The FSB reported the theft of ₽45 million of budget funds from the Lev Dodin Theater. Lev Dodin about the construction of a new theater building Personal life of Lev Dodin

Born on May 14, 1944 in Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo region. Wife - Tatyana Borisovna Shestakova, actress of the Academic Maly Drama Theater.

From childhood, Lev Dodin began studying at the Leningrad Theater of Youth Creativity, which was led by the excellent teacher Matvey Grigorievich Dubrovin. Largely thanks to his influence, Leo developed a strong desire to devote himself to the theater. Immediately after graduating from school, he entered the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography, where he studied with the outstanding director and teacher Boris Vulfovich Zone.

The year of graduation coincided with the year of Lev Dodin's directorial debut. In 1966, his teleplay “First Love” based on the story by I.S. Turgenev. This was followed by productions at the Leningrad Youth Theater ("Our People - Let's Be Numbered" by A.N. Ostrovsky) and the Drama and Comedy Theater ("The Minor" by Fonvizin and "Rosa Berndt").

Lev Dodin’s collaboration with the Maly Drama Theater began in 1975 with “The Robber” by K. Capek. The production of the play “Home” by F. Abramov in 1980 gained all-Union fame and largely determined the subsequent creative fate of Lev Dodin. In 1983, he became artistic director of the Maly Drama Theater. Over the years, the following plays were born: “Brothers and Sisters” by F. Abramov, “Lord of the Flies” by W. Golding, “Stars in the Morning Sky” by A. Galin, “Gaudeamus” by S. Kaledin, “Demons” by F.M. Dostoevsky, “Love under the Elms” by Y. O. Neil, “Claustrophobia” based on the works of modern Russian writers, “The Cherry Orchard” by A.P. Chekhov, “A Play Without a Title” by A.P. Chekhov, “Chevengur” by A. Platonov, "The Seagull" by A.P. Chekhov and others.

In total, Lev Dodin is the author of more than 50 dramatic and opera productions. His creative credits include the performances "Bankrupt" on the stage of the Finnish National Theater, "The Golovlevs" at the Moscow Art Theater, "The Meek" on the stages of the Bolshoi Drama Theater and the Moscow Art Theater, as well as the opera "Electra" by R. Strauss at the Salzburg Musical Easter Festival in 1995 (conductor Claudio Abaddo ), "Katerina Izmailova" D.D. Shostakovich at the 1998 festival in Florence, “The Queen of Spades” by P.I. Tchaikovsky in Florence and Amsterdam in 1998 (conductor S. Bychkov), “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” at the “Florentine Musical May” festival, “Mazeppa” by P.I. Tchaikovsky at La Scala in 1999 (conductor M.L. Rostropovich).

In the fall of 1999, at the Bastille Theater in Paris, L. Dodin staged a new version of “The Queen of Spades,” and in 2001, in the same theater, “The Queen of Spades” was restored.

Lev Dodin's performances were performed in 27 countries, including the USA, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Czech Republic, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Israel, Greece, Denmark, Ireland, Finland, Poland , Romania, Norway, Portugal, Canada, Holland, Austria, Yugoslavia, New Zealand, Belgium, Hungary. In the fall of 1999, a festival of performances by Dodin was held in Italy.

Maly Drama Theater under the direction of L.A. Dodina is one of the most popular theaters in St. Petersburg and “international” theaters in Russia, demonstrating the strength of Lev Dodin’s directorial talent and at the same time the fruitfulness of the Russian acting school. It is no coincidence that in 1992 the theater and the director himself were invited to join the Union of European Theaters, and in September 1998, the Maly Drama Theater from St. Petersburg was the first and so far the only Russian group to receive the status of the Theater of Europe, becoming the third in the world after the Parisian Odeon. and Milan's Piccolo Theatre.

The boldness of the outstanding director's production plans is based on the capabilities of a brilliantly trained troupe, many of whose actors are students of Lev Dodin. For 15 years now, Dodin has been cultivating in himself and his actors a passion for the truth - to live not by lies!

L.A. Dodin - People's Artist of Russia, laureate of the State Prizes of the USSR (1986) and the Russian Federation (1998), the Prize of the President of the Russian Federation (2001). His theatrical activities and performances have been recognized with many domestic and international prizes and awards. Among them: Russian National Independent Award "Triumph" (1992), twice - National Award "Golden Mask" (1997, 1999), awards from the K.S. Stanislavsky "For outstanding achievements in pedagogy" (1996), "Golden Soffit" (1996), Laurence Olivier Award (1988), French Theater and Music Critics Award (1992), English Regional Theater Award (1992), Italian UBU Award ( 1993, 1994), Italy's Abbiati Critics' Prize "For the Best Opera Performance" (1998), as well as the highest European theater award "Europe - Theater" (2000). The director was also awarded the French Order of Literature and Art of Officer Dignity "For his enormous contribution to the cooperation of Russian and French cultures" (1994).

Back in 1967, L.A. Dodin began teaching acting and directing. He trained more than one generation of actors and directors. Nowadays he is a professor at the St. Petersburg Academy of Theater Arts, heads the department of directing, regularly conducts master classes at theater schools in the UK, France, Japan, and the USA, is a permanent member of the jury of the professional literary competition "Northern Palmyra" and a member of the jury of the St. Petersburg Theater Prize "Golden soffit".

Lives and works in St. Petersburg.

Lev Abramovich Dodin... This name is well known in theater circles. An outstanding director, talented teacher and theater figure, he is one of the creative elite of Russia. You can learn about him and his works from this article.

Childhood and youth of the future director

Lev Dodin was born on May 14, 1944 in the city of Stalinsk, today it is Novokuznetsk. It was here that his parents were evacuated during the war. They returned to their native Leningrad in 1945.

From an early age, Lev began attending classes at the city Theater of Youth Creativity. At that time, the leader here was the wonderful teacher M. G. Dubrovin. Under his influence, young Lev Dodin developed a strong desire to devote his life to the theater. After graduating from school, Lev Dodin becomes a student at the State Institute of Theatre, Cinematography and Music of the Northern Capital. His teacher and mentor was the outstanding director B. Zohn. Lev Abramovich Dodin also calls Tovstonogov, Lyubimov, and Efros his teachers.

First steps as a director

Lev Dodin, whose life and destiny after graduation were entirely connected with the theater, began to realize his directorial ideas.

