MALE STRIPTEASE, OR WHERE DO WE GET A UKRAINIAN ANDRE MALRAUX?

The following article cannot be described as an interview in the usual sense. Rather, it is a private conversation between two talented, intelligent, and genuinely concerned individuals, Yuri Makarov and Mykhailo Rieznykov. The former is a popular television journalist, author and host of 1+1's “Telemania.” The latter is a noted stage director, head of the Lesia Ukrayinka National Russian Drama Theater. If this author were not afraid of sounding pompous, this dialogue could be described as a discussion of a pressing issue. One that worries a great many people these days, regardless of which side of the footlights or television screen they might be.

Y. M.: Mr. Rieznykov, how differently is culture being treated now? Is there any difference between today's and previous theater audiences, ones you have dealt with most of your professional life?

M. R.: The audiences have changed radically over the past decade. My generation spent twenty years aware that people went to the theater to get that homeopathic dose of truth they lacked in contemporary society. After getting it they would applaud. Plays like that were not just dramatic renditions but public events and the house was always packed. On the other hand, it was a certain restriction on an entire generation of dramatic performers who passed by Shakespeare and Moliere, past the problem of big-time world dramaturgy, for they had other sentiments, responsibilities, etc.

Y. M.: And even when classical plays were staged it was precisely to strip them of any context that could sound topical at the time.

M. R.: Absolutely. People were keenly aware of relevance. But then came glasnost, and the truth they had sought started gushing out on newspaper pages. It became clear that the theater would never keep pace.

Y. M.: But perhaps it shouldn't.

M. R.: Of course not. But on the other hand it had to make up for lagging behind somehow. And then we discovered that more than one generation of actors and actresses were raised on very mediocre plays. In fact, we used to be proud of making the best of a poor plot. As we tried to broach big-time dramaturgy we realized that we were not ready, spiritually and technically. In world dramaturgy one finds an altogether different type of passions and one has to live rather than impersonate them. So an actor doesn't spit and sniff but stays conscious, courageous.

Y. M.: So it was at that turning point that two problems seemed to collide. One, the manifestation of glasnost and the resultant loss of the relevance of those approaches that addressed the sense of truth. And the other one, the attitude to the dramatic art that was changing across the world — I mean both procedures and requirements. Like I said, all this was preserved for us. The rising generation, all those eighteen year-olds, are already oriented toward a different kind of entertainment. One of them, a friend of mine who celebrated her eighteenth birthday quite recently told my wife and me happily that she was going to a nightclub to watch a male striptease. We nearly dropped dead and then it transpired that we just didn't understand. “It'll be a hoot,” she told us. “Sure, a real riot.” Indeed, without understanding how the younger generation reacts one can imagine God knows what. In fact, they are not interested in watching naked men on stage. At their age men have long ceased being a topic of interest. On the contrary, they go to the show to have fun, which is another way to say that they just want to laugh at those male strippers, at something older men and women take so seriously. They want fun, things provocative, risquО, so they can have a laugh and not burden their minds with anything really serious; they want something that can be expressed in a couple of words (they call it clipped thinking). For my part, I just don't know how to communicate with these young people who make up a growing portion of the audience.

M. R.: A very precise diagnosis.

Y. M.: Well, maybe not a diagnosis, for I am not sure we are talking about some disease but a type of culture.

M. R.: We have to clearly realize why this has happened. As for the theater, Chekhov made an excellent statement: “The theater should touch the audience.” If it really gets to your heart, even one of those girls will respond, touching something highly cultural. But there isn't much to the current theater in terms of high culture. First, we don't have that kind of dramaturgy. Second, what we have we don't know how to stage properly; we make it bad, archaic, never rising to the level where we can get across to those people. I am working with third year drama students. I read them perhaps the only modern play about youth. It has love and sex, but it also has something else. Suffering one's destiny. You should see all those 19-year-olds' keen perception! I was overwhelmed.

Y. M.: But they are your students, if you will pardon my saying so. You didn't invite a dozen teens off the street, so the experiment wasn't exactly pure.

M. R.: Probably not. On the other hand, I think that the current regime is very much to blame. It has always been, because there a glaring shortage of food for thought for the young and those in power are unable to build cultural projects and inculcate such needs in the rising generation, starting at the daycare center and continuing through school. Frankly, that's what they have in the West. Drama is a subject taught in every normal British school. And they are familiar with Shakespeare starting at 6-7 years of age, so when they reach twenty they already feel the need.

Y. M.: Indeed, it's not an external factor of their life but part of their biography.

M. R.: Yet this is something society has to take care of. Ten years ago someone declared that one and all must start speaking Ukrainian overnight. I told him, “You will never make them. You must start with a simple Ukrainian folk tale, at the daycare center.” I think that today's shortage of things spiritual begets a very primitive, one-sided understanding of culture.

