Alexander shirvindt sclerosis sclerosis in life read. Alexander Shirvindt: Sclerosis scattered throughout life

Yes! The time has probably come-

It's time to give in to temptation

And life to sum up,

So as not to flirt with oblivion.

Unknown poet

(It is not known whether he is a poet?

It is known that he is not a poet. My verse)

Thought Patchwork

Senile thoughts come during insomnia, so the blanket here is not an attempt at an aphorism, but a natural covering. We must have time to run to the sheet of paper. If the route is through the toilet - write wasted. That is, what I wanted to write was gone.

The physical condition of the body provokes reflection. Comprehension tends to formulations. The wording begins to smell like thought or, in extreme cases, wisdom. Wisdom looks like individuality. In the morning you realize that all this old age cowardice already has a centuries-old background and is dictated by all sorts of geniuses. Dead end!

Years go by ... More and more often, various media are turning to demand personal memories of their deceased peers. Gradually you become a commentary on the book of other people's lives and destinies, and memory weakens, episodes get confused, because old age is not when you forget, but when you forget where you wrote it down so as not to forget.

For example, I wrote down the previous thought in one of my three books that were published earlier. And I forgot. Now I read it - as if for the first time. What I wish for those who also read them.

Sclerosis came as an epiphany.

... How often do we say philosophically different words without thinking about the essence of nonsense: "Time to throw stones, time to collect stones." What is this? Well, you scattered all the stones according to your young strength - and how to collect them in old age, if you bend down - a problem, not to mention unbend, and even with a cobblestone in your hand.

But since this is a textbook truth, then I also want to collect stones scattered throughout life, so that all the most precious things do not lie anywhere, but be in one heap; so as not to languish in time and space, sclerotically stuck in traffic jams of memories when trying to move from one milestone to another.

And this, it turns out, I already wrote. True, since then I have passed several more milestones. And there is something to remember. Rather, there is something to forget.

Once I was asked: "What, in your opinion, should not be included in the book of memoirs?" He replied: "Everything, if you are afraid of exposure."

Memoirism displaces Swift, Gogol and Kozma Prutkov from the bookshelves, and many graphomaniacs come up with documentary fables.

The theater was directed by Margarita Mikaelyan. Once at a meeting of the art council, she stood up and said: “I am many years old, I have been working in the theater for a long time. I am listening to this discussion now and I think: well, how much is it possible? And I decided not to lie from today ”. Pluchek says: "Mara, it's late."

Do not be tempted to write a monumental work within the framework of memoir stereotypes under the modest title "I about myself", "About me", "They are about me" and, at worst, a self-deprecating end: "I am about them" ...

Today, everyday dishes of life are passed off as portioned - hence the cheap biography menu and heartburn in the finale.

Once I came up with a formula for what I am: born in the USSR, living under socialism with a capitalist face (or vice versa).

I think that cloning was invented by Gogol in "The Marriage": "If only Nikanor Ivanovich's lips were put to Ivan Kuzmich's nose ..." So, if this is here, and this is here, then, unfortunately, it does not work. Cloning your own biography does not add up.

For 80 years I have never seriously despair - I just pretend. It retained the hair, the smooth skin of the face and the infantilism of the old asshole.

Once I came across, it seems, at Romain Gary (aka Emil Azhar) - sometimes I painfully want to show off erudition - the phrase: "He has reached the age when a person already has a final face." Everything! The prospects for growth and reincarnation are no longer there - you have to come to terms and live with this physiognomy.

The number 80 is unpleasant. When you say it, it still somehow skips. And when drawn on paper, you want to glue it up. Recently I caught myself thinking that I began to pay attention to the years of my life famous people... You read: he died at 38, 45, 48 years ... - and sadness overcomes. But sometimes you look: another lived for 92 years. A great weight off one's mind. Therefore, I now have a handbook - the calendar of the House of Cinema, which is sent every month to the members of the Union of Cinematographers. On the first page - the heading "Congratulations to the heroes of the day". There are dashes near the female surnames, and round dates near the male surnames. But starting from 80 they write non-round ones too - just in case, because there is little hope of congratulations on the next round date. And this calendar is my consolation. True, sometimes completely unfamiliar surnames come across - some kind of props, the second director, the fourth pyrotechnician, the fifth assistant ... But the numbers are: 86, 93, 99! Ichthyosaurs of Hope.

It is customary for great writers to sum up, to have complete collection essays. And when there are only three essays in a lifetime, then you can put them together, add something, and you get a "multivolume" work of 300 pages.