His debut as a director coincided with the year of release. Thus, 1966 was marked in the creative biography of Lev Dodin with the release of the television play “First Love” based on I. Turgenev. This was followed by work at the Leningrad Theater for Young Spectators. Here he staged the play “Our People - We Will Be Numbered” based on A. N. Ostrovsky. His “Minor” and “Rosa Berndt” were released at the Drama and Comedy Theater.

Small in the director's destiny

In 1975, the Maly Drama Theater appeared in the life of Lev Dodin. At first, the director simply collaborated with this and staged the play “The Robber” by K. Capek. Later, “The Appointment” by A. Volodin, “The Tattooed Rose” by T. Williams, and “Live and Remember” appeared.

The play “Home” based on the novel by F. Abramov, released in 1980, became fateful for Dodin. After this production in 1983, Lev Dodin received an offer to head the theater. Since then and to this day, he has been the permanent head of the MDT.
His first work as a chief director was the play “Brothers and Sisters”. The production had difficulty making its way through the millstones of censorship. However, thanks to the performances “Home” and “Brothers and Sisters”, those artistic foundations were formed that today make up such a thing as Lev Dodin’s theater.

During the 25 years of L. A. Dodin’s leadership, the following performances took place on the MDT stage: “Stars in the Morning Sky”, “Lord of the Flies”, “The Old Man”, “Moscow Choir”, “Gaudeamus”, “Demons”, “King Lear”, “ Love under the Elms”, “Chevengur”, “Life and Fate”, “Claustrophobia”, “Molly Sweeney”, “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and others, too many to list.

The theater's repertoire includes many performances based on the works of A.P. Chekhov, who has always been interesting to Dodin. This is the famous “The Cherry Orchard”, “Uncle Vanya”, “The Seagull”, “A Play Without a Title”.

Teaching activities

An original artist, an unsurpassed creator of theatrical shocking Lev Dodin, whose performances in genre and style format are almost defiantly different from one another, is still essentially a consistent traditionalist.

All his ideas that he embodies on stage are the result of personal, individual comprehension. He passes everything through himself, always experiencing a huge spiritual need for knowledge. This is probably why, quite early on, Lev Dodin experienced an irresistible desire and need to transfer his accumulated spiritual experience to someone else. And, as a result, in 1969 he began teaching at the Academy of Theater Arts of St. Petersburg. Today he is a professor at the Academy and heads the department of directing. Most of the training for actors and directors, according to his method, takes place in the theater. Dodin did not repeat literally any of his teachers. He has his own Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Dubrovin, Sohn, Strehler...

The performances staged by Dodin go on for many years without losing their relevance; they, along with the changing world, are filled with new meaning. His numerous students remain so throughout almost their entire creative biography. Among them are Maria Nikiforova, Vladimir Zakharyev, Pyotr Semak, Oleg Gayanov, Igor Konyaev, Tatyana Shestakova, Sergey Tumanov, Natalya Kromina, Vladimir Seleznev, Nikolay Pavlov, Andrey Rostovsky, Leonid Alimov and others, who worked and continue to work with the master in MDT. However, there are many who remain his students outside the theater, being adherents of the Dodin school.

Lev Abramovich conducts regular master classes at various theater schools in Europe, as well as in Japan and the USA. He is a member of the jury of the literary competition "Northern Palmyra", as well as one of the members of the jury of the St. Petersburg theater award "Golden Sofit".

Dodin method

The work of this wonderful director and the school he created do not leave anyone indifferent. It has a phenomenal power of attraction. In his creative laboratory, much attention is paid to words. Lev Dodin embodies all his intentions, ideas, impulses through an expressive and always original word. He has something to say to his students, so Dodin’s monologues can last for hours.

His method is entirely aimed at creating a theatrical whole. He has his own philosophical understanding of what theater is. He always fought for the Theater-house, the Theater-family. Lev Dodin devoted his entire life to creating such a scene. According to the Dodin model, theater is a collective artist who has a single collective soul. Only in the House Theater, according to Lev Abramovich, can a performance be created that is a product of great culture.

His creative experiments and directorial productions are interesting to the viewer. The small size of the theater does not always accommodate all those who want to attend its performances.

The most famous world productions of the director

Lev Dodin, whose photos constantly appear in the media and publications on relevant topics, is the author of more than sixty opera and drama performances that have been successful on various stages around the world. The most famous of them are “Bankrupt”, staged at the Finnish National Theatre, “Electra” and “Salome” by R. Strauss, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, “The Golovlevs”, “The Meek” at the Moscow Art Theater, “The Queen of Spades”, “Mazeppa”, “Demon” by A. Rubinstein. Opera productions were created by him in collaboration with outstanding conductors: Mstislav Rostropovich, Claudio Abbado, James Conlon and others.

Awards and titles

Lev Dodin is a People's Artist of Russia, a laureate of state awards of the USSR and the Russian Federation, and a prize of the President of the Russian Federation. His performances and theatrical activities have been awarded a number of Russian and international awards. In 1994 he was awarded the French Order of Literature and Art.

Catch the artistic director of the Academic Maly Drama Theater Lev Dodin in his native St. Petersburg - not an easy task. The head of the Theater of Europe (this status was assigned to MDT in 1998) travels a lot and often around the world. So Lev Abramovich’s book is called “Journey Without End”. However, these are not travel notes, but an immersion into the world of theater. Dodin is ready to talk about him endlessly. The director hardly talks about his personal life, but sometimes he still makes exceptions...

- What place of birth is indicated in your passport, Lev Abramovich?

In what is now in our hands, Novokuznetsk. And before they wrote: Stalinsk. After exposing the cult of personality, it was not without pleasure that I wrote this word in questionnaires so that everyone would remember the recent terrible past of my native state... Stalinsk is the very garden city that Vladimir Mayakovsky dreamed of. At least he intended it that way. It was built for a metallurgical plant and a huge number of iron ore deposits in the Kemerovo region, in the discovery and development of which my dad, a prominent geologist, participated. You know, in Soviet times I traveled a lot around the country, but then no one thought about abroad - we diligently developed a sixth of the land. However, to my shame, I have never visited Novokuznetsk. My wife ended up there in the seventies; she came with the Leningrad Comedy Theater, where she worked then. Then Tanyusha shared her impressions, which were not at all rosy. There was no smell of the garden city. The troupe was fed in the canteen of the city party committee, but even there the menu was very modest, the food counters were empty... But something else is interesting. My wife found the family where my parents lived during the evacuation. I even found a nanny! She remembered me and wrote a wonderful letter. I answered her, but, alas, I didn’t have the chance to meet.

- How did your parents end up in those places?

