Yuri Butusov. Photo: Maxim Blinov / RIA Novosti
A director — a complex and painful profession. It is given like a seal. The seal of knowledge. One becomes a director out of the impossibility of not becoming one. If a cocktail of various knowledge and impressions is bubbling inside you, then there is a chance to become a director... A demiurgic profession. Incomprehensible to many. Rare. A director is like an architect: you cannot become an architect in youth, just as you cannot become a director — too much knowledge is required. An architect creates buildings for people. A director creates people. A director. Creates. People. He is responsible for consciousness, for subconsciousness, for morality, for ethics, for god knows what else. For sex, for pain, for eternity. A director must always surprise. He must captivate and impress. He must see everything differently than all those people from normal life. He owes it to them, these people from normal life, to tell them about the hidden, the invisible to them, the secret. It is his job — to see another dimension and to find a form to describe it. He sees, hears, feels, and can describe it. He, like a canary in a mine, knows about a catastrophe even before it happens. A director — a Prophet. A director is always alone. In solitude. Alone observing the world, from the shadows. A director is important to no one: the audience is not interested in him, except perhaps his sexual adventures or political position. The audience only needs actors, only the fun and the beautiful. But without the Director, neither the audience nor the actors are possible. Without him, there will be no fun, no beauty. Wilson, Yeremin, Yukhantsev, Butusov have died... They died differently, each in their own life. Suddenly, almost simultaneously. This is a huge blow to the world, to civilization, to beauty, to MEANING. Each of them, having met in my life, was my teacher. With each of them, I have a story — personal, but all these stories led me to the director's profession. I saw Bob Wilson's performances at the beginning of the century. It was a different Theater, unlike what I knew before. And my world became unthinkable without Wilson. And then I sat at his rehearsals. I asked his actors questions. I was supposed to work as his assistant. He introduced me to Alla Demidova... Wilson saw the world in images, which he filled with light and music, creating unique BEAUTY. I heard Yuri Yeremin's name since childhood — he was the chief director of the drama theater in Rostov-on-Don. We had a common scenographer — Stepa Zograbyan, with whom he created the legendary «Ward No. 6». And then we worked together at Harvard University, teaching the Stanislavsky System, which Yuri Ivanovich could explain in one lecture so clearly that even a chair could understand it. He had brilliant KNOWLEDGE of the theater as a system of questions to oneself and the world... With Borya Yukhananov, I was always silent — only he spoke. It was the most productive and meaningful silence in my life. We were appointed theater directors on the same day — we spent it together in the corridor of the Moscow Department of Culture. I listened to a lecture on Theater and was happy. He was interested in my performances, he spoke well of them, but he probably hadn't seen them, but he could talk and analyze anything, without seeing. He just had his own special VISION of the theater and the world, and he conveyed it to everyone with his brilliant monologues. If Yura Butusov, whose performances I loved very much, hadn't come to me one day and personally said kind words about one of my first works in Moscow, I might not have managed... He always broke the usual and did everything contrary — in this, he was very close to me. He ruthlessly squeezed actors, like paints onto the canvases of his performances. He was a born rocker, and the visual expressionist chaos he created on stage always turned into the most delicate harmony and fragility. He had an acute sense of truth and lies, and he sought authenticity and genuineness in the theater... He had a theater of frenzied ENERGY, he conveyed to us the feeling that in the theater and in life, there are no boundaries. Or they need to be destroyed.
When directors die, the world becomes much worse. Without Butusov, Yukhananov, Yeremin, Wilson, there is much less ENERGY, MEANING, KNOWLEDGE, and BEAUTY in it. Their deaths — a blow to humanity, to art, to all of us... Directors cannot protect themselves, but they need to be protected, like rare birds. When all directors die out, we will wander here meaningless, ugly, stupid, and constantly bumping heads.
PS: YURA, I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT YOU... there is a congratulation from you on my phone from my birthday at MHT.. I watch it and cry... You — the ONLY one of all who came on stage on the closing day of the «Gogol Center» and spoke about the murder of the theater. «Before the start of the performance of «The Seagull», director and participant of the production Yuri Butusov addressed the audience with the words: «We would like to perform this play as a sign of support and solidarity with our colleagues, co-religionists from the destroyed theater «Gogol Center». After this, in the thousand-seat hall of the Vakhtangov Theater, where the performance takes place, there was a minute of applause. I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH AND WILL NEVER FORGET YOU!