this will happen, and then that. Yes, it’s hard, but that’s the way.”
It’s the same now. We all need it Requiem, because the situation we are in – we all seem to have died. Both those who are for the war and those who are against the war are all dead. Now you need to understand what to do next. In music, you can press keys to say, “Well, you’re dead. Well, nothing like that. Something goes on. You need to find a way.” This is some kind of help. Requiem there is help, not only for the dead, but also for the living in their tragedy.
This tragedy is tossing and turning us like grains of sand on a sea wave. The whole world is confused and lost.
– Is the show more about the future or the past?
– This is a play about the present. For the dead or those who survived. Combining the crushing, crushing feeling with eternity, which in itself helps.
You can talk about the past, fantasize about the future, but the whole theater is today. It is for those who will come and watch now. What they will see must interest them today and help them today.
And what I specifically tell about in each bead, from which I string a performance, really does not matter at all.
– Still, the segments of different stories, the beads, as you call them, are interesting – can you share how you connect them?
– By hearing, intuitively. I really don’t even have a clear answer. It seems to me that the more they will be unlike each other, but connected by an internal theme, the more interesting it will be. I can value them in many different ways: according to music, plastic, directly through the subject.
You know, there is this story or anecdote: what happens if we let some blind people touch an elephant? One will have a leg, so he will say that the elephant is fat, another will say that the elephant is long and flexible, another will touch the ear – for him the elephant will be soft and flat. But all this is an elephant. If you touch one leg, then the second, third and fourth – they will be basically the same. But if we still touch the canine? It is hard, big, completely different from the legs. And if we connect a weevil? Soft, flexible. But all this is an elephant. An elephant is life. We touch it like those blind people – in bits and pieces. The artist undertakes the ambition to tell about the elephant through several people touching different parts of its body, the viewer who sees this understands that it is all an elephant.
– As soon as you started Requiem, you mentioned that this one Requiem for born and unborn children who have fallen into the inhospitable embrace of our world. Maybe I’m a bit provocative, but should we decide the fate of the children, or do we own the future. What are your thoughts on this?
– The feelings are the most disturbing. Of course, everyone decides for themselves. I’m freaking out myself.
Trying to create as harmonious a performance as possible about something important, it’s like I’m gathering the shattered world around me. Now it feels like we’re all in shambles. Maybe it’s not enough, but I’m trying to put them back together. I understand that it can be hopeless. But I don’t know any other way.
I’m afraid to think about the future. I’m thinking about tomorrow’s rehearsal – will the costumes be ready, will everything be ready for tomorrow’s work, so that we can realize that harmony that we are creating. And further, if it helps someone to breathe more deeply, I will have completed my task. If it is not understood, I will hope that those who understand it will come to the theater the next day. After all, I can’t be the only one who wants to harmonize a broken world. Harmony brings comfort.
Not only a clergyman can comfort, but also an artist.
– You don’t shy away from inserting autobiographical motifs into your performances, in Requiem, for example, the Director appears. Why do you include yourself, or rather, yours alter ego?
– L. Tolstoy wrote about what he knew, he participated in the war and wrote “Sevastopol short stories”, a wonderful work. He also wrote War and Peace. The described world was very familiar to him: men, women, good and bad, nobles and peasants. By the way, the word “mir” means not only peace, but also “world”. So the alternative to war is peace.
F. Dostoevsky also knew people immersed in the darkness of deeply divided consciousness. He did not insert himself directly into his works, but his characters were a collective image of him. He was them.
F. Fellini and his “8 ½”! Marcello Mastroianni was the director alter ego. Fellini made a work about the director – about himself. There was never even a question as to what it was about.
For example, Dante, after all, he was not in hell, but he lived in a time when it was believed that if you turned a corner you could find yourself in hell. Modern man is too cynical, ironic, more closed under the layers of modernity, modernity. Dante, I think, was open-minded, and when you’re open-minded, you can end up in both heaven and hell. Some of the grandiose moments in the journey he describes are absolutely recognizable human things. Despite the fact that spirits are at work, it is easy to recognize human psychology by their behavior on that journey. Dante wrote about what he knew plus something more. There is a secret in this cocktail. The secret of the bartender’s skill is in what proportions of vodka and tomato juice he makes “Bloody Mary”.
The work combines the author’s personal experience and fantasy, as well as imagining what great literature, theater, art is like, but everything is within the limits of his knowledge base.
– ““Fragment” sounded like a big technical challenge, “Requiem” seemed to be easier, but I heard that different segments of it required a lot of different details. One such detail is puppets, you have also used them many times in your performances, what attracts you to them, what is their function?
– Puppets in the theater help to cross the boundary of conditionality. It’s one thing if you bring a real boy to the stage – you comb him, listen to shoes, feed him, but it’s quite another thing if you bring a doll controlled by several people and eat it, listen to shoes. The doll helps to overcome the wall of unreality. A doll is a very mysterious thing.
Did you know that a long time ago you couldn’t make dolls with pupils in their eyes? It was believed that such a doll could take away the child’s soul. A lot of time has passed, we have become civilized – we drive cars, work on computers, but that distinction remains: an animal is an animal, a human is a human, but a doll is a doll. The mystery of her nature remains.
Sometimes I think I’m using dolls too much, but I can’t help myself and, look, I’m already thinking, “well, of course I’ll use a doll.” You can play with it and it will help you cross a line that a person would not be able to cross on their own. He is too material for that. When the actor controls the puppet, he is also her – a doubling takes place. I see both him and the doll. I see what he gave her and what he kept for himself. And how can he take it back, and she will be left lying on the floor like a rag. How can he give it to her again and she will instantly come back to life. I had a friend who worked in a puppet theater with one of the old masters who made them. You know how that craftsman checked them after making them? He would just drop it and see what pose she would strike. If she has something human in her, he succeeded. If not, the doll was made again.
– Puppet theater is not the same as drama theater. How do the actors of the Klaipėda Drama Theater work with puppets?
– You just need to understand them and let that understanding into you. You got me on that topic and I think I need to talk to the actors now because their treatment of the dolls is still lacking. Choreographer Ania (Anna Abalikhina, author. past.) is making the right moves with them, but I still need to talk.
– You run Krymov Lab in New York, tell us about your activities there?
– We have already staged two plays and are preparing a third. Long procedures, longer than here. “Requiem” appeared in Klaipėda very quickly – my possibilities and this level of theater preparation are so impossible there. Just a different theater organization.
We do plays in New York, we want what we do to be a wonderful activity in a wonderful city.
– What are your immediate creative plans after Requiem?
– I am afraid to talk about the future. And in the next one, I will go to Prague, we will create a play “The Three Musketeers” at the National Theater.
This is a wonderful theater. Mozart worked there and conducted “Don Juan”. There is even a golden plaque, where it is recorded that Mozart stood here.
I will definitely stand in that place.
The premiere of D. Krymov’s “Requiem” will take place on May 11, 12 and 15 at the Klaipėda Drama Theater.