My father devoted many years to studying Siberia. In 2007, the book “Abram Lvovich Dodin. Selected works, memories." Dad's name is very famous in the geological world. He was a man of quiet and even wisdom. Born and raised in a small Jewish town, he did not know Russian for a long time, only at the age of fifteen began to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, and at twenty-six he already defended his dissertation, and soon his doctorate. Every year he spent approximately from May to October on expeditions, or, as geologists said, in the field. My mother (she kept her maiden name, her name was Tsilya Abramovna Dobkes) was sympathetic to her husband’s occupation; she raised my brother David and sister Rosa alone for several months. But in May 1941, she unexpectedly announced that she would no longer let dad go alone, she would go with the children with him. And indeed, she packed her bags and followed her father to Siberia. What was it - intuition, a sign from above? It’s pointless to guess, but it’s a fact: with that act, my mother saved the family. If I had stayed in besieged Leningrad, I probably would not have been born, and the older children would not have survived in the starving and freezing city... Mom was a wonderful pediatrician - even in Stalinsk she refused to go on maternity leave, worked almost until childbirth, believing that the sacred The duty of every citizen is to remain at his post, with all his might bringing closer the hour of victory over the enemy. For a long time, my mother believed in Soviet power and the slogans it proclaimed; in 1944, while pregnant, she joined the party. Dad didn’t express his political views out loud, but he didn’t share Mom’s idealism, that’s for sure. He never allowed himself to be rude; the only time in his life he lost his temper before my eyes was in March ’53 after Stalin’s death. Mom cried and lamented: “What will happen now, how to continue to live?” Dad was silent for a long time, chewing his lips, and then he couldn’t stand it and said in his heart: “Stop it, you fool!” I also managed to speak out on the topic of the cult of personality. The leader of the peoples had not yet been buried; farewells continued in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. I was sick, which happened to me often as a child, and was waiting for a visit from a nurse who was supposed to give me an injection. Like all children, I really didn’t like this procedure, I was even afraid of it, because they were pricked with thick needles, it was painful and unpleasant. I resisted to the last, tried to break free. Mom began to exhort: “Leva, aren’t you ashamed to cry over such a trifle? Stalin is dead! I shouted back: “I don’t care about your Stalin! I don’t want an injection.” I spoke and suddenly saw my mother turn white. She was mortally afraid that the nurse would report, and began to wail: “Don’t pay attention, he’s not himself, he has a high temperature...” Yes, there was such a time, for a careless word there was a threat of a real camp sentence... Gradually, the realization came to my mother that the words spoken from the stands, words and real deeds are very far from each other. In the seventies, she experienced the collapse of her previous illusions, but until the end of her life she remained an unusually active, active person. I remember how I decided to help a disabled person from the First World War, who was crowded together with his wife in a tiny room in a huge communal apartment. The old man hardly moved, could not independently get to the shared bathroom and toilet, his life turned into a living hell. According to the laws of that time, only those who lost their health on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and, it seems, the Civil War could count on improved living conditions. Benefits did not apply to participants in the First World War, which was called imperialist in the USSR, emphasizing its anti-people essence. This did not stop my mother, she spent two years of her life trying to get a separate apartment for her neighbor, and reached the position of first secretary of the district party committee, which was almost equivalent to a feat. You should have seen the face of an elderly woman, the wife of a veteran, who, not believing her own happiness, cried and said: “Today we washed ourselves in our bathroom for the first time in our lives. I kissed all the walls in it...”

I, too, lived in a communal apartment until I was twenty, and in a certain sense I’m even grateful to fate for that invaluable experience. The huge apartment was home to about fifty tenants, representatives of all social strata of Leningrad - workers, engineers, teachers, police officers, criminals... There were Kolka the plumber, Lenka the speculator and Vitka the district police officer... Together they drank, sang, beat, loved, quarreled, fought , reconciled, got married, got divorced... Once again I was visiting Fyodor Abramov in Verkola and spent the whole evening talking about my communal apartment. Fyodor Alexandrovich listened and listened, and then chuckled and said: “Look at you! And it turns out that you can write interesting things about the city!” Indeed, this apartment was a concentrated clot of passions, representing an absolutely accurate cross-section of society. I still keep in touch with some of my neighbors, and I’m even close friends with one of my peers.

- Really with Kolka the plumber or Vitka the policeman?

Alas, Vitka came to a bad end and became an alcoholic by the time he was forty. And Kolka ruined her vodka. His wife once pierced his head with an ax, but then he survived, and the next time his missus kicked him out of the apartment, and a dead drunk Kolka froze to death in the hallway under the door... And my friendship connects me with Misha Mazur. He is a philologist, knows several languages, and has lived in France for a long time. We met after a long break during our first tour in Paris and from that moment we never lost sight of each other...

- Where did you live in St. Petersburg?

On the corner of Khersonskaya and Bakunin. This is the Smolninsky district. We were not allowed back to Leningrad immediately after the war; they demanded that we prove that we deserved this honor. But dad was a major geologist, worked at a leading scientific institute... My parents returned to the same two rooms that they occupied before the war. They stood empty, without furniture; my aunt, who survived the blockade, burned it in the potbelly stove during the long winters, trying to somehow keep warm. Nothing from my father’s library has survived either. Empty space: bare walls and a lonely chair in the center. The first piece of furniture that appeared was a bookcase knocked together from scrap materials, essentially from a rifle pyramid with traces of a butt rack. Then it stood in David’s apartment for a long time, no one raised the hand to throw it away, take it to the trash heap... Until the end of her life, my Aunt Lyubochka had a difficult attitude towards food. She constantly tried to feed everyone, but she herself ate very little. As a child, I did not understand the reason for this behavior, it irritated and angered me, only later, as I grew up, I realized what a wonderful and kind person my aunt was. She hardly talked about the blockade. Like most people who lived through that time. She didn’t even watch movies or TV shows, she silently got up and left the room. Apparently the memories were too terrible. This tragic page in the history of our people still awaits true researchers. “The Siege Book” by Ales Adamovich and Daniil Granin, which sounded loudly in the early 80s, will seem like a homeopathic dose of truth that is yet to be discovered... At some point, I was closely involved in this issue, working together with the writer Kirnosov. Alexey survived the siege as a child and wrote a story, we tried to turn it into a play and put it on stage. There were a lot of chilling details, including confirmed cases of cannibalism. However, the secret menu of the Smolny canteen, which served the top party leadership of the city, was no less eerie to read. Everything remained there during the hungriest days of the blockade. Right down to black caviar... The play was called “What is a Bomb”. I worked at the Leningrad Theater for Young Spectators and persuaded the main director Korogodsky to send the play to Glavlit. Soon the censors called the chief director, but Zinovy ​​Yakovlevich said: “You started this mess, now clean it up.” I was a boy, I was not afraid of anyone or anything. The censor turned out to be a smart person. He pulled the text out of his desk and began flipping through it, periodically glancing at me. Each page was crossed out with two thick red lines. From corner to corner, criss-cross! Having finished leafing through the pages, the man said: “If you insist, I will hand over the play to the regional party committee. With all the ensuing consequences for you personally and for the theater... I advise you not to persist and pretend that this sedition did not exist in nature.” I realized that there was no point in arguing, I took the play away and never returned to the issue of production. For some time, by inertia, I continued to collect eyewitness accounts of the blockade, but only became convinced that I could not show this material from the stage. They won't allow it. A dark room that is scary to enter even after decades. The greatness of the feat of the defenders and residents of Leningrad overshadowed the horror of what they suffered over nine hundred days and the guilt of those who doomed them to this.