I have always wondered why biographies and autobiographies are written from birth onwards, and not vice versa. After all, it is obvious that a person can describe his present uncomplicated life in a brighter and more detailed way, and only then, gradually, together with a fading memory, sink into the depths of his life.

I turn on the reverse gear.

The conclave of today's artistic directors of theaters is close in age to the Vatican.

I remember one of the congresses of the Union of Theater Workers a few years ago. We have convention nostalgia. This one was held in some green hall of the mayor's office. "Turn on the first microphone ...", "Turn on the second microphone ...". I sat, listened, listened, zamaril, wake up, and I have the feeling that I am in a billiard room: a huge green cloth and billiard balls, just a lot, a lot. These are bald spots. And Alexander Alexandrovich Kalyagin, sitting on the podium, is also a powerful billiard ball. (Although, of course, it is fortunate that there are people of such an actor's level, who at the same time want to be the main bosses.)

Many years have suddenly arrived. In a second for some reason. I was on a fishing trip - my friends brought it. Friends are also not the freshest, but still ten to fifteen years difference. There is a descent down to the lake. They are here and there, and I poured in there, but I can't get back up.

I scratch in a straight line, like a stayer, but with the steps is already a problem. Knees.

With age, everything is concentrated in a person - all the parameters of the mind and heart. But there is also physiology, it dominates all parameters by the age of 80. When you neither sit down nor get up, then everything obeys this, and "physics" begins to dictate. When you get up, and your knee does not unbend, you become mean, and angry, and greedy. And at the same time. And if the knee miraculously unbent, then everything is ready to give, not to regret anything.

For the first time I understood the meaning of the expression "weak in the knees" twenty years ago - it turns out that this is when, firstly, they hurt, secondly, they bend badly and, thirdly, become weak. I turned to two familiar luminaries on the knees - both gave diametrically opposite recommendations, and decided to wear my knees as they are, because I can't afford new ones.

I am treated with a special warming gel for joints, which I buy at a veterinary pharmacy. Friends-riders advised. Here are the instructions for use: “Smear from knee to hoof. It is recommended to cover the horse with a blanket after the procedure. It is advisable to refrain from work on soft ground. " I smear! Awesome effect! At the same time, I refuse soft soil. Fundamentally. I only agree to a hard surface. Like tennis players. One loves hard, the other loves grass. So am I now.

Fatigue builds up. Moral, not to mention physical. I didn't sleep here at night: knee! I turn on the TV. The film "Three Men in a Boat, Excluding a Dog" is on. This is exactly the moment when we chase the catfish. I am standing in the boat, Andryushka Mironov is on top of me, and Derzhavin is on Andryushka. I think: but it was!

And on the set of the film "Ataman Codr" I galloped for 12 kilometers for drinks to the nearest Moldovan village and back. The film was shot by a wonderful director Misha Kalik. We played on horseback all the time. And on horseback after filming rushed to the store. Many years later, at one of the Golden Ostap festivals, of which I was the permanent president, they brought me a horse. I had to leave as such a sovereign on a white horse, easily jump off and open the festival. You don't understand when you yourself plunge your body into disaster. I pounced on this horse with the help of everyone around me. And I couldn't jump off at all. Therefore, he crawled over the rump, hugging the horse by the neck.

I have a very hard exercise in the morning. Lying down, I first twist the legs for the lower back. 30 times. Then with difficulty, groaning, I sit on the bed and do rotary motion on a creaky neck five times there, five times back. And then with a hanger 10 times. Someone once taught me, and I'm used to it. And I feel like I've done my exercises.

Recently, in the winter at the dacha, my wife and I went for a walk, but so that this activity would not be completely meaningless, we went to a village store. And there we saw the loader Mishka, who used to work as a mechanic in our summer cottage cooperative. He was not very fresh, but happily rushed to us with the words: “How long have I not seen you! Why do you look so bad? Have grown old. Oh, it's just scary to look at you! " We try to break away from him, leave the store. He is behind us. On the street - the bright sun, snow, beauty! The bear looks at me attentively and says: "Oh, and in the sun you are still x ... veee!"

75, 85 and 100. If this is not the waist or hips, then the numbers are very suspicious.

When Bernard Shaw was asked why he does not celebrate his birthdays, the writer replied: "Why celebrate the days that bring you closer to death?" And really, what kind of holidays are these seventy and eighty years?

The old age parties are terrible. Live so that everyone is touched, that at 85 you look at 71? Although, apparently, the great attraction of public longevity is the immortality of optimism.

Young people - everywhere we have a road,

Old people are honored everywhere.

I'm an old man standing on the doorstep

Life that is closed for registration.

