Tobolsk is an ancient city in the Tyumen region with a population of about 100 thousand people. Once it was known as a merchant center for the development of Siberia, now it has become one of the centers of historical tourism. In addition, it is not the first time that it hosts the Ural Biennale – one of the main cultural events on the other side of the Urals. Izvestia understood how those who change the city and local culture from the inside live.
Decembrist’s wife
One of the symbols of local cultural life is the Free Youth Theater. The second of two professional theaters in the city, which once grew out of a small student studio…
– I graduated from the theater, studied in Tyumen. I returned to Tobolsk – to be honest, after returning it was difficult here. Tyumen was a student, active city, Tobolsk was not at all like that, – says its founder and director Olga Solodova. – Why did you come back? My husband insisted on returning, so I am a little “the wife of the Decembrist.”
After returning, Olga gave birth to a child, and had to forget about returning to the “big cities”. But it was difficult for her to work in small Tobolsk… “To be honest, the state of our drama theater did not suit me very much,” she recalls.
Photo: Free Youth Theater
A way out was found when on the street she accidentally met her teacher from Tyumen – the woman also moved to a small Siberian city and also followed her husband, who was transferred to Tobolsk for work. But she did not consider it a reason for sadness.
– She told me then: it doesn’t matter where you live, it is important what kind of people surround you. I thought about it and realized: so, now I am surrounded by the wrong people whom I would like, I need to do something of my own, – Olga recalls now.
The theater began with a small amateur studio – a troupe for six people was assembled in 2006 literally by ad, placing it on one of the local radio stations… Most of the artists did not have any professional training at that time.
For about eight years, the troupe, which did not have its own site, wandered around various institutions: they rehearsed and played performances either in the local museum or in the pedagogical institute. The latter eventually even provided the theater, which had already acquired its name, a more or less permanent venue – in exchange for classes with students, now theater artists, and not amateurs, were given the opportunity to work at the institute’s site and even received a small fee for classes.
At the same time, the performances became relatively constant, and the theater got its “own” audience. But working on someone else’s site – even under such conditions – was difficult, admits Olga. The institutions that let them in had their own schedules, and there was always a risk that it would not coincide with the schedule of performances or rehearsals.
And in 2017 they applied for the Formula of Good Deeds grant, which came to Tobolsk. In total, it took her 400 thousand rubles to create her own theater. – Now she “would not dare to do that,” Olga Solodova admits: “We came to the administration, there they offered us a building for the money we could afford. We converted it into a theater ourselves. I still don’t know, to be honest, how we did it. “
“Today theater is not necessarily a wall theater“
So the theater got its own building – in a residential building, but in the historical part of the city…
– There were performances where there were only five spectators, because no one understood what it was. At first, our spectators sat on the benches. It was uncomfortable, but they endured, – recalls the Free Youth Theater.
The theater began to play one performance at a weekend, and gradually its own audience began to grow. And then the theater took to the streets of the city…
“Thanks to a certain independence from the repertoire policy and state plans, when a certain number of comedies or children’s performances need to be staged, a certain openness appears,” explains Olga Solodova. – Because I understand that “today the theater is not necessarily the theater of the walls”, stage projects can be very different.
So there were joint projects made in conjunction with local entrepreneurs or even large cultural events that the city hosted…
Photo: Free Youth Theater
“Sunny Italy”
With local restaurants, for example, the theater has staged a series of gastronomic performances. The first was created primarily for the local public. – He is played in a local shopping center, a bit like the Colosseum. And he himself, Olga Solodova smiles, is dedicated to sunny Italy. The food is served to people one by one, and people use their headphones to tell a story about it.
But the second performance was based on the works of Chekhov: “We began to think about who writes well about food, and now we found such good works where food is mentioned. We placed it all in the space of the garden and arranged such a name day in the “Cherry Orchard”.
Photo: Free Youth Theater
“The Cherry Orchard”
The action was not limited to one work – other Chekhov’s characters also took part in the performance: Nina Zarechnaya and Trigorin from The Seagull, and three sisters appeared in front of the audience.