- Why didn’t you return to the topic later?

We were preparing for a production in a children's theater. It would be necessary to speak even more harshly and frankly with an adult audience, but such material is not at hand. What seemed bold and revolutionary in the late sixties now risks looking pale, banal and toothless. However, the point is not only in the documentary basis, but also in meeting the modern level of artistic demands...

- Did you face the problem of choosing a life path, Lev Abramovich?

For some reason, adults love to ask little children what they want to be. I remember my peers answered the question in a standard way, choosing one of three options - fireman, driver or policeman. Gentleman's set of the late forties. There were no astronauts then... Against this background, I stood out sharply, because since kindergarten I had been repeating that I would be a geologist. Many guys have never heard such a word... I stuck to this version until I became interested in theater, and my older brother went into geology, now he is already a corresponding member... I liked reading poetry, although my first experience of public speaking was extremely unsuccessful. I disgraced myself in front of my parents who came to visit me at the pioneer camp. I took part in the concert and spoke from the stage so quietly that none of the spectators heard a word. Mom and Dad were terribly upset and recalled the ill-fated episode with a shudder, even when I had already been studying for several years at the Theater of Youth Creativity under the guidance of Meyerhold’s student Matvey Dubrovin, whose centenary we celebrated recently. His main talent was his ability to communicate with children. He was a great teacher on the scale of Korczak. Dubrovin created a unique atmosphere at rehearsals and found the key to each child. He talked to twelve-year-old boys and girls for hours about the meaning of life, and we sat holding our breath, afraid that the teacher would fall silent. Such a rebbe, caring for his flock... I owe a lot to Matvey Grigorievich, he helped me become successful. Like my second mentor, course master at the Theater Institute Boris Vulfovich Zon, a student of Stanislavsky. So you say: choice... Do you, for example, know that from the first grade I sat at the same desk with Seryozha Solovyov?

Exactly! Seryozha and I conducted a pairs show that was fashionable at that time, wrote jokes, invented some skits, and acted them out at concerts at school. Apparently, it didn’t turn out too bad, because they began to invite us to the Raduga cinema to perform before the screenings. Although we were paid for the sketches not with money, but with ice cream, we were absolutely happy... By the way, a detail that confirms that our whole life is woven from amazing coincidences. In the third grade, Seryozha and I showed a skit about an Italian boy who distributed the local socialist newspaper Avanti!, and an evil priest tricked him into luring him and turned him in to the police. Seryozha played a boy, but as usual, I got the role of a negative character. And seven or eight years ago, while in Rome, I met the lifelong senator of the Italian Republic, Giovanni Pieraccini. At first we talked, as they say, on business, and then we became friends, and one day he invited me to his country house. And when we sat down to dinner, the owner began to tell episodes of his biography and suddenly announced that he was one of the founders of the Avanti newspaper! and was even its editor-in-chief. I figured it out in my mind: it turned out that my friend was in charge of the editorial office at the moment when I was playing a story related to this newspaper at school. Isn’t it an amazing intricacy?.. If we return to the story about Solovyov, in the sixth grade we became interested in cinema, founded our own studio “Detyunfilm”, and recruited staff. Yes, yes, everything is adult! We had deputies, cameramen, lighting technicians, assistants... And we appointed ourselves as artistic directors and directors at the same time. It seems incredible, but we went to a reception with the main boss at Lenfilm, and he received us - two boys in identical gray jackets, white shirts and red ties. We carefully prepared for the meeting and laid out on the table a plan of what we were going to shoot, as well as a list of the necessary equipment. The director of the studio, either out of surprise, or out of spiritual breadth, or maybe both the first and the second, gave us everything! A day later, two trucks loaded with professional filming equipment arrived at the school yard. There were huge digs, jupiters, a cart with rails, boxes of film, a movie camera... We wrote a script together and started filming. Apparently, some kind of indestructible energy was emanating from us, since everything we planned worked out. They found abandoned mechanical workshops on the Sinopskaya embankment of the Neva and set up a film set there. We went to the neighboring police station and asked to post security: we couldn’t take away the equipment every evening! Apparently, out of shock, the head of the police department allocated two guards who stood guard for three nights until the filming ended. We honestly returned all the equipment we received to Lenfilm, where they showed us the footage... Many years later, when I was studying at the institute, I accidentally met the director of our school on the street, who said: “Leva, we still receive bills from the studio to pay for the development of your and Solovyov’s film...” I just threw up my hands.

- Has the film survived?

Seryozha has several parts left.

- What was his name?