Old people should be helpless and touching, then you feel sorry for them, and they are needed for the landscape and the youth's momentary comprehension of the frailty of existence. The militantly youthful old people must be thrown off the rocks. For lack of rocks - discounted. I mean banking.

A good doctor calmed me down. “Dates are all nonsense. The age of a person, he said, is determined not by dates, but by his being. " Sometimes, for a very short time, I am somewhere around 20 years old. And sometimes I'm under 100.

The famous line of Bulat Okudzhava: "Let's join hands, friends, so as not to disappear one by one" - in our case now: "So as not to fall one by one."

To live for a long time is honorable, interesting, but dangerous from the point of view of the displacement of temporary consciousness.

I remember (I still remember) the 90th anniversary of the great Russian actress Alexandra Alexandrovna Yablochkina on the stage of the House of the Actor, which after a while began to be called by her name. In response, she said: "We are ... artists of the Academic Order of Lenin, His Imperial Majesty Maly Theater ..."

The birthday of our theater coincides with the Day of the Old Old Man, or (what is it?) The Old Man ... So I have a double celebration.

Satire theater is 90 years old. We celebrate an anniversary every ten years. During the reporting period, I made four of them - 60, 70, 80, 90. For the 60th anniversary, a ramp in the form of a snail was installed on the stage. The whole troupe lined up on it. Above, on the platform, stood Peltzer, Papanov, Menglet, Valentina Georgievna Tokarskaya, a lovely lady with tragic fate... I hosted the program and represented the troupe: "Here are the youth ... but the middle generation ... and here are our veterans, who are on their shoulders ... And finally," I shouted, "the eternally young pioneer of our theater, 90-year-old Georgy Tusuzov!" He ran against the movement of the ring. The audience stood up and began to applaud. Peltzer turned to Tokarskaya and said: "Valya, if you, old b ..., did not hide your age, then you would run with Tuzik."

By the way, about the "forever young" Tusuzov. Using its preservation at the age of 90 once almost cost me my biography. The 80th anniversary of the most powerful circus figure Mark Mestechkin was brewing. In the circus arena on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, people and horses crowded behind the forgang to express their admiration for the master of the Soviet circus. In the government box sat the Moscow bosses - the Moscow City Committee of the party.

Having assembled the jubilee team, I brought Aroseva, Runge, Derzhavin onto the stage, who demonstrated to Mestechkin the similarity of our creative directions with the circus. “And finally, - I habitually say, - the standard of our circus training, the universal clown, 90-year-old Georgy Tusuzov”. Tusuzov runs out into the arena in a trained manner and cheerfully runs along the route of the circus horses to a storm of applause. During his run I manage to say: "Here, dear Mark, Tusuzov is ten years older than you, and in what form - despite the fact that he eats shit in our theatrical cafeteria."

I wish I hadn't had time to say it. The next morning, the Theater of Satire was invited to the secretary of the Moscow City Conservatory on ideology. Since it was impossible to invite me to the Moscow City Conservatory alone - due to my persistent non-partisanship - the secretary of the theater's party organization, dear Boris Runge, led me by the hand.

At the morning table were several stern ladies with "challah" on their heads and a couple of men combed with water, apparently after yesterday's alcoholic mistakes.

They did not drag out the execution, since there was a long line on the carpet, and they asked, naturally, to his fellow party member Boris Vasilyevich Runge, whether he considers it possible to stay within the walls of the academic theater of a person who dared to say something from the arena of the Red Banner circus to repeat within the walls Nobody can party MGK. Borya looked at me helplessly, and I, not being burdened with the burden of party ethics, made a naively surprised face and said: “I know what my native MGK incriminates me, but I am surprised at the depravity of the perception of the esteemed secretaries, for in the arena I clearly said:“ She has been eating for a long time in the buffet of our theater ”. The embarrassed MGK let Runge go to the theater without any party penalties.

I gave my life to other people's anniversaries. When asked why I don’t celebrate mine, I came up with an answer: “I don’t think of a jubilee on which Shirvindt and Derzhavin would not congratulate the hero of the day.”

But once we played the play "Celebration" in the premises of the Mayakovsky Theater. There they hung out a huge poster - my portrait and the phrase: “In connection with the 60th anniversary of Shirvindt -“ Honoring ”. And small - "Slade's Play". The people came with certificates, bottles, souvenirs. Once Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov even came with his retinue - not to the performance, but to congratulate the hero of the day. When the situation cleared up, someone in the Moscow government was missing.

