Actress "theater post" Alena Starostina about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF"we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, Assistant director and actress of the theater Post Alena Starostina shares with stories about her favorite books.
I am not one of those children for whom reading books was an essential, necessary part of life. But the stories of parents and reading fairy tales before bed each night was a real holiday. I could not sleep if mom or dad did not read me anything. Until now, it is much easier for me to perceive by ear: imagination begins to work, there is space for filling, stories and characters arise from the air, come as if from nowhere.
At home there was never a big library: every book had to be taken out or brought from somewhere. I grew up at a time when the appearance of a new edition was a real event: you could get a ticket for written paper and write something out, for example, the children's encyclopedia "What is? Who is this?". We didn’t wait for three volumes, there is still a mystery for me, what is there in the letters X, Ts, Ch, Sh, Sh, E, Yu, I. Every summer, returning from Kazakhstan after the holidays, we brought some books (I don't know why, but it was easier to get them there). A suitcase of books on trains, across half the country!
My first self-read book is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I was in love with Huck and dreamed of traveling on a raft with him along the Mississippi River: America was so different from the fact that it was outside. In general, in childhood I presented myself as a boy, as a young man, as a man, as if I had a second self, known only to me. Man's me. Then I had almost no friends, but there were a lot of friends. Hence, probably, the love for the knightly novels of Walter Scott, the adventure stories of Jack London and the novels of Hemingway.
Thanks to my literature teacher Tamara Belokoneva, I learned and loved to read with a pencil in my hands, emphasizing, signing and taking notes. Doing all this, I establish a real connection with the text, leave my mark: the book becomes mine, and only mine. When I now open "War and Peace" or "Hero of Our Time" and look through all the bookmarks and signatures, I remember not only the works, but also return to myself the one that is no longer there.
Relations with books are like relationships with people. With some you spend all your life, agree, swear, fall in love, and some go away after the first acquaintance. It still seems to me that if I go to Venice for Christmas (Brodsky spent his first emigration fee on a trip to Venice and then returned there almost every year), I will meet Brodsky or understand something about myself.
Now in my library, new books appear very rarely, mostly downloading for Kindle. It is much more convenient, and for some reason in the reader the reading speed is much faster. Nevertheless, my library from real books collected over 15 years is very dear to me, because it is a part of me, what I am now, pages are stored and my past. Each book has its own history. It is surprising for me that now all these books are stored in the cloud, and at any moment, anywhere you can open each of them. Not owning them, you still have them, as it were.
Sofia Giatsintova
"With memory alone"
The book, thanks to which I so wanted to be behind the scenes. These are the memoirs of the actress about the Moscow Art Theater and the 1st Studio, created inside the theater under the direction of L. A. Sulerzhitsky, where he taught Vakhtangov. Happiness, delight, awe and tenderness in every line, telling about the life of the theater, about the people who created it. Here there are Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, Sulerzhitsy and Mikhail Chekhov, Alexey Dikiy and Birman. And, of course, Violet - that was how her classmates called Hyacinth. "It is finished, collapsed, stunned: I am an actress! Artistic theater !!!" - So begins the first part of the memoirs. Further complexity, misunderstanding, bewilderment, first roles, relationships with fellow students, endless rehearsals, meetings with great actors and a long way to itself.
Mark Twain
"Personal Memories of Joan of Arc Sierre Louis de Comte, Her Page and Secretary"
This story about an amazing woman from the face of a close friend, a man who "was with her from beginning to end," is filled with the smallest details of the life of Joan of Arc. For a long time I could not get rid of the feeling that Jeanne lived inside of me, that I knew her personally and together with her find myself at the trial in Rouen. I feel anger and resentment against the injustice of this court and, together with the author, bow to her perseverance and honesty. In addition, Mark Twain himself wrote: “Of all my books, I like most of all“ Joan of Arc ”; this is the best of them; I know that very well. Besides, it gave me seven times more pleasure than all the others ; 12 years I cooked it and wrote for two years. For other training was not required. "
Konstantin Stanislavsky
"Ethics"
At the very first lesson in acting, we were given the task of reading “My Life in Art” and the “Ethics” of Stanislavsky for the summer — basic books for all students of the theater. To the question of how to create a performance or how to compose a drawing of a role, these books do not give an answer, but the only true answer does not exist. The peculiarity of theatrical art is in its collectivity: the actor must feel himself only a part of the whole and be responsible in his work before him. The acting ethics developed by Stanislavsky seem to limit you, but in fact only inspire you to work tirelessly on yourself. Now, some simple rules for me are natural: do not make noise behind the scenes, do not interfere with partners, be prepared for rehearsal, come to the play in advance. But once these commandments of existence in the theater were a discovery for me.