If I’m not mistaken, Iskra is working.” Soloviev reasonably does not mention this student work in his filmography. I, as you guessed, too... Yes, I don’t even have a filmography... The plot was based on an almost autobiographical incident from early childhood, when we, together with several other friends from our yard, created a semi-underground organization designed to fight hooligans who persecute and abuse children. There were a lot of punks then. It’s an interesting thing, although I grew up in an intelligent family, my childhood was still spent under a criminal overtone. In the third or fourth grade, we became obsessed with the fashion for dental bonding, when gold-plated and silver crowns made of candy foil were attached to healthy teeth in imitation of prisoners returning from the camps. And in the fifth grade, two over-aged dunces were placed behind Seryozha and me. They managed to commit some crime, receive a prison sentence for what they did, serve their time and return to school. Back then, they weren’t expelled for poor academic performance; they stayed in the same class for another year, two, three... Of course, eighteen-year-old bullies were not going to study, but they periodically came to lessons. They sat at their desks and swore continuously. No, they didn’t swear, they just talked, thieves’ and obscene slang replaced their normal speech. One day Seryozha could not stand it, turned around and politely asked to speak a little more quietly. And there was a labor lesson. Our so-called classmate, without thinking twice, took the scissors lying in front of him on the table and hit Solovyov in the back of the head, piercing his head with the blade. Happiness is not too deep, otherwise tragedy would happen. But in any case, Seryozha needed medical help, I had to call an ambulance, which took my friend to the hospital... Here’s the story. We wanted to make a film with Seryozha about our organization, which tried to resist the yard hooligan. And together we went to the Theater of Youth Creativity to see Matvey Grigoryevich Dubrovin. Interestingly, at first we thought of signing up for the swimming pool. Then there were almost no of them in Leningrad, literally two or three in the whole city. But we weren’t accepted into the swimming section; enrollment was over. However, we had already accelerated, decided to enroll somewhere, and then, very opportunely, an invitation to TYuT caught our eye. We went straight from the pool to the Palace of Pioneers. There was a competition, three rounds. They accepted both of us. From that moment on, I fell in love with the theater forever, and Seryozha eventually returned to cinema, and we began to do different things, although we still continue to communicate. Not long ago, Solovyov was filming a documentary about his childhood and called me to our old house on Khersonskaya Street. Of course, everything was rebuilt there, but the courtyard was preserved. How small he turned out to be! And before it contained the whole world... To cross it from end to end, you had to make an almost round-the-world trip! In one corner of the yard lived Sedy's gang, the second was controlled by Lysy's gang, I did not join either one, so neither of them liked me... Our balcony on the third floor survived, from it I looked at Ovsyannikovsky, which was destroyed on the site of the former Winter Equestrian Square the garden where Chernyshevsky was subjected to civil execution in May 1864. There are many memories associated with the garden in my life. All kinds - both funny and sad. There my volleyball was stolen. Brand new, tarpaulin... It was a terrible shortage at that time! Dad tried to persuade me not to take the gift outside, but I had to show off to the guys. As soon as I entered the garden, unfamiliar boys knocked the ball out of my hands and ran away. I cried for five hours and almost gave my mother a heart attack... You know, sometimes I even envy those who have left their native places far, far away and cannot return there. The world of childhood remains unchanged in their memory. Reality sometimes mercilessly destroys old images. To be honest, I was not glad that I listened to Seryozha and went with him to Khersonskaya, which I had not visited for a long time. Suddenly I saw how thin everything in our life was.

- That’s why you’re not going to Novokuznetsk?

Quite likely... Subconsciously. I drove all around, but didn’t get there. I think facing the past is not easy for everyone. As the poet said, “you can return to the same places, but it is impossible to go back.” It’s one thing when you grow up next to someone without noticing the gradual changes in them, in yourself, and it’s a completely different story to see each other decades later. It's always a blow, a shock.

- Have you and Solovyov kept each other in sight all your life?

Almost yes. If there were pauses in communication, at least they were aware of what was happening. After all, we spent eight years sitting at the same desk, and school friendship, you know, is a serious thing... We lived next door. I still remember Serezha’s phone number - A-10455. Every day before classes we called each other and met in the yard. Although the school was two steps away, you just had to turn the corner. We read books together, came up with some dramatizations, literally raved about cinema...

- Why didn’t you have a relationship with him, Lev Abramovich?

After college, I worked a little on television, but you’re right, it never made it to big cinema. Vague ideas arose several times, but they invariably shattered into reality, and I gradually stopped thinking about it. What I wanted to do always turned out to be at the wrong time. This is such a strange pattern. There was a moment when I became interested in Ward No. 6, worked with Oleg Borisov and Innokenty Smoktunovsky, and dreamed of filming them. I even tried to write a script proposal, but they looked at me like I was crazy, making it clear that the conversation was inappropriate. Then I decided to transfer Fyodor Abramov’s “Brothers and Sisters” to the screen, but this idea was also nipped in the bud...

Actually, in the theater I often took on disastrous projects. For about ten years I toyed with the idea of ​​staging Petrushevskaya’s “Music Lessons.” I didn’t offer it to any of the main directors - everyone refused! A similar story happened with a play without a title by Chekhov. They didn't take it! Self-censorship was worse than the official ban. Fear lives in our people at the genetic level. Sometimes a half-hint was enough for a person to get scared and back up. No one wanted to take unnecessary risks; the sly question served as a universal cover: “Well, will they let this pass?” Unfortunately, many ideas died without actually being born. I can't say I did everything I wanted. The only good thing is that I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to. This is perhaps the only thing I am ready to be truly proud of.

Yes, for the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, Zinovy ​​Korogodsky and I produced at the Youth Theater the play “After the Execution, I ask...” about Pyotr Schmidt, but I worked on it absolutely sincerely. And today I wouldn’t refuse that production. There is nothing shameful or opportunistic about it... All sorts of situations happened. In 1974 he staged Chapek's The Robber at the Maly Drama Theatre. The deputy head of the Leningrad cultural department talked to me, sitting on the windowsill and dangling his legs. He said: “Young man, we treat you well and the best we can do is not to miss the performance. For your sake. You’ll say thank you later.” Nevertheless, after lengthy approvals, “The Robber” was still allowed to be played, but the performance did not bring much harm to the Soviet regime, since the audience did not attend it well. At that time, this theater was visited by a peculiar audience.

- Which?

The small dramatic one was literally small. Much was predetermined by its regional status. The theater was created in 1944, shortly after the siege of Leningrad was lifted. The troupe had a task: to travel around villages and play in clubs. Essentially, touring non-stop. The wonderful actress Svetlana Vasilievna Grigorieva still works for us, she is already eighty-five, and she remembers how, together with her colleagues, she rode in carts on broken roads... Then the theater was given a building on Rubinstein Street. At first I had to share it with several other creative groups, playing simple productions two or three times a week. An equally unpretentious viewer attended them. It took a lot of time and effort to change the image of the theater. Of course, the great merit of this is Efim Padve, who headed the MDT in 1973. Perhaps I was lucky; I became the main director in 1983, when the Soviet system was decrepit before our eyes and was losing its grip. And although we had been pushing the already made “Brothers and Sisters” through the prohibitions for almost a year, none of the bosses took upon themselves the responsibility to say the final “no.”

- There was a moment when you were completely out of work, Lev Abramovich...