At an anniversary, as at a pop concert, you must have success. Not at the hero of the day - they did not come to him, but at the audience. Once Boris Golubovsky - he was then the chief director of the Gogol Theater - had Gogol's portrait makeup done. He grabbed Lev Losev and me backstage, took me aside and nervously said: "Now I will check your congratulations." And he began to read to us in Gogol's make-up the greeting written for the anniversary. Then he looked at our faces - and began convulsively to tear off his wig and make up.

Colibri®

* * *

Yes! Probably the time has come -
It's time to give in to temptation
And life to sum up,
So as not to flirt with oblivion.
Unknown poet
(It is not known whether he is a poet? It is known that he is not a poet. My poem)

Thought Patchwork

For example, I wrote down the previous thought in one of my three books that were published earlier. And I forgot. Now I read it - as if for the first time. What I wish for those who also read them.

Sclerosis came as an epiphany.

... How often do we ostensibly say philosophically different words without thinking about the essence of nonsense: "It's time to throw stones, it's time to collect stones." What is this? Well, you scattered all the stones according to young strength - and how to collect them in old age, if you bend down - a problem, not to mention unbend, and even with a cobblestone in your hand.

And this, it turns out, I already wrote. True, since then I have passed several more milestones. And there is something to remember. Rather, there is something to forget.

Once I was asked: "What, in your opinion, should not be included in the book of memoirs?" He replied: "Everything, if you are afraid of exposure."

Memoirism displaces Swift, Gogol and Kozma Prutkov from the bookshelves, and many graphomaniacs come up with documentary fables.

Today, everyday dishes of life are passed off as portioned - hence the cheap biography menu and heartburn in the finale.

Once I came up with a formula for what I am: born in the USSR, living under socialism with a capitalist face (or vice versa).

For 80 years I have never seriously despair - I just pretend. It retained the hair, the smooth skin of the face and the infantilism of the old asshole.

The number 80 is unpleasant. When you say it, it still somehow slips. And when drawn on paper, I want to glue it up. Recently I caught myself thinking that I began to pay attention to the years of life of famous people. You read: he died at 38, 45, 48 years ... - and sadness overcomes. But sometimes you look: another lived for 92 years. A great weight off one's mind. Therefore, I now have a handbook - the calendar of the House of Cinema, which is sent every month to the members of the Union of Cinematographers. On the first page - the heading "Congratulations to the heroes of the day". There are dashes near the female surnames, and round dates near the male surnames. But starting from 80 they write non-round ones too - just in case, because there is little hope of congratulations on the next round date. And this calendar is my consolation. True, sometimes completely unfamiliar surnames come across - some kind of props, the second director, the fourth pyrotechnician, the fifth assistant ... But the numbers are: 86, 93, 99! Ichthyosaurs of Hope.

It is customary for great writers to sum up, to have a complete collection of works. And when there are only three essays in a lifetime, then you can put them together, add something, and you get a "multivolume" work of 300 pages.

I turn on the reverse gear.

80 to 40

* * *

The conclave of today's artistic directors of theaters is close in age to the Vatican.

I scratch in a straight line, like a stayer, but with the steps is already a problem. Knees.

Fatigue builds up. Moral, not to mention physical. I didn't sleep here at night: knee! I turn on the TV. The film “Three Men in a Boat, Excluding a Dog” is on. This is exactly the moment when we chase the catfish. I am standing in the boat, Andryushka Mironov is on top of me, and Derzhavin is on Andryushka. I think: but it was!

I have a very hard exercise in the morning. Lying down, I first twist the legs for the lower back. 30 times. Then with difficulty, grunting, I sit on the bed and make a rotational movement on my creaky neck five times there, five times back. And then with a hanger 10 times. Someone once taught me, and I'm used to it. And I feel like I've done my exercises.

75, 85 and 100. If this is not the waist or hips, then the numbers are very suspicious.

The old age parties are terrible. To live so that everyone is touched, that at 85 you look at 71? Although, apparently, the great attraction of public longevity is the immortality of optimism.

Young people - everywhere we have a road,
Old people are honored everywhere.
I'm an old man standing on the doorstep
Life that is closed for registration.

The famous line of Bulat Okudzhava: "Let's join hands, friends, so as not to disappear one by one" - in our case now: "So as not to fall one by one."

To live for a long time is honorable, interesting, but dangerous from the point of view of the displacement of temporary consciousness.

The birthday of our theater coincides with the Day of the Old Old Man, or (what is it?) The Old Man ... So I have a double celebration.

