And this is all about him<\/p>\n
Interview with Igor Nicolaev, the director<\/p>\n
My maxim is always the same: it needs to be interesting. I got up and went away once it ceased to be of interest. <\/strong> \u2013 Igor Nikilaevitch, could you tell me, where did your dream about theatre come from?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2013 It\u2019s the subjective world\u2026 Nothing beckoned me more than it. In childhood I could refuse everything \u2013 fishing, cinema, school \u2013 for the meeting with a new interesting man, for listening to his stories\u2026 He could be speaking, speaking, speaking\u2026 And me, a boy, wished to understand, what did this man has inside him, and why there was exactly that. What makes people different\u2026<\/p>\n \u2013 And when did this wish turn into action for the first time?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2013 I was in my fifth grade, it was autumn. I came to the House of Pioneers to enroll into the drama club. I went in, looked around and saw that it was out of time yet. I remember the thought: it\u2019s too early for me. And I postponed. I was drawing, making photos, whatever wasn\u2019t there I was doing… I enrolled in the drama club in my seventh grade. \u2013 And what have been going on later? Has the theatre remained your attraction all the time? \u2013 Your descriotion sounds like a challenging life. But despite the difficulties the dream hasn\u2019t left you. Where there any other pursuits? Aspirations? \u2013 What was happening during these years that was of great importance? \u2013 You elaborated your own psycho-emotional training technique for actors. Tell us about it, please. What is it needed for? How was it being made up?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2013 I received an offer to lead the theatre-studio in Daugavpils in order to revive Russian Theatre that once had been there. We started to live in Daugavpils as a commune, sharing one flat. It was the third year since I had met Arkadiy. Then I began to relate something. We held so-called Fridays: we were sitting and talking all the way through the night from Friday to Saturday. Somewhere at that time \u201cThe Flamy Flower\u201d emerged. \u2013 Was there anybody who supported you on your director\u2019s path or \u201cwas giving a push\u201d to your interest to the man as he is?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2013 There were amazing people who had played the very important role in my life: Alexander Michailovitch Polamishev \u2013 my mentor at Shchukin school, and Vladimir Pavlovitch Efroimson, the founder of medical genetics, he was committed to prison before and after the war. I had an honor to edit his manuscript \u201cThe genius and genetics\u201d. I can call to memory former actress of Maly Academic Art Theatre Elizaveta Ljudvugovna Maevskaya, who was a coach and consultant at the All-Union Theatrical Society, and the author of remarkable books: \u201cThe Acting Technology\u201d and \u201cDirecting as a Practical Psychology\u201d. Pavel Vasilevitch Simonov, the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity headmaster was another one significant to me person.<\/p>\n \u2013 You invested almost all in your dream of being a director. Why?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2013 I wanted to be the director, and I became the director. I caught Shchukin school at its peak. All stars of modern stage and screen were learning as full-time students in parallel with me, starting with Nastya Vertinskaya and finishing\u2026 I even don\u2019t know who to name to finish\u2026 Mikhalkov, Kostya Raykin and so on. I saw a lot of interesting things during my life. I was always interested in people, it was engrossing to absorb them into myself. They represented various ways of living, discrepant styles of seeing and explaining the world, different methods of thinking and feeling. People were always more interesting to me than myself. \u2013 Have you had to deprive yourself of many things to achieve your objectives?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2013 There were some cases in my life, when I had abandoned a good career, because it hadn\u2019t fit to my senses. For example, once we performed \u201cThe Bug\u201d (V. Mayakovskiy\u2019s play) staged by Alexander Mikhailovitch Polamishev. Yuriy Mihailovitch Lyubimov was pleased with our work. They were friends with Polamishev, so Lyubimov said: \u201cI\u2019ll take two of your guys on the internship, choose yourself, who\u2019ll make this twain\u201d. Alexander Mikhailovitch made a proposal to me: \u201cIf you wish, there is such an occasion\u201d. What did the internship with Lyubimov mean that time? It meant your carrier was ensured; one could spent a year there, and his future was assured. It was the perfect launch! \u2013 Would you like to put something else on stage?