After leaving the Youth Theater, where he served, or rather lived, for eight or nine seasons. I fell out of favor with the authorities, and they didn’t risk taking me anywhere. In fact, I didn’t have a permanent job for ten years. I put it here and there. Two performances at the Drama and Comedy Theater on Liteiny, several at the Maly Drama Theater... From 1970 to 1983, he worked at the Theater Institute, remaining an hourly teacher, receiving about forty-two rubles - it was impossible to live on them for even a few days. A monstrous time, if you think about it! It’s probably hard for young people to believe, but sometimes the subjective opinion of one person was enough to essentially erase you from the profession. The head of the theater sector of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee, by the way, was a former teacher of scientific communism at the Theater Institute, who loved to tell students bold political jokes about Khrushchev, Lenin and Stalin, for which he was considered a liberal and a frontier. And then the man became a boss and changed dramatically. It turned out that an official from among the ex-intellectuals was the worst option possible. He had a peculiar manner, he never stayed for discussion. He watched the performance without emotion and went to the director’s office, who handed him his coat. He dressed silently and at the door casually said over his shoulder: “Of course, this can’t be let out.” That's all. Then he calmly left. The reaction of the management immediately became known to the artistic council, and further discussion turned into an empty formality. Yes, there were people who found the courage to object, defending their own position, but, by and large, this did not change anything.

Party officials had an amazing nose for everything alien. I didn’t stage contemporary plays then, I only took on the classics. It would seem, where is the estate, where is the water, and where is the flood? Let's say, "Rose Bernd" by Hauptmann. It seems to be a completely harmless work for the Soviet regime without any deep implications. But the authorities found something to complain about. The regional committee leader saw a cattle pen on stage and immediately called the director of the theater to him: “Just don’t take us for complete fools! Do you think we don’t understand what Dodin is hinting at? Like, there are no freedoms in the USSR and the Soviet people live in a stable?” What could be talked about after such a statement? I still don’t understand how everything fit into people’s brains. However, on a subconscious level, it means they understood that they had built a cattle pen for people...

There was an equally funny and sad story when I released “Nedoroslya” on Liteiny. After the scandal with “Rose,” the chief executive Yakov Khamarmer and the theater director Vera Tolstoy were forbidden to deal with me, but our initial agreement was intended for two productions, and people decided to keep their word, which required considerable courage at that time. We rehearsed for nine months and finally finished. The decision whether or not to have a performance depended on the same head of the regional committee sector. The day before there was a rumor that he was being removed from his position. Apparently, on the last day of work, the man’s conscience awoke, or maybe he was simply too lazy to strain himself, but, first criticizing me for distorting and modernizing the classic, after a truly MKhAT pause, he said, waving his hand: “However... let him go!” And the artistic council breathed a sigh of relief, because they were mentally preparing for the worst... Such moments gave life a particularly tart taste and smell.

Today I remember this easily, but then it was not too sweet. Think about it: ten years of unemployment! Performances happened once a year, or even less often, the money paid for them was tiny...

- And how did you get out?

- Why, by the way, did you fall into disgrace?

Probably, my performances “didn’t fit into the flow”, they broke out of the general series. In addition, in the last year of work at the Youth Theater, I secretly staged “Mother of Jesus” by Volodin. Wonderful play! Today it would seem insufficiently religious and too secular, but then it was perceived as impermissible clerical propaganda and was officially prohibited. We rehearsed at night in the hall on the fifth floor (now this is the Small Stage of the Youth Theater), then in the same way, under the cover of darkness, I organized closed screenings, leading the audience by the hand and persuading the theater security not to tell anyone about what was happening. But you can’t hide an sew in a bag. The right people became aware of freethinking in the Youth Theater. This quarreled me with the main director Zinovy ​​Korogodsky. To top it all off, I gained a reputation as a young extremist...

I left voluntarily, writing a statement of my own free will, because I realized that I could no longer remain under the roof of the official theater. We had a successful creative union with Zinovy ​​Yakovlevich, but when it collapsed, further stay in the Youth Theater became meaningless.

- What about your work book? Where did they put her so as not to be branded, like Brodsky, as a parasite?

To be honest, I don't even remember. He probably took it to the Theater Institute. They didn’t want to hire me as a staff member there, although I started teaching acting, essentially, immediately after receiving my diploma, the next year after graduating from college. This is how, in fact, the course “Our Circus” was born, then “Brothers and Sisters”, “The Karamazov Brothers”... Today’s basis of MDT are my students from different years. From the very first set, Tyuzov's, Tanyusha Shestakova, his wife, and the wonderful Kolya Lavrov, who left us not so long ago. And then the names of favorite students who became masters can be listed for a long time...

In recent decades, the concept of apprenticeship has faded from people’s consciousness; today they do not teach, but provide educational services, which, you see, is not the same thing. After all, the main task is not the transfer of knowledge, but the inheritance of human values. However, this is a topic for a separate big conversation.

- Have you ever thought about leaving your profession, Lev Abramovich?

Never. Even during the most severe bummers, when I was unemployed. Apparently, I am a stubborn person and am not used to giving up. There was something else - melancholy. It seemed that nothing would change until the end of time, everything would continue to drag on. Suddenly I physically felt what timelessness was and wanted to express it in performances. Maybe my mood was felt at a distance, which is why the productions were canceled so often?

- What about leaving the country?

Paradoxically, I hardly thought about this either, although I never condemned those who chose the path of emigration. Some left their homeland with hope, others left out of despair, others challenged themselves and their circumstances. Therefore, seeing off could also be both joyful and sad, more like a funeral. Sometimes I even envied those who decided to take such a desperate step, but I always understood that I myself would not go anywhere. I felt like I was born on this earth and had to do something useful here... Then I began to travel around the world, discovered many wonderful places, but never found the answer to the question of where I wanted and could live, except for Russia. Yes, probably nowhere. Despite all the horror of what I observed and sometimes observe around me...

Siberia is my native land, the Russian North, the Volga region... Everywhere I feel good, like at home. I won’t be able to do theater anywhere like I do here. Although there are a lot of offers from abroad, I don’t want to. Firstly, a foreign language, and secondly, a completely different structure of the theater... The first time I came to Paris, it seems, was in 1977. It was a real miracle! I was included in a group of young actors and directors for a tourist trip. They sold us vouchers at a big discount, and still I collected money from friends and acquaintances. I still remember who borrowed and how much. For a long time I did not believe that they would let me out of the country, because before that my trips were canceled twice. First I had to fly with the Youth Theater on tour to England. The plane is at nine in the morning, and the day before at eleven in the evening they told me: you stay at home. The guys then brought a sign from the hotel room they had booked for me as a souvenir. It said Lev Dodin... After some time, another departure was planned, and I was dropped off again at the last moment. In a word, I mentally resigned myself, so I prepared for France, but internally I was preparing for the worst. I didn’t even pack my suitcase until the last moment, so as not to look like a fool. I told my students at the Theater Institute that I was going to Moscow on business.

