Risk taker
By John Freedman
Special to The St. Petersburg Times
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John Freedman / The St. Petersburg Times
Theater director Yury Urnov who has been invited to be the associate art director of a new cultural center in the battle-scarred city of Vladikavkas in the North Caucasus.
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VLADIKAVKAZ, North Caucasus —Snipers manned roofs here and battles broke out regularly on the city’s streets in 1991. The terrorist attack on the school in Beslan in 2003 took place just 15 minutes down the road. The conflict in Chechnya continues to rage to the north, while tensions along the Russian-Georgian border to the south also hang in the air. This is Vladikavkaz, heart of the Caucasus region and capital of the republic of North Ossetia. There is another side to this city, however — one less known, perhaps, but far more meaningful to some people who believe their hometown is ripe for a cultural revival. In a move intended to have symbolic and practical significance, they plan to transform a burned-out conference hall into a multipurpose cultural center. The first step in that transformation began last month, when the Shans, or Chance, Theater unveiled its new production of “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” It was staged and designed specifically to be performed amid the ruins of a structure that has been abandoned since a fire destroyed it 10 years ago. “We have deep traditions here,” said North Ossetian Culture Minister Eduard Galazov. “Our society is very traditional and our theater has rich traditions. The great director Yevgeny Vakhtangov was born here. The world-famous conductor Valery Gergiev was too. Mikhail Bulgakov lived here when he wrote his first three plays, and our drama theater produced all of them. Theater has been an enormous moral force in our society, although that is mostly lost now. We would like to recapture theater’s ability to reach out and grab people.” What better way to engage people’s hearts and minds than to throw them a challenge? In a city that knows violence and terrorism only too well, the Chance Theater resolved to take on Martin McDonagh’s dark Irish comedy about terrorists running amuck. Would the audience be offended by the surfeit of shooting and killing? Would they be shocked by the farcical treatment of the topic? Would they be insulted by the cascades of obscenities that McDonagh’s characters spout as they attack and counterattack each other? “You have to understand our audiences,” explained Izabella Karginova, the artistic director of Chance, which will be the resident theater in the new cultural center. “They are very set in their ways. What we hope to do is to draw a whole new audience into our theater.” Yury Urnov, who was invited from Moscow to direct the show and will be the associate art director at the future center, allowed himself to be pulled aside for a brief interview one hour before the show began. His biggest concern was what the audience would bring into the hall that night. “What we will soon find out is if the spectators are ready for the provocation we prepared for them. There’s no guarantee that they are. In Moscow in 1991 people didn’t want to be provoked. They were tired and unwilling to respond. I have the feeling that the potential for success exists in Vladikavkaz right now. But I don’t know that for sure.” For the premiere, the theater filled the 150 seats with an audience that would be likely to appreciate the play’s humor and message. Nearly half of the crowd consisted of students from the city’s institutes. Friends, writers, artists and a few dignitaries filled the rest of the seats. All were there by invitation and all were encouraged to stay after the show for a discussion. Nearly two-thirds did. At the outset, one elderly man voiced the criticism everyone knew would be heard sooner or later. “Dirty language is no topic for art,” he said. “And the music and gunshots were much too loud.”
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John Freedman / The St. Petersburg Times
North Ossetian culture minister Eduard Galazov (second from left) enjoys the show.
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But one after another, speakers began to stand and deliver an entirely different verdict. “I have never been to the theater before,” one young man said, “and I really liked this show.” A young woman, a student, admitted she had reservations about coming when she heard a description of the play. “I am really glad I came,” she added. “There was nothing offensive about this at all. It was so well done.” “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” tells the wacky tale of Irish terrorists who also happen to be cat-lovers. When the head terrorist gets word that his cat has been killed, he swears he’ll kill everyone who had anything to do with the deed, including his own father. What he doesn’t know is that his cat’s murder was the doing of a splinter group that is out to get him. But he only learns that when it’s too late. By then he has killed another cat in revenge, setting his own death in motion. McDonagh’s play is packed with misfits and clumsy fools. As directed by Urnov and performed by the actors in Vladikavkaz, they are homespun folk, the kind of people you would smile at and say hello to in the morning on your way to work. “Every person in Vladikavkaz feels the presence of terrorism,” Urnov explained. “But terrorism is not a concrete act. It is more like a sickness, I think. Why do all the characters in this play go out and fight? Because the conditions where they live give them no other opportunity. They’re high-strung people with no other outlet for their energy.” As planned, the new cultural center will be an ultra-modern space seating between 150 and 500 spectators. The stage and seating blocks will transform into numerous configurations. Galazov’s assertion that it will be “one of the most functional spaces in Russia” has already been echoed by one producer from the United States. “Philip Arnoult, the director of the Center for International Theater Development in Baltimore, traveled to Vladikavkaz last week to learn more about the project. Responding to questions by e-mail, Arnoult stated: “There is a powerful convergence going on in Vladikavkaz. It reflects the strong and complementary visions of Bella Karginova and Yury Urnov, the will of the authorities to reclaim and transform an important space in the city center and the commitment to build a young and new audience in the region.” The plan is to begin reconstructing the center’s mangled roof this summer. With that in place to fend off inclement weather, the Chance Theater plans to add three more shows to its repertoire by September and October. The complete overhaul of the space will take several years to complete, with a projected budget of approximately $400,000. It is further linked to the complete reconstruction of an entire city block that will house a historical and ethnographical museum. “We need to show potential investors that we are ready to make good on a project like this,” Galazov explained. “That’s why the response to ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’ will be so important.” There are plenty of obstacles to be overcome before the cultural center becomes a reality. But smiles were evident all around when one man, describing himself only as a 44-year-old, stood up during the post-show discussion and declared: “This is the first example of European-style art in our republic.”
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