Audience
English audience was one of my biggest ‘finds’. It takes everything very seriously. Perhaps, if I were occupied with another kind of theatre, it would be an obstacle, because the English are too concentrated, but it’s very good for me, actually. Just as me, they like digging to the truth till the end of time. Their absurdity, nonsense, English humour, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ are on to a good thing for me… They come to the theatre well prepared. The Italians are easy to accept any unexpectedness, any novelty, they agree to any experiment. The English say: “Now, wait, an old bird is not to be caught with the chaff. We will watch it ve-e-ry attentively”. It’s impossible to make the Italians to watch something attentively. It usually goes like: “Wait, guys, let me say just one more word!” – “Relax, it’s fine as it is! Nothing more to say!” While in England there is a ringing silence in the audience. It’s such a pleasant thing for the theatrical performance, you don’t know!
As Grotovsky stated, there is a special exercise for every kind of theatre. Same for national traditions: a special theatre for every nation. For me personally, America is bad. But when I came there with my troupe for the first time and we began running on their heads, an excessively free American spectator quickly understood that he is besieged by the true anarchists, and he cocked them a snook and said: “Now you will see what the real freedom is”. But this game wasn’t interesting to me. It made sense in Russia under Brezhnev; it was my hobbyhorse there. Licedei (Pagliazzi) was an island of spiritual freedom in the country where there was no freedom at all. That was the reason why the audience supported us. People thought: “At last, there is freedom somewhere, at least in the clownery some do what they want, they crush the aesthetic canons, at least it’s them who get the joy”.
America is not a bad country, it’s just too young. In fact, the Americans are like children, they can only understand eccentricity at the moment. When I came there for the second time, accompanied by the Canadian Cirque du Soleil, I already knew that I wouldn’t clutch them on philosophy or poetical emotion. And I decided to conquer them: I went for the techniques, I based my performance on a simple attention to it. I’d make a turn, and while a spectator swallowed a hitch and felt pleased, I’d stop and immerse in thoughts. I’d take a strange thing off the stage, and the spectator began to wonder what it was for. Once I heard the grumble, I’d make next turn. I extended the pauses up to 10 seconds, till the silence became static. It’s a great problem for the Americans – to keep a mind on something that doesn’t move. They do not watch Bergman in America. But fighting with them gave me an immense professional pleasure!
This year I was ‘fighting’ with the French when we had performances at the Casino de Paris. I was looking for a hitch for a long time. Whatever I tried, didn’t work. It was so till I guessed that poetical emotion would be a place of our meeting. Good for me, ‘cause fortnight of my ten weeks tour had already passed. Now I know exactly which countries do need me, and which do not. For example, Spain doesn’t need me. All our attempts to demonstrate tenderness in Barcelona last year failed miserably. They couldn’t understand a thing. The Spanish audience doesn’t forgive if you do not address it personally. Columbia needs me. While in Belgium or in Portugal I am absolutely useless: their society is in such condition that my ideas have no meaning there.
And our Russian audience is just like me. We are so similar. I prefer when comedy and tragedy are together, for me it’s the top of the theatre, and here it is everywhere around you. There is nothing to think up. Who is the favorite personage in Russia? The exhausted, the drunkard, fool, blockhead, the outcast. My personage was an easy-going member of this company. I don’t mean it ironically, it’s true. It’s in our blood – to sympathize with the lost people, with those who didn’t succeed in life. There are not many heroes and victors in Russia. The success of my clownery here based upon the fact that this is the country of anti-heroes. But at one moment I felt that I have nowhere else to go. People loved me, I didn’t have anything to do, I only had to come out to the stage to get applause. It wasn’t just dull – it was scary. There was nothing to overcome. And I left my country. But what is funny – now in Russia there is a nostalgic feeling for what I have done in England and what was absolutely up-to-date there. Nostalgia is one of the most profound emotions in Russia. People need a base to stand on. “We want to get back to what was necessary or even seemed important”, they say. That’s why novelty is impossible here at the moment.
JD – The interview was made in 2001/2002. Below is an extract from Quidam by Cirque du Soleil, the famous and much-loved Skipping Rope routine.
Translated from Russian by Julia Shuvalova.