The departing delegation was gathered at the Ministry of Culture, presented with foreign passports, and instructed for an hour and a half, telling us what an honor we had been given and how we should behave with foreigners. I looked at the visa and continued to not believe in a miracle. We arrived at the airport, went through customs, border control... I kept looking around, waiting for someone to stop me. And then the flight was delayed. It flashed in my brain: “Well! Q.E.D!" I looked at my fellow travelers and realized that about half of our company was in the same mood. We went together to a restaurant located in the departure area and drank heavily. As soon as everyone had gathered, they called for boarding. Only at the moment when the plane's landing gear lifted off the runway did I realize that I was flying to France! The trip was wonderful - Paris, the banks of the Loire, Versailles... And now I’m returning to Moscow. The flight was in the evening, so I stayed overnight with a friend. I’m calling Leningrad to tell my mother: I’m back, everything is fine. She picks up the phone and starts asking: “Leva, is that you? You are in Moscow?" I don’t understand anything and repeat over and over again: “Yes, mom, I’ve arrived, everything is fine...” It took about three minutes to explain what seemed to be the obvious. And only a few days later, when I was already in St. Petersburg, my mother admitted that she did not expect me to return, she had no doubt: I would stay in France, take advantage of the only chance. Indeed, I did not have a permanent job, I was often without money, and was listed as persecuted, but it never occurred to me to flee to the West...

When the putsch happened in August 1991, my mother called the theater and began shouting into the phone: “Leva, why didn’t you listen to my advice? How many years have I been saying that I need to leave here!” No, for me the question was not that way. I am very stubborn, I love what I love, I want what I want, and I don’t agree with anything else...

To be continued.

Biography
Lev Abramovich Dodin is a Soviet and Russian theater director. Performances “Home” (1980), “Brothers and Sisters” (1985), “Stars in the Morning Sky” (1987), “Demons (1991), etc.
Lev Abramovich Dodin was born on May 14, 1944 in Stalinsk (now Novokuznetsk). His father worked on a geological expedition. Mother was a pediatrician.
After the war, the family moved to Leningrad. Lev Dodin became interested in theater at school. Together with Sergei Solovyov, a future film director, he acted out sketches. Then the guys organized the film studio “Detyunfilm” and made films. In 1956, they enrolled in the Theater of Youth Creativity - Tyuta Theater at the Palace of Pioneers, where Matvey Grigorievich Dubrovin, a student of Meyerhold, taught.
After graduating from school, Dodin entered the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography. Here he was lucky enough to study with the outstanding director and teacher Boris Vulfovich Zone.
After college, Dodin began working on television, then he moved to the Theater for Young Spectators under Zinovy ​​Yakovlevich Korogodsky. His first independent work at the Youth Theater was “After the execution, I ask...” There was a very good atmosphere in the theater. Dodin liked working there. He started teaching. A student of his first class, Tatyana Shestakova, will become the director’s wife.
However, after the production of Ostrovsky’s comedy “Our People - We Will Be Numbered!” His relationship with Korogodsky became complicated, and Dodin, who wanted independence, chose to leave. After this, he spent ten years in “free swimming.” As Dodin says, “it was quite difficult to survive. Sometimes there was no salary. But I did only what I wanted, and the way I wanted. Each performance was done as if it were the last, because it was still unknown what would happen next, and all the ideas - if you had them - had to be embodied in this particular performance.”
The famous theater teacher A. Katsman invited Dodin to work together on the acting course at LGITMiK. In 1979, the students staged the play “Brothers and Sisters” based on the novel by Fyodor Abramov. Together with a teacher-director, the aspiring artists spent the summer in Pinega, Abramov’s homeland, trying to be as accurate as possible in showing the life of the northern Russian village. The student performance at the Educational Theater on Mokhovaya Street was a success, exceptional even for that time rich in theatrical achievements. This unusual educational work became the basis for the plays “Home” (1980) and “Brothers and Sisters” (1985; the play ran for two evenings at the Maly Drama Theater). The theatrical trilogy based on the novels of Fyodor Abramov was awarded the USSR State Prize. The premiere of “House” was not only a theatrical event; spectators and critics perceived the performance as something important in their personal lives and in the life of society. Everything here was real people, destinies, events.
In 1981, Dodin staged “The Meek One” based on Dostoevsky at the Bolshoi Drama Theater (second edition - Moscow Art Theater, 1985). In this performance, Oleg Borisov played one of his best roles. As critics note, “the study of the borderline states of human consciousness will for a long time become one of the leading themes of Dodin’s work.”
At the Moscow Art Theater he creates a complex play “The Golovlev Gentlemen” based on Saltykov-Shchedrin, in which actors of different generations played I. Smoktunovsky, A. Georgievskaya, V. Kashpur, G. Burkov, E. Vasilyeva... In the final round dance, the “wights” twirled around a hero seeking forgiveness and peace.
With a new acting course, Dodin staged Rasputin’s “Live and Remember” (the story of a Great Patriotic War deserter hiding near his native village). In joint work, the ideas and principles of the theater-house were formulated, the main composition of the troupe of the Maly Drama Theater was formed, which Dodin headed in 1983.
The social melodrama Stars in the Morning Sky (1987) became a real sensation. “We staged the story that Galin composed very freely,” recalls the director. - And Galin, a wise author, did not interfere with anything. Even then we did not make a performance against the authorities. We made a play about what is inside people, what can happen between people, and what people can bring each other to because of the universal loneliness that always surrounds a person, and especially in our lives.”
The nine-hour play “Demons” was performed at the MDT in the winter of 1992, during a difficult time for the country. This theatrical poem, imbued with mournful tragic harmony, is one of the highest achievements of Dodin’s art.
Many of Dodin's performances are permeated with the subtlest religious feeling. “The worst thing is to be an atheist, that is, not to think about anything; religion is a property of the existence of the soul. And theater is a journey in the soul, an exploration of one’s own, someone else’s, human soul,” says Lev Abramovich.
The play “A Play Without a Title” is Dodin’s third experience of working on Chekhov’s dramaturgy. Before that there was “The Cherry Orchard” and two years of experience working on “Three Sisters,” which never made it to the premiere.
Key scenes are played in the water. The certainty of sand, water, rain, the naked body creates a sense of the natural beauty of the natural world, sharply contrasting with the unnatural, ugly, meaningless human life.
In “Chevengur” metaphysical waters will splash on the stage again, Hamlet’s questions of the meaning of existence will be discussed by barefoot, ragged, dark and obsessed people. “Pathos is a lie for Platonov. Dodin famously captures it with humor, writes art critic Ninel Ismailova. - In general, no one knows how, like Dodin, to mix all the colors, high and low, tragic and comic, lyrical-romantic and crudely naturalistic for a single image of the performance. “Chevengur” by Dodin is a philosophical aphorism using theatrical means. It contains the motives of all Platonov and all Dodin. Here there is selflessness, and cruelty, and strength, and blindness, and heaps and loads, and water, and fire, and earth, and stones, and people, and the passions that devour them, and life, and death.”
“Theater of Europe” - this honorary title was awarded to the Maly Drama Theater in 1998 at its XVIII General Assembly. Countless reviews of foreign magazines and newspapers were full of enthusiastic headlines: “Deep acting”, “Burning dramatic trepidation”, “Triumph of the Russian theater”. Prior to this, the status of “Theater of Europe” was given to the Parisian Odeon and the Milanese Piccolo Teatro.
Dodin undoubtedly belongs to a very small group of true followers of Stanislavsky. In one of his interviews, he said, “You may not like Stanislavsky’s thoughts, but they, like Einstein’s laws, act objectively. And when an artist plays correctly, he plays according to Stanislavsky, even if he doesn’t like him - this is the whole paradox... His main discovery is that theater is a search for an ideal, an eternal striving for perfection.”
Dodin for a long time refused to stage plays in the West. Finally, he decided to experiment and at the Salzburg Easter Music Festival in 1995, together with the famous director Claudio Abbado, he showed the opera “Electra” by Richard Strauss. The performance was a success.
Now one production follows another “Katerina Izmailova” in Florence, “The Queen of Spades” in Florence and Amsterdam, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” at the Florence Musical May festival (conductor S. Bychkov), “Mazepa” at La Scala (conductor M. Rostropovich), a new version of “The Queen of Spades” at the Bastille Opera House, “The Demon” at the Chatelet Theater...
The director invariably turns to Russian classics, as he believes that “abroad, as well as at home, the public is attracted by an encounter with genuine art.”
Dodin presented Chekhov's The Seagull at the Third World Theater Olympiad in Moscow. And again water is his element. As critics noted, the director created one of his most pessimistic performances. From the very first moments, everyone in it is tired, devastated by life, as if the waters of a witch’s lake flooded the will, desires, aspirations and hopes. “If we talk about the genre, I’m more of a philosopher, thinking mainly about myself, about my understanding of good and evil, about what is fair and what is moral, and what is mean and cruel,” says Dodin. “But since I am a theater director, I translate these thoughts into the fabric of performances.”
The boldness of Dodin's production plans is based on the capabilities of a brilliantly trained troupe, many of whose actors are his students. Lev Abramovich is a professor at the St. Petersburg Academy of Theater Arts, heads the department of directing, and regularly conducts master classes at theater schools in the UK, France, Japan, and the USA. The outstanding director Dodin tirelessly cultivates in himself and his actors a passion for the truth - to live not by lies!