Y. M.: Frankly speaking, I have always tried to be very careful using the notion of spirituality. Rather than broach such elevated subjects, I think we should concentrate on elementary things like self-preservation. Often, communicating with politicians in power or close to it, I find myself thinking what a well- mannered and respectable gentleman I am talking to. Yet his acts and those of his colleague produce a certain resultant force which seems, well, not so much heartless as anonymous, which is even more frightening. I find it easier to deal with a complete rascal, because I know what he is all about and he knows that I know. And here one is faced with something collectively impersonal, people without any characteristics at all.

M. R.: I am an inveterate optimist and I do hope that after this cataclysmic month something will change for the better in the regime's attitude toward culture.

Y. M.: I am not so sure. The powers that be don't help us. That would be all right by me if they stopped meddling in our cultural affairs, imposing all kinds of senseless restrictions. I do wish they let the people have a break, so these people could find the time and strength — and I mean physical strength — for culture.

M. R.: I think you're right. We have recently been besieged by a mind-boggling number of all kinds of directives and instructions, taxes, and imposts — and I don't think that those above are unaware of this — so much so that we have to part with sixty of every hundred of our hard-earned hryvnias. So what are we left with? We are grownup men, you and I, each in his own field of endeavor, and we realize that before issuing a directive an executive has to weigh its consequences. Otherwise the same thing will happen as it was under the Soviets when they drained marshlands to try to irrigate deserts.

Y. M.: Despite all this, I am terribly envious of you.

( M. R. shows amazement.)

Y. M.: You are a director, you can step into a theater and watch your own production, live some two hours with your audience, so you can understand something afterward. Television is different. Several days after your program you may get silly and dubious statistics about how many watched it. This way you never know at what point your viewers sighed or laughed. In your case the response is instant and obvious. Even when the audience is silent it tells you a lot. That's what I call feedback, something modern cultural technologies are practically denied. This is probably why the theater, long since predicted to die out, is still there.

M. R.: But this makes your programs even more important, because your audiences cannot be compared to ours. You have the country's whole adult population and we have 700 at best at a time.

Y. M.: Right, but that's what makes the situation so complex. You always have the chance (I don't say opportunity but chance) to face an audience you will find it interesting to address. What we do is best described by the military as carpet bombing, so we must always have in mind the abstract viewer, a kind of homunculus. Besides, television is a business. Actually, I wouldn't bet on television being an art. If it is, it is very much in the applied department. It operates with a very limited number of ideas, rather fragments of ideas. A theatrical performance can offer a certain model of life. Television can at best offer a model of human conduct.

M. R.: Still, just as the theater is what Gogol described as a pulpit from which one can address a lot of good words to the world, television is also a pulpit from which one can address such good — or not so good — words to the world. I have a feeling that those in high office, among them perhaps television executives, have a one-sided concept of television. RTR (in Russia) has a play each week broadcast to all of Russia. They also have the “Arena” and Vitaly Vulf. What do we have in Ukraine? I was ashamed to receive a letter from Moscow's Culture channel, asking permission to play a televised version of Dumas' The Young Years of King Louis , commemorating the author's anniversary. It means that they plan half a year ahead. Who would ever call me in Kyiv and ask for a play?

Y. M.: The situation is like this: RTR, Culture, and Russian are primarily state channels. Second, there are no government bureaucrats working with the Culture channel. The government did not create it, it simply made it possible.

M. R.: Made it possible. We said it together... The government made it possible for a team of competent people, professionals to do something they considered necessary. The government trusted them...

Y. M.: Right. We can't expect another AndrО Malraux appointed Ukraine's Minister of Culture like in France. Actually, we may not need a person like that. However, the Minister of Culture ought to know AndrО Malraux when he sees him. That would be the most I would expect from him.

M. R.: I think that the times are marked by declining professionalism because of uncertainty. You know, people are afraid to consult doctors not because they suspect them of murderous intentions, but because they are afraid of their own ignorance. The same applies to us.

Y. M.: One last question. Suppose we understand what is bad and where it comes from. Suppose we even have our own positive action plan, something like Anton Chekhov's maxim, “learn to bear your cross and have faith.” Where is the limit of our tolerance? Or should I say the hell on you, that's your funeral? Should I say that this rector, chief stage director, manager or bureaucrat is a wishy- washy, utterly nonprofessional and profoundly immoral, because he is doing someone else's job, maiming other people's souls? Should a person of, say, Rieznnykov's caliber say this out loud?

M. R.: It all depends who you address this message. Efros once said, “Previously, walking past the Sovremennik Theater, I would always see brightly lit windows, meaning that another rehearsal was on. Not now. All the windows are dark. Are they that tired?” Let me tell you honestly: I am tired. Very much so. I visit officials, talk to bureaucrats; they listen to me and sometimes agree with me, but nothing changes. Previously, it was the insurmountable barrier of ideology. Now I think that it is a barrier of general confusion. And so I hope that there will be someone to address this message after the presidential elections.

Y. M.: “Uncle Vanya, we will have a rest.”