Peter Brooke
"Empty space"
The book about the theater - that there is a rough and inanimate theater, and still there is the Holy and the Theater as such. But the most important thing for me in this book is the feeling of freedom that it gives. For the theater there are no systems and laws, each time it is necessary to invent something new, explore and experiment without fear: "A person who asserts that the theater has its limits, thus denies the wealth, diversity and inexhaustibility of life itself."
Jerzy Grotowski
"From poor theater to art-conductor"
This is a collection of texts from different years of one of the most significant researchers of the theater. I can not remember how this book turned out to be with me, who advised it to me, but it, like no other, helped in understanding the actor's work. I still think that owning a profession is not a set of stage skills, but above all a spiritual process, the ultimate degree of sincerity. The body of the actor must get rid of everything that blocks internally. The body of the actor is as if subject to destruction, burning.
For Jerzy Grotowski, the crucial issue is the "nonexistence" of the body, overcoming borders and barriers. An actor should improve the act of self-rekindling, “exposing”, should be capable of identifying mental impulses that are just being born. The meaning of the exercises described by Grotovsky is in complete self-surrender. But these tasks are very individual, there is not one universal set for everyone: each actor develops his own personal training. I am very close to the idea of Grotovsky that the structure of the acting game can be built, but the process itself - never. A performer is a man of knowledge who cannot be sure that he has attained true understanding.
Ingmar Bergman
"The cruel world of cinema"
In my life there was a period when I watched two films of Bergman a day on videotapes or in a cinema: then I literally lived in the world of the director and looked at the world through his eyes. It seemed that everything around was a projection of the Bergman "magic lantern". "Laterna magic" (the so-called first part) can be literally translated as "magic lantern", "fantasy" or "foggy pictures." This is a very candid autobiography of the director, in which the author describes his childhood, work in the cinema and theater and personal life. In the "Pictures" is also told the story of the creation of the main Bergman films.
Erland Josephson
"Role"
This is a very small book-diary of the great Swedish actor, the hero of the films Bergman and Tarkovsky, touring the play "The Cherry Orchard" directed by Peter Brooke, - the troupe tours take place in Moscow, Tbilisi, Leningrad and Tokyo in the winter and spring of 1989. Josefson's notes are not only reflections about the play and the role, but also notes about the cities in which Josephson comes to be for the first time, about the directors with whom he managed to work, about people, about the theater in general. The actor documents his feelings of rehearsing and communicating with Brooke, inspiration, joy and fear of the public, fatigue and homesickness. In addition, this book is also a glance of a foreigner who first appeared in Soviet Russia on the eve of change. "Moscow is a city in silence. They move in silence, indifferent to the very goal, deprived of cheerfulness. The prevailing feeling is helplessness, appointed by fate."
Jacob Gordin
"Roll call in the darkness. Joseph Brodsky and his interlocutors"
This book helped me to understand more clearly or even to feel that history is people. The historical process is first of all a human content, filled with concrete actions, countless human wills. It is impossible to simply cut off the past and break away from it: this inevitably leads to psychological trauma. The idea of absolute responsibility arising from the understanding of the integrity of the story, it seems to me, is very important, especially now.
Heroes of the first half - Akhmatova, Gumilev, Mandelstam, Pasternak. In the center of the second - the fate of Joseph Brodsky, the memories of the author and documents. The virtue of the book is that the author does not divide these two parts, but reflects on the relationship of poets and the single field of Russian culture. “In a real tragedy, not a hero dies - the choir dies,” Brodsky wrote in the Nobel Lecture, and this epigraph Jacob Gordin took for the second part of his book. The chorus is the total wealth of the culture of the 20s and the friendly circle of Brodsky of the 60s in Leningrad. "We have different thoughts, different faiths. But we do not argue, but look together. The voices resonate in the darkness."
