SummaryThe Logic of Changes. Anatoly Vasiliev: Between the Past & the Future by Polina Bogdanova explores the creative path of one of the leading Russian theatre directors. The author analyses the logic of the origin and evolution of his artistic ideas, of his theoretical and practical experience. The book opens with a foreword which describes the main stages of the director's life and portrays the remarkable artistic personality of Anatoly Vasiliev who has kept surprising his contemporaries and colleagues in the course of his creative work for nearly forty years. Chapter One is devoted to the staging of: Vassa Zheleznova: the First Version, by Maxim Gorky which Vasiliev directed in 1978 for the Stanislavsky Drama Theatre (he joined the company together with Boris Morozov and Josif Raikhelgauz, his former fellow-students, and their teacher Andrey Popov, a well-known actor, who became Artistic Director of the company). It was this production that marked the real start of Vasiliev's career: he established himself as a brilliant and original director of the new generation. The author points out that at the beginning of his career Vasiliev was a faithful disciple of the Russian psychological school and worked within the bounds of the realist aesthetic. He had a taste for the «texture of life» and the in-depth study of human nature. Chapter One also examines a very important circumstance: in this Gorky production Vasiliev displayed some different features — a marked subjectivity in the perception and depiction of the reality shown in the play, a complex metaphorical way of thinking and the autobiographical approach to creative work. The author maintains that the first half of Vasiliev's life was marked by adherence to realism which was manifest, not only in Vassa Zheleznova, but also in his productions of two contemporary plays, both written by Victor Slavkin. The performances The Adult Daughter of the Young Man and Le Cerceau, directed by Vasiliev, established an epoch in the Soviet theatre of the 1970's and 1980's, which is the subject of the next two chapters. The author points out that Vasiliev, who from the very beginning showed an inclination towards theoretical assessment of his work for the theatre, started examining the structure of the «new wave» plays, which he called «disconnected», and changing accordingly the methods and style of rehearsing. That was why both The Adult Daughter and, to a greater extent, Le Cerceau astonished the audience by their unusual form, the «vagueness» of the action and a new system of relations between the characters who were examined in conflict not with one another but with life. Next the book tells the readers that at the stage of The Adult Daughter and Le Cerceau Anatoly Vasiliev began thinking on the imperfections of the Russian psychological school which he called «the theatre of fight» and felt that he needed to excel its bounds by turning to the tradition of the theatre of play. The book discusses Vasiliev's in-depth research into play culture which lasted many years and occupied the second half of his career. At that time he founded his own theatre, the School of Dramatic Art and worked as master of the Acting and Directing Department at the State Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS, now the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts — RATI). He therefore carried out his experiments with his students. The second part of the book is devoted to the twenty-year period of Vasiliev's work at the School of Dramatic Art and at the Lyon Higher Drama School. The author discusses experimental dramatizations of works by Plato, Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann, the production of Lamentations of Jeremiah (a mystery play, according to Vasiliev) and several Pushkin productions (Don Juan, or The Stone Guest, Mozart and Salieri and Excerpts from Onegin's Voyage). The book as a whole examines the changes in Anatoly Vasiliev's artistic ideas and the logic of their evolution and details the extensive practical and theoretical experience the director has accumulated. The innovative significance of his experience is invaluable. The author points out that in the course of his career Vasiliev has been moving towards working out an original theatrical methodology of creating play structures, a distinct style of acting and a distinct approach to the analysis of a dramatic text. The book concludes that the extensive practical and theoretical experience of Vasiliev and his actors can lay the foundations of a theatre school, while developing the Russian theatre traditions going back to Stanislavsky, would lead the theatre to the philosophy and aesthetic of the turn of the XX — XXI centuries. The book includes interviews with Anatoly Vasiliev and his theoretical works written in collaboration with Polina Bogdanova, the author of this book. There are also interviews with actors of Vasiliev's theatre, the living repositories of the theory and practice of play structures.
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Полина Богданова