<\/em><\/p>\n \u2013 Yes, I would. There are several plays I would like to stage, especially one of them. It would be one of my best performances. I wrote the script myself, based on Dostoevskiy\u2019s \u201cThe Crime and The Punishment\u201d. All is shown as if eyed by holy fools, actors would be playing holy fools. The name of the play is \u201cThe Prayer\u201d. It consists of four parts, and each part ends with a prayer. The Orthodox church gave permission\u2026<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 [From 1970 till 1984 Igor Nikolaev worked as the director in various Theatres of Astrakhan, Ordzhonikidze, Minsk, Vilnius and other cities. His productions of I. Fridberg\u2019s \u201cThe Arena\u201d and G. Gorin\u2019s \u201cThe Phenomenons\u201d at the stage of the State Russian Drama Theatre in Vilnius became the most striking examples of successful combination of professional director\u2019s and tutor\u2019s searches with his own method. <\/em> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And this is all about him Interview with Igor Nicolaev, the director My maxim is always the same: it needs to be interesting. I got up and went away once it ceased to be of interest. Igor\u00a0 \u2013 Igor Nikilaevitch, could you tell me, where did your dream about theatre come from? \u2013 It\u2019s the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":356,"parent":0,"menu_order":54,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-page1.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-208","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5368,"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/208\/revisions\/5368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uigoria.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Igor<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0I remember once my wrist was broken, and I was wearing a splint. At that very time I had to perform the role of an evil wizard, but I was locked up at home. We lived on the ground floor, and, surely, I escaped through the window. And what did I memorize: I was staying behind the scenes, the splint was taken off me \u2013 painfully. I darted to the stage \u2013 nothing ached, I popped out behind the curtains \u2013 \u201cA-a-a-a!\u201d The great power of art stroke me that time.<\/p>\n
<\/em>
\u2013 Yes. It existed in parallel with sports, learning, work. When I was nearly 15 an invitation came to me to join the Folk Theater of the plant where I was working thereafter. That\u2019s how Vladimir Fedorovitch Dolmatov, the amazing man, appeared in my life. He became my mentor. But before him there was Vladimir Ustinovitch, the leader of our drama club in Pioneer\u2019s House. He gave me my first drama lessons. Whereas Vladimir Fedorovitch taught me not only acting but instilled in me some principles of life.
\u00a0 \u00a0I graduated from high school, and went to Moscow wishing to enroll in the Theater Institute, but didn\u2019t succeed. Then I returned home, visited my grandma\u2026 My mother sold her watch, and I went away to Moscow again, this time to try my chance at the actors exchange. But I met the next significant person in my life instead \u2013 Vladimir Alexandrovitch Malankin. He had been recruiting additional students to his class in Minsk. And he accepted me. I found myself in Minsk, learning at the Dramatic Arts faculty\u2026 We were starving severely. Then some contacts were established, I launched drama club at one school, put on performances and was fed up in exchange.<\/p>\n
<\/em>
\u2013 Oh! I was quite renowned man. I was starring in Folks Theater, I worked at the plant earning more than my mother did. I was known enough sportsman. I read avidly, in large quantities, managed my time to attend Philharmonic, make work outs, play at stage and work.
\u00a0 \u00a0And then the day of exam had come. We were at the end of the first year at the Institute. I performed my etude well. All was great. Vladimir Alexandrovitch was resounding marks: fives (the highest mark) \u2013 no my name, fours \u2013 the same. Can you imagine my feelings? Three points \u2013 no my name. It seemed to me I had turned gray. Such an overthrow, the most crushing defeat of all I had experienced in my life. Probably I had never suffered such a crash. Two points \u2013 there was no my name either!
