Nowruz 2017: Yakut accent
Kazan hosts the international festival of Turkic-language theatres
The capital of Tatarstan hosts the festival, which aims to unite the Turkic-speaking theatres. Nowruz has been held for the thirteenth time, and this year seventeen theatres have taken part in the event.
''A production should be interesting''
Nowruz festival was born in a difficult time, when the great nation was already cracking at the seams. In 1989, the Theatre Union of the USSR decided to establish such theatrical forum in Kazakhstan, but two years later, the Union collapsed and the festival was buried under its ruins. Conceived as annual, it is then was not carried out for five years. Then Nowruz was taken back to the viewer in Tatarstan, since 1998 it has been held in Kazan and received the international status.
Finally, in 2009, it was decided to depart from the previous four-year cycle, the festival began to be held every two years, alternating with educational forum with the same name. No less interesting and useful.
This year Nowruz involves 17 theatres. They work at five sites of the city: large and small stage of the Kamal Theatre, the Russian Youth Theatre, the Tinchurin theatre and the puppet theatre. ''There was only one criterion of the selection of applicants for participation in Nowruz – a performance should be interesting. On the festival playbill there are classical performances, and more modern ones by their form,'' commented on the situation with the participants the main selector of Nowruz festival, theatre critic, head of the literary section of the Kamal Theater Niyaz Iglamov to Realnoe Vremya.
Shaman's grandson and his performances
According to the tradition, every Nowruz selects whose nation theatre will be most represented at the festival. The previous Nowruz was dominated by Kazakhstan, this year, the most presented is the dramatic art of Sakha-Yakutia.
The Yakut play Female Warrior of Dzhyrybyn opened the festival on the big stage of the Kamal Theatre. As for directing, at Nowruz there is presented a retrospective of the performances of the young Yakut director Sergey Potapov, staged by him in different theatres.
Potapov is a student of Mark Zakharov, which says about the commitment, on the one hand, to psychological theatre, on the other, to more bright and figurative one. A curious detail: Sergey is a grandson of a shaman. If you analyze his performances, then, obviously, you can find in them a touch of mystery. The director himself says that he stages what touches him.
On 6 June, at the festival, on the stage of the Tinchurin Theater, it was staged the performance by Sergey Potapov — it was The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov. The director staged it in Kazakhstan in the drama theatre named after Kuanyshbaev. The Cherry Orchard by Potapov is a requiem for the old way of life and social fabric, Chekhov's characters in the Potapov's interpretation — they live outside of time and space.
On the same day, on the big stage of the Kamal theatre there was staged a performance by Sergey Potapov Awakening, the director staged it in the academic theatre named after Oyunsky. The performance theme is tragic – the loneliness of an old man, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, who lives a retirement home. The world of the man — his bed and a couple meters around him…
Yesterday at the stage of the Youth theatre there was shown the drama Crazy Muklay, Sergey Potapov staged it in the Khakass theater of drama and ethnic music. The theme of the play is no less dramatic than in Awakening — the revolution and the civil war through the biography of a particular person. The cry of the human soul, which faced with insoluble contradictions.
This year's festival will end with the play directed by Sergey Potapov, and this work can be described unexpected in something, and there will definitely be mystic. Werewolf is the title of this play, which Potapov staged in Estonia in the theatre: R. A. A. M. Love, passion and xenophobia — it is what the characters of the play are tormented by. In a khutor, previously peaceful, there appeared a daughter of the woman considered a witch-werewolf, and now there is the divide between ''own'' and ''alien''.
There are good news for Tatarstan theatre-lovers. Sergey Potapov starts work in the Menzelinsky theatre, he took the play Iblis of Azerbaijani playwright Huseyn Javid. Negotiations are underway for its staging in the Kamal Theatre.