Satire theater is 90 years old. We celebrate an anniversary every ten years. During the reporting period, I made four of them - 60, 70, 80, 90. For the 60th anniversary, a ramp in the form of a snail was installed on the stage. The whole troupe lined up on it. Above, on the site, stood Peltzer, Papanov, Menglet, Valentina Georgievna Tokarskaya, a lovely lady with a tragic fate ... I hosted the program and represented the troupe: “Here are the youth ... but the middle generation ... and here are our veterans, who are on their shoulders ... And finally , - I shouted, - the eternally young pioneer of our theater, 90-year-old Georgy Tusuzov! " He ran against the movement of the ring. The audience stood up and began to applaud. Peltzer turned to Tokarskaya and said: "Valya, if you, old b ..., did not hide your age, then you would run with Tuzik."

I wish I hadn't had time to say it. The next morning, the Theater of Satire was invited to the secretary of the Moscow City Conservatory on ideology. Since it was impossible to invite me to the Moscow City Conservatory because of my persistent non-partisanship, the secretary of the theater's party organization, dear Boris Runge, led me by the hand.

At the morning table were several stern ladies with "challah" on their heads and a couple of men combed with water, apparently after yesterday's alcoholic mistakes.

But once we played the play "Celebration" in the premises of the Mayakovsky Theater. There they hung out a huge poster - my portrait and the phrase: “In connection with the 60th anniversary of Shirvindt -“ Honoring ”. And small - "Slade's Play". The people came with certificates, bottles, souvenirs. Once, Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov even came with his retinue - not to the performance, but to congratulate the hero of the day. When the situation cleared up, someone in the Moscow government was missing.

At an anniversary, as at a pop concert, you must be successful. Not at the hero of the day - they did not come to him, but at the audience. Once Boris Golubovsky - he was then the chief director of the Gogol Theater - had Gogol's portrait makeup done. He grabbed Lev Losev and me backstage, took me aside and nervously said: "Now I will check your congratulations." And he began to read to us in Gogol's make-up the greeting written for the anniversary. Then he looked at our faces - and began convulsively to tear off his wig and make up.

Anniversaries, anniversaries, anniversaries ... Parties, parties ... When over the decades you become an obligatory attribute of any dates - from high-state to small-departmental - the price of the importance and necessity of meetings and feasts gradually atrophies. I will allow myself to compose another rhyme - with a bad rhyme:

Soaring in the drinking whirlpool
And sipping friendship barely,
It's scary to think how many songs
We didn't listen to the bottom ...

On the 10th anniversary of Sovremennik, I called the team a “terrarium of like-minded people”. Who else has not appropriated the authorship of this boorish aphorism! I don’t sue copyright, I’m generous.

Decades have passed. There are no longer many like-minded people. Only a few remained. Volchek is the great Tortilla of the empty terrarium.

At her recent anniversary, I remembered how in the 90s we stood with her on Red Square, hanging on ourselves the Order of Friendship of Peoples.

Immediately after that, the order was simply renamed "Friendship". Obviously, considering that the friendship of our peoples with her ended on us.

Today she has everything. To reward her, you need to come up with a new order. She has a unique theater. She has a wonderful son - the closest friend of my wonderful son. Let him live long! Let this lousy planet behold who, ideally, should inhabit it. After all, people like her, for some reason, no longer do.

Events fill existence very densely. The brother's jubilee smoothly turns into someone's funeral service. And there, you see, the 40th day of the next brother joins with the 80th anniversary of the next one. Horror!

There is a joke: a crematorium worker sneezed at his workplace and now does not know where who is. Now the era has sneezed on our generation so much that it is completely unknown where who is.

Unfortunately, more and more often you have to bury your friends. I’m afraid that I myself may not live up to the legend, but serving the departures of true legends has become a prestigious mission. The work is bitter, difficult, but at least sincere.

And at the same time…

Bury and congratulate
I have no strength - fuck ... for-mother.

About the dead - either good, or the truth! At memorial services, I have questions: do the guys hear what they say about them? For example, I would be interested to know who will come to my funeral, what they will say about me.

The funeral also became some kind of show. Already, as at anniversaries, they say: "Yesterday at the memorial service, such and such performed great." And they discuss, speaking in pop language, who "passed" and who "did not pass."

Tragedy, farce - everything is back to back. They buried Oleg Nikolaevich Efremov. The funeral service was coming to an end. I was sitting in the hall and suddenly I heard someone faint near the stage. Who fell, I could not see, and how this story ended, I found out a few days later.