\u00a0 \u00a0Then Vladimir Alexandrovitch said: \u201cNikolaev, please, stay here. The others are free to go\u201d. And he continued, I was listening to his words as if in a daze: \u201cI can\u2019t take upon the responsibility for your health. You would be squeezed out like a lemon and thrown away. You couldn\u2019t stand for long being an actor. And I don\u2019t want to be blamed. But I can tell you: you are a director by vocation. No offense, but that\u2019s it\u201d. I was crashed, and our admirable scenic speech coach, noble, intelligent by appearance, gray-haired handsome man gave me a tongue-lashing: \u201cIf you can broke so easily, that means there is no place for you in the theatre!\u201d
\u00a0 \u00a0I woke from a stupor, went to the District Committee of Komsomol, pronounced short speech about aesthetic education of pupils, and got a mandate to create, neither more nor less, the theatre-studio \u201cVremya\u201d under the roof of the Committee. After that I carried out entrance examinations in three rounds, because there appeared 120 candidates, 80 of them, surely, were girls. Thanks to this studio I got acquainted with m-r Lurie who was the director at Russian Drama Theatre of Lithuanian SSR! He told me: \u201cI can\u2019t help you, but why wouldn\u2019t you try to enroll in our theatre as an actor?\u201d I made a try. And I was accepted! With 55 rubles salary! As an actor! To the Russian Drama Theatre of Lithuanian SSR! I firstly appeared at professional stage on the 7th of November 1962. And I remember this entry very well, we performed \u201cThe Taming of the Shrew\u201d. I played one of the four \u00a0Petrucchio\u2019s servants, and we were singing a quartet: \u201cPour shalt pour, hei-la-la, hei-la-la\u201d. That\u2019s how I plunged into the theatre.
There was my life in studio going on in parallel\u2026 We were putting plays, practiced scenic skills and speech. And I played in Folk Theater as well from time to time. It was the Ukrainian dramatist Levada\u2019s play, named \u201cFaust and the Death\u201d. My role was of a man who had to fly to the Mars, but his wife had left him (and I was 17 that time). Furthermore he was carrying on philosophical debates with his ideological opponent \u2013 defrocked monk, and all this was in lyrics. It was a tragedy. There was a scene in which I was walking around the study and saying goodbye to the books: \u201cMy friends, adieu, good bye, or probably, farewell to forever\u201d. I still remember it. This performance had a great success, so had we \u2013 the three leading personas.
\u00a0 \u00a0I dreamt of being a director, rolled under to be taken as an assistant in order to start learning direction. The chief director gave me his promise, but after that the other man was appointed to be an assistant. I couldn\u2019t bear such a deceit, therefore I submitted a letter of resignation.
\u00a0 \u00a0I daydreamed of playing three roles: Hamlet, King Lear and Karl Marx.
\u00a0 \u00a0Then the time came for me to join the army, it was mandatory military service. I was sent to Ussuri region, at the very Far East. I ruled the drama circle at the local school, participated in military trainings, played for the military district team in shot putting and discus. The next October revolution\u2019s anniversary was just to celebrate, and I was reciting \u201cRequiem\u201d by Robert Rozhdestvensky in the city of Khabarovsk at the ceremonial concert. I even managed to play a role at the Garrison Folk Theater. Cut a long story short, after all these adventures I enlisted to extended army service, stayed in Khabarovsk and managed that same Garrison Folk Theater. But I made a condition that I would work at the theater if I would be allowed to enroll to Shchukin drama school. I was accepted there to learn distantly at the Directing Faculty. I made great success at the exams scoring 48 points from 50 possible.
\u00a0 \u00a0Then I got to the hospital, and was forced to take an academic leave in Shchukin\u2019s school. Vladimir Fedorovitch Dolmatov yielded to me Folk Theater. So when I finished my army service, I became the director of Folk Theater, having only one year in Shchukin\u2019s school completed.<\/p>\n
<\/em>
\u2013 After the army I couldn\u2019t find myself. It felt as if I was suspended between the sky and the earth. The life was vivid from the outside, but from the inside… I don\u2019t know. I had got my theatre, all was fine, but still\u2026
\u00a0 \u00a0I was looking for an answer. I read many psychology books\u2026 But something didn\u2019t come off. Once I found out that a group of Moscow University sociologists came to the plant. I made acquaintance with them, and we started to work together; I launched the research on the theme: \u00abThe \u201cmaster \u2013 worker\u201d conflict subject to piecework wages\u00bb. There I met Arkadiy Rovner. Once he invited me to his hotel room, I dropped in. The host handed over to me a stack of typewritten sheets and said: \u201cLook, here is some information. It may occur to be the information only or it can change all your life\u201d. I started to read right away, sitting in his room.