Sergey Paradzhanov
"Dormant Palace"
This amazing book is a collection of movie scripts of Parajanov’s never-made films. These are not just scenarios, but rather poetic novels, fragments, flashes, pictures. The fate of Paradzhanov is reflected in these stories of non-existent films. Paradzhanov understood that he would not be allowed to shoot what he wanted, but no one can take away his ability to write or tell friends. Like the films of this director, as well as his whole life, this book is about the power of beauty, fantasy, imagination. The dormant palace of cynos. The last script, Swan Song. Zone, about the piercing love of two men, was recorded on tape recorder by cameraman Yury Ilyenko. This is how the only film made by another director directed by Parajanov appeared. I can not imagine that someone now reprinted this collection.
Calvin Tomkins
"Marcel Duchamp. Afternoon Conversations"
Marcel Duchamp is one of the main artists of the 20th century, a theorist and philosopher of art, a chess player, a man who stood at the origins of Dadaism, surrealism, conceptualism, but never considered himself to be a participant or a follower of any one direction. Director Dmitry Volkostrelov once told me, holding in his hands this thin book: "Be sure to read." For half a year she was lying on my shelf, I took her with me on trips, but my hands did not reach. And then in a couple of hours I read and understood - this is really a book that it is important to read to anyone who feels like an artist. First of all, Duchamp believes that your life, the way you breathe and move, can be used as a living picture, a scene from the movie: "Art is something like an internal flow in a person."
John Cage
"Silence"
I met with the work of John Cage at the exhibition "John Cage. Silent Presence" at the NCCA: there I heard his music for the first time, I saw his pictures and interviews. Cage inspires with openness, cheerfulness, attention to life and every sound. This book includes lectures and articles by the composer, many of which are written "by the method of random actions." This book is from a number of basic texts of the 20th century and is felt only in print: it is impossible to reproduce its graphic beauty in electronic format, it must be kept in hand. The way the lines, words are arranged, the structure of each lecture is unique - it’s rather scores. Cage enters into the musical field the concept of "all sounding": not only noise, but also silence. Unlike sounds, silence has a duration with which Cage proposes to work: in his opinion, there is no absolute silence. Even in a room with very good sound insulation, we can hear two sounds - a high sound of our nervous system and a low circulatory sound.
Richard Kostelyanets
"Talk with Cage"
A year ago my friends gave me this book for my birthday, and I finished reading it quite recently - I really wanted to extend the meeting. This is a collection of nearly a hundred interviews that Cage gave at various times to various publications. Richard Kostelyanets combined them into one large text, divided into thematic chapters, similar in form to a conversation with himself. Here they talk about music, artists who influenced his work, about the theater, about his personal life, about politics and his favorite mushrooms. Cage talks about how Eastern philosophy and Zen Buddhism changed his attitude towards music, and the "Book of Changes" helped him in his work. Speaking about the unity of life and creativity, he cites the words of the American writer Henry Toro: "It does not matter what shape the sculptor gives to the stone. It is important that sculptor sculpt the sculptor."
Heiner Goebbels
"Aesthetics of absence"
There are very few books in Russia that examine the processes taking place in the theater today: recently the important books by Hans-Tisa Lehman “Post Drama Theater” and “Esthetics of Performativity” by Erica Fisher-Lichte appeared in Russian, but these are books by theorists of the theater, not practitioners . Heiner Goebbels is a director who lives and creates his performances in our days. He is trying to analyze the ways of spectator perception and interaction with a stranger. How to create on stage an unrecognizable, incomparable reality that can touch, inspire and inspire creativity.
It is important for an actor to understand and accept that attention is directed not only at him, but also at all the elements that make up the reality of the scene. Between him and all other objects arise voids, free for imagination. The disappearance of the actor, the separation of the effect of the presence and attention of the audience, polyphony, the separation of voice from the body, an empty center - these are just some of the concepts in the theater of absence. The theater of absence abolishes the center and displaces the subject in order to enable viewers to focus their own eyes, this book explains and gives freedom of choice.