My old friend Anatoly Adoskin, the most intelligent, gentle, delicate person and ironic to the bone marrow, comes up to me. “You can imagine what happened to me,” he says. - I fainted at Oleg's funeral service. There were a few minutes left before Oleg was carried out, the whole Kamergersky Lane was filled with people, and suddenly they carried me out. True, head first. I understand: we must at least move, but weak. I began to think that Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko were so endured. And then I got up a little. "

Our life is similar to this incident with Adoskin. Today's anniversaries differ from memorial services in less sincerity only because in the latter case there is no global envy of the hero of the event.

I read how they boasted about one nursing home. After the fires and orders to check all such houses, the commission came across somewhere a wonderful boarding house, in which the elderly are really looked after. Clean, well-fed old men and women crawl there, and the administration has a trained mechanical cuckoo. Every day at dawn, she cakes 20-30 times, no less - therapy!

And then I broke out on a fishing trip. Early morning, wind, slush, no bite. Suddenly the cuckoo is the first of the season. Cakes and cakes. I counted - 11 times! Well, I think he's lying. And then he shook his brains - did not interrupt, the voice is clear, without pauses, almost like a metronome. Who knows, maybe it’s true? And then I suspected that it was mechanical.

Cowardice is the sister of panic. I'm not afraid of death. I am afraid for my loved ones. I'm afraid of accidents for friends. I'm afraid to look old. I'm afraid of gradual dying, when I have to grab onto something and someone ... "Our Everything" wrote very correctly: "My uncle had the most honest rules when he got seriously ill ..." more. Now I understand that this is the most important thing in the novel.

I am a handsome old man afraid of becoming helpless. In general, the diagnosis is "old age of moderate severity."

* * *

For more than forty years I have been at the Theater of Satire. The endless polemic about the archaic hospital and the modern entreprise movement is wildly tired of its meaninglessness and illiteracy. Also an invention for me - an entreprise! At the end of the century before last, great entrepreneurs gathered a theater company, put on some kind of "Thunderstorm", sailed down the Volga on a steamer down the Volga to Astrakhan and played this "Thunderstorm" at all the berths, eating chilled vodka in the swim by a sturgeon with black caviar.

When they ask me why I do not flicker in entreprise, I say that there is absolutely no time for this, and then, if I wanted to play something, I would somehow go to the management in my theater and come to an agreement with him. But seriously, the situation with the repertoire theater is dangerous today. Some clever specialist has proved that peat fires are a consequence of the drying up of swamps. Before thoughtlessly and incompetently draining the swamps of repertory theaters, it is not superfluous to think about the coming fires.

Unfortunately, there is no visible consolidation of people who have lived their lives in the theater. Everything can be covered in a second. Why, when the threat of eviction hung over the House of the actor, did he win? Why is the huge building on Old Arbat, on which many vulgar billionaires were drooling, is still preserved as the House of the Actor? Because the actors united and closed the entrance with their bodies. Now the sword of Damocles hangs over the meaning of theatrical existence.

"I am a tired old clown, I wave a cardboard sword ..." Satire is no longer mine, it means anger. Self-irony is closer to me - salvation from everything around.

In the play "An Ordinary Miracle" with Valentina Sharykina

So, when you know that everything will be fine and end sadly - what kind of satire is there. Satire should only be alarming. If the addressee of satire is not a complete idiot, he will be on the alert, smelling arrows. You cannot laugh only at idiocy: when a person is absorbed in some idiotic idea, you cannot move him. He can only get angry, fight back. In a joke, in irony, there is still hope that the subject of irony will hear it.

Before Valentin Pluchek, the main director of the Theater of Satire was Nikolai Petrov. Very intelligent clever man... Once he was told that Tovstonogov put on a wonderful performance, all of Moscow travels to St. Petersburg. He replied: "I can also stage a wonderful performance." - "Well?!" - "What for?"

This is "why?" it has always been here. And this despite the fact that, for example, the artist of the Theater of Satire Vladimir Lepko received for his role in the play "The Bedbug" the first prize at the festival in Paris (this happened at a time when our people did not know where Paris is). And still they said sluggishly: "Well, yes ..." And there were "real" theaters nearby.

Pluchek always suffered from this "... and the Theater of Satire." As the theater began with blue-blouses and TRAM, with humorous reviews, this train lasted. Pluchek also tried to raise acute problems, and tried to go here "Terkin in the next world", "Sword of Damocles", "Suicide". But all the same, these were separate geysers, plugged by censors, against the background of various "Women's Monasteries". This tendency cannot be overcome in any way. It still exists, although today everything is blurry.

Now such a frenzy of festivals and statuettes - it is impossible to understand if there are any criteria at all. I got into the habit of saying: "But this is wildly popular with the public ..."

