Wedding tunes of Olga Alexandrova
Biographical information:
At the beginning of 2003 the «Ob-Ugrian peoples’ theatre» was created in Khanty-Mansiysk city. Olga Alexandrova became the creative manager of the theatre. She is the member of the «Theatre workers union of Russia». Before that she worked as an actress in Izhevsk puppet theatre, in Moscow drama theatre «Laboratory», as the main director of the youth drama theatre «Idnakar» (Udmurtia).
Two women, two wedding tunes:
The play «Three wedding tunes» was performed within the framework of one of the programs of «School of drama arts» — «The Scythian’s Slanted View».
Natalya says, «To my shame I went to watch this performance only because somebody said that Igor Popov watched it and was admired. Igor Popov is the companion-in-arms of Anatoly Vasiliev. He is a theatre actor and the architect of blameless style so he couldn’t make a mistake».
This play is woven from songs and dreams, ceremonies and prayers so it is alien to Russian ear. This performance is based on folklore and performed in the Udmurt language. So, the performance appeared to be without words for all who were in the fifth studio on Povorskaya.
But the plot was quite clear from the first sound to the last breath, without any mysticism.
Olga Alexandrova is an actress and a producer, who has studied Finno-Ugrian folklore and ethnography. In this performance she not only combined national ceremonial songs and dances, which every nation performs on the main occasions in their life (death, illnesses, childbirth, weddings and funerals), but she also has woven a plot from all these about the constant flow of life.
Language became music having ceased to be the main mean of expressiveness. Being incomprehensible at first, it has sounded as noise of the wind, as the wash and shaman’s guttural recitative, as a tender mother’s lullaby and childish prattle, which is common to all people in the world, as the angel’s voice and the devil’s hissing.
It was an epic theatre.
There were an empty space and a singing girl, white shawl, embroidered gown, a small tree behind her, ringing with bells and a shaman-girl with a tambourine and her huge shadow on the wall. She is an actress and a narrator in one person, the main character and the creator of the world of performance.
She did several circles on the stage, whispering, wailing and singing. Bewailing she tried to cast a spell on spirits, to return the God’s attention. So she found herself on the threshold of transformation.
It was a poor theatre as it went into the pocket. Different things appeared out of it and came to life. A tambourine turned into a belly of an expectant mother, it buzzed, moved and breathed and then a swaddle figure appeared out of the pocket. Everything was clear — a baby was born.
One leaf-bell of the tree of life has hung on the person’s breast it meant that the man found a soul.
It was a poetic theatre. It comprehends life at a level of the universe, as an act and a moment. Feeling of transience of our life has abolished neither meaning nor philosophy. It is possible to argue in such way if you like a person. The actress made spectators to change «optical instruments» through which they perceived a reality. In this performance time and space breathed, constricting and separating its borders.
At first, it was a simple tambourine and suddenly it became the whole planet, where a person will have to live. Then we saw a simple piece and suddenly it became a person and life of this motionless doll began to trouble us and resemble our own life. Next we saw only the actress and then she became a shaman, who talked with her idols and then she became the God, who went down from heaven and chose a persons’ destiny.
It was a comic theatre. A person was got out of swaddling clothes. He got up rocking at the middle of a tambourine. He had square shoulders and was beetle-browed.
The shaman kept saying something. She sprinkled the figure with coins as promising a satisfied future. Coins rolled over the surface of a tambourine like children’s laugh in the garden. Suddenly the second doll appeared when we had seen her rounded forms we understood that it was a woman and of course she was the main character’s darling.
The shaman whispered words of love, married them off, made a marriage bed, suffered a hungry winter and illnesses with them, sowed and gathered in the harvest, argued with them and had disputes with the God, asked for suggestions as if she promised him to look after all people.
The imagination, alarmed with guttural music, painted these pictures-plots itself. At some moment, I could swear, I have seen a tree blackened from coming thunderstorm on the empty stage.
It was a tragic theatre, because the beginning of every life has its ending. The shaman hid her face with black mask. She took out squeaking sound of disaster passing her hand over a rough board and it was clear that the old ages have come.
Next not coins but stones fell down a tambourine and children’s laugh became senile deep breath. A tambourine revolved as toy merry-go-round faster and faster as though life ran from the hill. Coins and stones, as our mixed joy and sorrow, rolled down a tambourine and fell down near our legs.
Soon a man died and his bell took its place on the tree of life. A body was swaddled again, a shawl became a shroud and the circle was locked. White roll hung down the shaman’s heavy knitted stocking.
The actress changed her «optical instruments» again, giving a chance to feel what is small and what is big, what is worth tears and what is not. There were a lot of such rolls on the shaman’s legs. She clinked by death bodies like by bells. She lulled dead people’s souls as though they were alive.
She put the second, woman figure, on the tambourine. It was an eternal love plot: «they lived happily and died in one day». She sprinkled them with snow white as fluff.
It was a live theatre, sacred and quite clear in means and quite allegorical in meaning, mysterious and naive theatre.
The performance came to end, the shaman disappeared and only some coins, stones and fluffs, shivering from our breath were on the floor. In essence it was things which are left after each life such as a hollow of ashes and a perishable piece.
We may say «very little» or «rather much». The actress showed both variants.
Natalia Kazmina
A part of an article from
the literature magazine «Theatre life»
№6 2001 года
