Slava Polunin, part 2.

For some won­der­ful pho­tos and more visit Acad­emy of Fools.

This is from SLAVASNOWSHOW.COM

What Is My Kind of The­atre?
or
The The­atre I Love

- It is a kind of wed­ding cav­al­cade,
where I try to marry every­one to everyone;

- It is a the­atre of rit­ual magic
and fes­tive pageantry,
con­structed on the basis of images and move­ments,
games and fan­tasies,
that are the com­mon cre­ation of the audi­ence and the peo­ple of the theatre;

- It is a the­atre which inex­orably grows
from dreams and tales;

- It is a the­atre of hopes and dreams,
full of long­ing and lone­li­ness,
losses and disillusionment;

- It is a the­atre which always changes,
which breaths spon­ta­neous impro­vi­sa­tion
and cares scrupu­lously for tradition;

- It is in the vein of con­tem­po­rary
multi-layered syn­the­sis,
on the bound­ary of life and art;

- It is a the­atre that works in an epic-intimate alloy
of tragedy and com­edy,
of absur­dity and naiv­ity,
of cru­elty and gentleness;

- It is a the­atre which escapes
def­i­n­i­tion and the unequiv­o­cal
under­stand­ing of its actions,
as from attempts
to usurp its freedom.

Slava Pol­unin

I found a trans­lated inter­view with Pol­unin, and here are some excerpts.

As for my pro­fes­sion, here I started with the naïve things, a mere eccen­tric pan­tomime. My ideal was an early Chap­lin. I took eccen­tric­ity very seri­ously and stud­ied a the­ory of trick. When Buster Keaton worked at the film stu­dio, he car­ried two suit­cases of tricks with him – two actual suit­cases with files of enlisted tricks, a real col­lec­tion. I did the same. I even elab­o­rated a the­ory: if a turn con­sists of 25 tricks, it can be con­sid­ered clas­si­cal. I worked at the rhythm, at the tech­niques; I elab­o­rated a whole eccen­tric scale. But when I reached the top, I lost the inter­est: quan­tity didn’t pro­vide qual­ity. I could make peo­ple roll in the aisles, it didn’t take any effort, but I sud­denly under­stood: laugh­ter is not so impor­tant. I began doing only 5 tricks instead of 25, so the tech­niques did not go against the rhythm of personage’s char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. I con­cen­trated on the per­son­age, on his con­di­tion and thoughts. Thus eccen­tric­ity changed to poet­i­cal process.

If the crowd is mov­ing in one direc­tion, scream­ing, then, maybe, you should take an oppo­site direc­tion and keep silence? We need to find the means to be heard and to be noticed, we need to make peo­ple want to lis­ten to us. The cir­cus has lost the poetic emo­tion; I’ve decided to bring it back.

At first I demanded my guys to be straight, slim, brawny, to do yoga, bal­let danc­ing. But later it became clear that good-looking peo­ple do not ful­fill their task; they rather broaden the precipice between the audi­ence and us. We were in deep shit. And it was then that I for­got any for­mer prin­ci­ples and began to take in the troupe the one-eyed, the cross-eyed, the ugly, the strange, the bold, the paunchy, as long as they deliv­ered some­thing nice to the per­for­mance. I’m jok­ing, of course.

Slava will be voic­ing a char­ac­ter in the upcom­ing pup­pet film from Rus­sia, GOFMANIADA