With such a giggle, as if making excuses: they say, the audience is a fool. And the audience is actually different. I know there are only spectators of Fomenko Workshop or only Sovremennik.

We don't have that. Fortunately or unfortunately - it's hard to say. Unfortunately, I think. But this is because of the sign, we have it democratic. And the hall is also huge. We do not complain about the fees, but sometimes you look through the slit before the performance, from whom these thousand two hundred seats consist, you want there to be other people. And the faces are those that are. And in general, it is difficult to determine by their faces whether they need to go to the theater or not.

Career is a measure of vanity, and my vanity is metered by the need not to fall out of the cage of worthy people.

I accidentally got into the chair of the head - I was persuaded. Pluchek was already ill then, did not appear in the theater. There were no new interesting performances, the actors began to leave.

We were the Zakharovs' closest neighbors at their dacha in Krasnovidovo, and after dinner we sat down to play poker. Ninochka, the wife of Mark Anatolyevich, always said that she had forgotten which was more valuable, "three" or "square", but as a result she beat everyone. And they gambled and drank them the next day. After the game and the calculation, at two or three o'clock in the morning we went for a walk. There, at the dacha, with a splinter, Mark Anatolyevich began to persuade me to head the theater. My relatives were against it, they said that I was sick, crazy, senile and paranoid. The wife could not even resist: "And if I put a condition: me or the theater?" I replied, "Actually, I'm both tired of you."

When I was appointed artistic director, Elena Tchaikovskaya, our famous figure skating coach and a good friend of mine, said: "Come on, Shurka, try it!" She is also a gambling person. I was really interested.

Here, somehow the most intelligent Mikhail Levitin, during our tour with him on the stage of the Theater of Satire, honestly said that, in addition to the tempting possibilities of stage footage and a lovingly indulgent attitude towards me, he personally rejects everything here. This is a wonderful, sincere position, rare in our sanctimonious circles.

Having been with this suspicious muse for more than half a century, I have long learned to separate emotion from necessity. Then Galya Volchek, answering a question, said that being an artistic director is not a desire, not a choice, but a sentence. I, too, was sentenced to this chair - not as a reformer and destroyer of a hated past, but as a keeper of this circus-like "ship" afloat. I don't have any ambitious mercantilism in the theater, but there is only a need to always focus on the 90-year life of this institution and try to be (of course, portraying it) a patriot.

With Olga Aroseva, Valentin Pluchek and Mikhail Derzhavin

In addition, my position is special: I sit in an office, and on the floor below there are men's dressing rooms, and even below are women's ones. And there the policy of the theatrical leadership is discussed round the clock: "He was completely stunned, we have to go, we need to talk to him ..." And then I go downstairs to prepare for the performance and instantly join my colleagues: "He was stunned as much as possible!" And in the midst of the riot, they suddenly realize that this is me. Like this - I leave the office and immediately plunge into the brewhouse of those dissatisfied with the leadership. I am dissatisfied with him the most. And this is my salvation.

Everyone tells me: soft, kind, lethargic, where is the hardness?

I warned that in my old age I suddenly do not want to become a monster. And playing this monster is boring. Therefore - what it is. But when it goes off scale, you have to. Here with Garkalin one day it went off scale. He is an artist in demand, and we adjusted to him, that is, we were already dependent. Nobody says that you cannot work in an entreprise. It is known that everyone runs to the side, and I run. But there must be some kind of moral barrier. When in the center of Moscow, on Triumfalnaya Square, there is a poster "The Taming of the Shrew" and tickets for the play are sold out, and the wife of the actor in the lead role calls us and says that the artist is lying and cannot raise his head, he has a terribly high temperature and in general, some kind of horror is going on with him, we are forced to give a replacement. Spectators return tickets, because sometimes they go to a specific show and a specific artist. That evening, 600 tickets were handed over - that's half of the hall. Huge money for the theater. And at this time, the dying Garkalin on the stage of the "Commonwealth of Taganka Actors" theater plays the premiere of some kind of entertaining performance. Moscow is a small city, of course, we were immediately informed. Our deputy director went there, bought a ticket, sat down in the hall and waited for Garkalin to come out - so that later there would be no talk that this was not true.

Then everyone in the theater hid, thinking: "Well, this nice guy will now say:" Put it in front of him "- that's all." But I kicked him out, and everyone said: "Look, he showed character, Garkalin kicked out, well done." Some time passes, and I already hear: "Kick out such an artist!" But still there is no return.

Theatrical performances disintegrate very quickly - this, unfortunately, is a property of our art form.