\u00a0 \u00a0Vivecananda, introduction\u2026 raja-yoga philosophy\u2026 I was appalled. When I had left the hotel I felt as if I entered the other city, the other world. All was the same, but in some way different. That\u2019s how my first encounter with The Tradition happened. Then my more or less conscious life began. It took place in 1968.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0During the exam session at Shchukin school I got acquainted with Boris Tiraspolskiy, my first spiritual relative. We were contemplating together on how could we help actors to embody scenic images; what should we do to teach a man to control and manage his psychological condition, energy, body. We were studying in details various psychotechnics. As the result, the method emerged in 1971, that is known nowadays as DFC (Differentiated Functional Conditions), but at first it was named \u201cThe Flamy Flower\u201d. It was generated for the sake of actors, with an eye to support total implementation of theirs acting capacity. It comes to an idea that special training and awareness allow us to create an instrumental setting by means of which we can make it clear what a person is capable of using his or her psychic energy. Does a man have some special \u201ctools\u201d in this sphere? It was the starting point, our initial approach. The idea belongs to Boris Tyraspolskiy.
\u00a0 \u00a0But we had to legalize all this somehow. Therefore the name DFC (Differentiated Functional Conditions) was invented when we were making up our first scientific paper having in mind that social recognition of the method was a must. We gained recognition at the \u201cBig city\u2019s ecology\u201d conference, that was held under the leadership of academician Kaznatcheev, then at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the USSR Ministry of Health Fourth office. After that I was invited to work with the \u201clikvidators\u201d of Chernobyl catastrophe. There I applied DFC method too. This technique proved to be helpful not only for actors. That\u2019s how the DFC method arouse.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0According to the popular view I took my choice very early. Being 14 years old I knew, what I liked to learn and what I wanted to do. That\u2019s why all I had been doing was closely connected with my final goal. I was making myself ready for work in the theatre that included knowledge of human psychology, human life. My being was integral, all-in-one, I would say. I had known exactly what I wished. I wanted to understand\u2026 I wanted to understand, why is that? Why people, being absolutely stunning creatures, do live such an imperfect life. It seemed humiliating for them, I had thought.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0I came home and thought: \u201cO Lord, I can put on three plays in a year\u2026 It doesn\u2019t matter if I won\u2019t work in Moscow. Or I would dangle around Lyubimov and make a pretense I\u2019m not like I am. He is not a teacher for me\u201d. Then I phoned to Alexander Mikhailovitch and just pronounced his name\u2026 He immediately realized that I intended to refuse, and asked: \u201cWhat\u2019s up? Why?\u201d. I thought up some reasons, but he didn\u2019t believe me and even got slightly offended\u2026<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0No matter how director Nikolaev valued the opportunities and advantages given by professional stage, as soon as the slightest chance had emerged, he returned to the idea of his own Theatre. That was how theatres-studios in Daugavpils, Kaluga, Vilnus, and Kiev emerged. Such a performances as \u201cThe Dragon\u201d by Eugene Shwartz, \u201cThe Spanish Pleasantries\u201d based on Tirso de Molino\u2019s plays, \u201cWhy are we not in Vittenberg?\u201d based on \u201cHamlet\u201d by W. Shakespeare, and \u201cYurodiya\u201d in the wake of Dostoevsky’s works, being put on by participants of these studios, can be dubbed Nikolaev author’s Theatre. That\u2019s how both of the director\u2019s aspirations were implemented: one of them \u2013 to establish his own theatre, the second \u2013 to elaborate his own actors training technique.]<\/em><\/p>\n