At the New stage of the Moscow art theatre Director Yury Kravets represented romantic drama “the Mechanics of love”, based on a futuristic play by Mary Zelensky “Humanitas Engineering”. We went to the show with caution, because often new-fangled plays have a focus on unpretentious mass audience. But our fears proved unfounded, the play was resurrected in the memory the days of the true theatre skills and put current issues of drama and life in General.
Acting was good, the generated images resembled school friends, and the dialogs matched with personal experience. Everything that happened on stage was creative, fresh, made with great taste. Decision of scenes were often unexpected, but harmonious.
After the show we wanted to ask the Director about how this play was born, and to discuss some important issues of life and theater that emerged after viewing his creations. We offer our readers an interview with Yuriy Kravets cultural-political magazine “E-Vesti”.
E-Vesti: As the main musical theme You took my favorite song, the Beatles «Yesterday». Why this song, this is Your Director’s choice or the script?
Kravets Y.: It is our choice, we needed a song that everyone knows. In the play this song is absent. The melody, the style, the mood that it creates matches with the play. And that’s all, nothing more
E-Vesti: I agree with You as a viewer, thank you, in my opinion, a very strong spectacle. Although I don’t like plays about modern times. But my feeling is that, on the one hand, you took immediate issues of petty squabbles, but on the other hand, throughout the play can be seen deep the underlying feelings. Is this a style? A new direction?
Kravets Y.: You know, this is not the style, and not something new. All that happened here was based on the experience in life I have, or my friends have, or those with whom I communicate. Because, on the one hand, love is certainly eternal and without it there is nothing. But all consists of trifles. Because, in my personal opinion, if we are not indifferent to each other, then we feel jealous, argue, demand something, everything around explodes. But if we do not care, then nothing is seen, not noticed. And this story about it.
It would seem that the main character is not like everyone else, and this is her charm. She does everything wrong. If the woman awaiting a man that she likes, she cleans, prepares the table, she dresses in suitable manner. Our heroine does not prepare the table, she meets him in a bathrobe, and suddenly she begins to sing him a song. She says him to eat what he brought. She does everything the opposite. And, it seems to me that life is really like it. So, we just tried to do so.
E-Vesti: Modernity is read in the play very clearly, and the image of the future you present is technologically plausible. Much is done in this direction. Do you believe in this vision of the future?
Kravets Y.: I am more than confident that everything will come to virtual sex that children will be born not through love of men and women, but in artificial, synthetic manner. Tomorrow will it be tomorrow, or day after tomorrow, or a bit later, I don’t know.
Unfortunately, it’s all quite creepy and awful. For me personally. I’m still working as Director of the Moscow theatre College under the direction of Oleg Tabakov. We have a dormitory on the fourth floor for girls, and the fifth floor for boys. I’ve seen that they communicate with each other by all these technologies. I tell them, would you go down to each other and talk? And they said, “why walk, virtual world is convenient”? Because you need to see the human eye! And they answered: “So, we see the face on the screen”! But somehow you need to feel human. And they can, unfortunately, can live without it.
We, of course, can nothing select or prohibit. This is a normal story. But we are trying to convey to them that it is better to read a book, to turn its leaves, because it gives a different feeling. It is better to talk to a person when you see, hear, touch, feel of his facial expressions, his energy. But we have only 72 students. And around us there is million that live like that. When you come to the restaurant, and around you there are the IPhones… The horror, the nightmare
But, I think, it can be our mission. Even in the play “Mechanics of love”, maybe subconsciously, there is a kind of thought that it is better to touch than to sit in some gadget.
E-Vesti: You, as the Director of the theater, can you imagine what is the theater of the future? Will the theater be aleave or everything will become virtual?
Kravets Y.: No. I have a reinforced confidence that the theater will not go away. But if the theater will not be included in the new virtual space, on its door will hung a lock. But if the theatre will be included to the virtual space, it will win, it will find a place in virtual world, it will be interesting people, then the theatre will bring them offline. It is 100%. If the theater will sit in their positions and resist to all these innovations, it will be closed in one second.
E-Vesti: I understand that Your show will attract primarily women. And will it be hard for men to watch it?
Kravets Y.: You know, I, frankly, staged a play about men but not about women. And I assumed that the play is purely male. Because I’m a man, and this story is made from a male point of view. It gives me pleasure. Yesterday’s spectacle was visited by some of my male friends near fifty years old, and then they said me very interesting words. And about connection, about interests, etc. One of my classmate came here with a fifteen-year-old son. I was sure that he will not understand. But she said he was sitting with an open mouth and he understood everything, and he said he everything was clear. So, I hope that this story will not leave anyone indifferent.
E-Vesti: This is a very good, solid performance.
Kravets Y.: This is a very good play, very good author Mary Zelenskaya. She let us do everything, really everything. For me it was a revelation when the author said, “After I wrote the last word, I put the end – all, my mission, my job was over. You can do whatever you want, I authorize it”. And I opened my mouth. When we talked to her when rehearsing, she told us about the original intention, we saw that something matched but something didn’t match. Overall, all was ok. Something we have added, for example, a talk show in the play absent. We turned to Masha, and she finished the scene for us. Yesterday was performance. She said thank you. So, somehow it all came together.