The horror is that no one asks for roles in the theater. Roles are now being dropped. Earlier they gnawed their eyes out for the role, but today ... In the Theater of Satires my students come to me: "Dear father, I'm sorry, this year I can't rehearse." - "Why?" - “I have an 80 episode film. And this is not "soap". Perhaps Schwarzenegger, Robert De Niro will be filming there. Or maybe even Zavorotnyuk herself. " I start yelling: “The theater is your home! Aren't you ashamed, why were you taught then? " They nod, cry, kneel. They explain: an apartment, a divorce, a small child.

How can I forbid them something? But it is impossible to compose a repertoire for a month. This one begs for leave, the other goes there. If ten actors who are in demand in the cinema play in the play, it is almost impossible to calculate the day so that they would be free at the same time.

When my students ask if they can participate in TV commercials, I answer: “You can. But you can't act in Viagra, dandruff and beer. " I say to the actresses: “You washed your hair in the frame, and your dandruff disappeared. And in the evening you go on stage as Juliet, and everyone in the audience whispers: "Oh, this is the one with seborrhea." Juliet with dandruff is unbearable!

We have wonderful youth in the theater. Although youth is a conditional concept. There was a time when at the Maly Theater great Michael Ivanovich Tsarev played Chatsky at the age of 60. They were afraid of him like fire. He flew onto the stage, flopped down on his knees and said: “A little light is on my feet! and I am at your feet. " And then he quietly said to Sophia: "Lift me up." And the trembling young Sophia lifted him up.

Forty years ago, playing King Louis in the play "Moliere" at Efros, I felt like a godfather to the king. My king was young, pretty, smartly dressed, endlessly impudent, with a wonderful director. When someone turned to the king: "Your Majesty," I said: "Hey ..." And then I gradually crawled to the dependent, unhappy, aging, complex Moliere in the play "Moliere" staged by Yuri Eremin. What it means to have your own theater, to lead it and play in it - I know by heart. In the play, Moliere shouts that he is surrounded by enemies - and this is the only line that I play brilliantly.

The themes "artist and power", "artist and state", "artistic director and troupe", "old boss and young actress" - do not disappear anywhere. But it is ridiculous to say that artists are being pressured and persecuted today. And Moliere is not enough. It is known what tense relations Bulgakov had with Stalin. He studied Bulgakov very scrupulously: he called, corresponded, ruled ... It was the ruler's animal interest in the artist. And today's politicians rarely go to theaters. But they manage to supervise water polo, hockey, volleyball. I now dream that someone from the presidential administration would bail out the Theater of Satire. I would go to the premieres, and all the TV channels would show: the deputy head with his wife and children came to the play at the Satire Theater, and in general he is a member of their artistic council ... A fairy tale!

Alexander Shirvindt

Sclerosis, disseminated through life

Yes! The time has probably come -
It's time to give in to temptation
And life to sum up,
So as not to flirt with oblivion.

Unknown poet (It is unknown, is it a poet? It is known that not a poet. My verse)

Thought Patchwork

For example, I wrote down the previous thought in one of my three books that were published earlier. And I forgot. Now I read it - as if for the first time. What I wish for those who also read them.

Sclerosis came as an epiphany.

And this, it turns out, I already wrote. True, since then I have passed several more milestones. And there is something to remember. Rather, there is something to forget.

Once I was asked: "What, in your opinion, should not be included in the book of memoirs?" He replied: "Everything, if you are afraid of exposure."

Memoirism displaces Swift, Gogol and Kozma Prutkov from the bookshelves, and many graphomaniacs come up with documentary fables.

Today, everyday dishes of life are passed off as portioned - hence the cheap biography menu and heartburn in the finale.

Once I came up with a formula for what I am: born in the USSR, living under socialism with a capitalist face (or vice versa).

For 80 years I have never seriously despair - I just pretend. It retained the hair, the smooth skin of the face and the infantilism of the old asshole.

The author himself says that he wrote the book not in order to show himself as a very significant person, not with a vain goal, although to some extent this is present. Most of all, he wanted people to remember his work, which will be useful to many for a long time to come. He wanted to convey an entire era on the pages of the book and preserve the memory of it in the hearts of people.

The actor with humor recalls what happened to him, jokes a lot. Before us appears not the person whom we are used to seeing on the TV screen, but the living and real Shirvindt, who loved, made friends, helped. Reading the book, we will be able to see other famous actors, many of whom are no longer alive. And again, let's look at them from the other side. In their relationship there was a lot of interesting, unusual, there were jokes and jokes. Through the eyes of an actor you can see important events that took place in the theatrical world. All his memories are filled with warmth. The book is written in easy language and leaves a pleasant impression.

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