The Moscow Theatre of Drama and Comedy – on the Taganka – became the most radical, exciting theatre company in Russia in the 1970s. It was led by Yuri Lyubimov with a dedicated company of fabulous actors like underground singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky. But in the 80s Lyubimov pushed the dissident boat out too far with a banned show and went into exile in the West, making a fortune directing opera in Italy and, famously, ‘Crime and Punishment’ at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1985.
Back in Russia, when the thaw arrived in 1989 Lyubimov took the reins of the Taganka again. The Russian system encourages a dictatorial style of directing and in 2011 while on tour in Prague the actors revolted in a public row over touring allowances and the 93-year old Lyubimov resigned, claiming that the system of permanent companies was out of date and a contract system was needed to restore discipline.
A flood of outraged comment and counterargument has flooded Facebook pages and news outlets in the past couple of weeks. There is a quasi-religious conviction in Russia that a theatre director is an artist whose vision must be honoured and obeyed. Western ideas from the 1960s about the equality of theatre workers are firmly rejected. A hierarchy of power is accepted by almost everyone and on every trinket stall in Russia you will find a matrioshka doll in which successive layers go back from Putin to Brezhnev to Stalin to Lenin to the last Tsar.
At an international seminar a couple of years ago a radical director of a much younger generation asserted that art is and must be an aristocratic activity and cannot be democratic. The irony is that the reputation of star directors rests largely on the shows they create with a permanent company and which stay in the repertoire for decades because people want to see them. Without a permanent company shows could not be brought out year after year for lucrative and prestigious foreign tours.
The gulf between Lyubimov’s perks, which include flats for his family members, and mean tricks like sending actors on low wages back to Moscow to sleep at home between shows rather than pay for hotels and subsistence, just got too big. “He’s a millionaire but an actor of 25 years’ standing is still living in a communal flat”, says one leading company member. In a ‘communal flat’ you get a cubicle in what amounts to a kind of hostel. The Moscow culture minister has now written to ‘Esteemed Yuri Petrovich’ accepting with regret his resignation.
How unlike our own dear theatre scene! Actors work on contracts for the run of a show and pay the rent by working in call centres, selling stuff with their well trained voices and improvisational skills. The Government tells the Arts Council what it wants and the Arts Council funds a Board of the local great and good to employ a Chief Executive who employs an Artistic director who hires actors as and when.
A matrioshka doll of power.
Paul Harman was gaffer of two TYA companies over 30 years.