In total, the menu of the dinner-performance included seven courses of serving authentic “Chekhov” dishes, each of which is somehow connected with drama, and the dinner itself lasts about two hours…
Stories about the Tobolsk crucian carp
The third project was a gastronomic verbatim dedicated to local traditions – the stories of local fishermen were collected and recorded in the theater for the Kalach and Karas café of Siberian cuisine.…
– The guys really wanted to promote Siberian cuisine. I started looking at who wrote what about the crucian carp, and I realized that no one wrote about him, of course. And I went to the local fishermen, wrote down their tales, stories about the Tobolsk crucian carp and eventually collected this text, – says Olga Solodova.
The idea itself emerged precisely from the desire to bring back the “fashion for crucian carp,” says Vasily Palshin, project manager for the “Mark and Lev” project, to which the cafe belongs, – he became one of the author of the idea of cooperation with the youth theater.
Photo: Free Youth Theater
“Karas-Tobolyak”
Even the name of the cafe already plays up the local flavor – in addition to the local crucian carp, it features traditional Russian rolls. And the Swedish buns, which are also served in the institution, remind of the captured Swedes who were once sent here by Peter I to rebuild the city.
– At one time it was on every table, most of the city grew up on it. It is clear that now people can buy sea bass and tilapia, and crucian carp seems to have become a cheap fish for cats. Although crucian carp, of course, is bony, but very tasty fish, you just need to know how to serve it, – he says.
Given the rich history of the crucian carp in Siberia, it is not surprising that most residents have many stories of their own associated with it – funny or sad. It was them that Olga Solodova collected and reworked for the performance.
Truth, first of all, it was appreciated by visiting viewers, she says: “As practice shows, local spectators do not go to such performances. They rather go to the “Sunny Italy”, but they will not go to the “Karas-Tobolyak” – they already live in this. But visiting spectators, including the guys from the book festival, they were absolutely delighted with what they saw and heard, from the stories of local fishermen. “
There are also more and more such in Tobolsk – only this year, the city, together with Tyumen, hosted the Ural Biennale, and in the summer a book festival was held here. “Books in the City”, organized by the Moscow International Book Fair. It lasted for five themed weekends, during which the theater artists, together with publishing houses, held several readings: both on their own stage and in the city space – for example, on the old water tower and one of the towers of the old Kremlin.
The Ural Biennale has been working with Tobolsk for several years already. This year, within the framework of the project “Create a new layer”, the city showed an installation by the artist Katya Sokolovskaya, located in the building of old wine warehouses – and today the veterinary service. The audience’s reaction suggests that the city has begun to change in recent years – primarily in terms of the audience, says Alisa Prudnikova, Commissioner and Artistic Director of the Biennale.
Photo: Free Youth Theater
– Events of different specifics, different genres always take place in Tobolsk, this also influences a lot. This year, for example, the city hosted both a book fair and a contemporary art project, she says. – This is all happening before our eyes, and if earlier we came and, like in most cities where there are no such new artistic practices, met with such skepticism and rejection, now there are more and more conversations about the meaning of this or that phenomenon. The most important moment for me is when the attitude to the new is expressed not in spitting, but in the possibility of dialogue – and this possibility of dialogue is definitely there.
Tobolsk Youth Theater is looking for new opportunities for development through such projects… “Of those with whom we met, relations with almost no one have not broken off, they continue. At the festival we got to know the publishers, they turned out to be very responsive and interesting. They immediately caught on to our team, and now we are also discussing offline and online readings, ”says Olga Solodova.
In the near future – a tour with a gastronomic verbatim about crucian carp that has fascinated tourists, a local children’s theater festival to grow up a worthy change, and, possibly, further readings with publishers… Now in the former amateur troupe, all artists are professionally trained, who regularly take part in all kinds of master classes and professional laboratories. But the backbone of the troupe is made up of students from the local theater school.
– There is a theater department at the college, and the guys come to us for practice. So there is a constant renewal of the troupe. On the one hand, this is good, on the other, there is complexity. Because then the guys go to enroll in Moscow, they do it, and it’s not a fact that they will return, ”the theater director sighs.
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