Maly Drama Theater of St. Petersburg - Theater of Europe occupies a special place in the life of Danila Kozlovsky. The actor has to constantly combine numerous film shoots with work in the theater. He regularly travels in Sapsan between Moscow and St. Petersburg, since filming of another film often takes place in Moscow, and in St. Petersburg no one cancels performances and rehearsals for this period. Rehearsals begin, as a rule, with a warm-up, chanting, which lasts an hour and a half, then lunch, and at four or five Dodin arrives, and the rehearsal itself begins, which ends at midnight. The schedule is not easy, but Danila is devoted to Dodin and considers himself lucky with the theater. One shouldn't wish for a better fate. The actor says:

“Another theater is out of the question. I am very radical on this issue.”

Danila about the theater and his teacher Lev Abramovich Dodin (from an interview with the Tallinn newspaper “Capital” - October 2013):

“If we talk about the scale of mine and the Maly Drama Theatre, then they are absolutely not commensurate and are not commensurate in favor of the Maly Drama Theatre. It is well known that this is one of the best theaters in the world. And its director, Lev Abramovich Dodin, is one of the most significant directors of our time. My teacher. Therefore, working under his leadership and being on the staff of the Theater is a privilege, a great happiness for the artist. I hold on to this work with my hands and feet.

An artist needs theater because it is a completely different world from cinema - different energy, different atmosphere - everything happens here and now. Having to tell, for example, the story of your entire life in front of several hundred spectators in three hours of one evening is an amazing feeling. This is a kind of drug that is very difficult to part with. »

Lev Abramovich Dodin regularly uses Danila as an example for future students. At a meeting with applicants in August 2013, he said (recorded by Alex Lazarevskaya from the words of one of the applicants):

“Did Danila’s talent strike me at our first meeting? I don’t think so... This first meeting of ours took place back in 2002 here at St. Petersburg State Technical University, where Danila was admitted as an applicant, like you, to my course (course of acting and directing by L.A. Dodin). What struck me was not his talent, although he certainly had it, but his fantastic impudence. But it was an arrogance so contagious, naive, youthfully perky. I love this kind of chutzpah. She moves the artist forward, makes him grow above himself and above others. And in the end, it is precisely this kind of arrogance that develops into healthy professional ambitions. I remember thinking that this would be interesting to work with. And then I heard Valery Nikolaevich (V.N. Galendeev - professor at St. Petersburg State Technical University, teacher of stage speech) say: “Hmm, what material! He has a little lisp, but it will be all the more interesting to work with him.” This is how we have been working for almost 11 years. Since then, Danila has repeatedly amazed me with his talent, fantastic performance, and acting endurance. With your courage to try something new, to accept this new thing, to let it pass through yourself. Without this quality it is impossible to succeed in our profession; not a single truly great artist has succeeded in this. Danila has a keen sense of justice and amazing intelligence and decency. You can’t acquire this over the years, you can’t work it out: you have to be born with it. He is extremely demanding of himself and others, but most importantly - of himself! I learned a lot from him in this regard. What do I love most about it? His eyes always light up! It's contagious! He is always interested in the work he is doing, and it becomes interesting to everyone around him!”

And here’s what Danila told a dog.ru correspondent about Lev Abramovich in March 2014:

“The first time I saw Lev Abramovich was during the entrance exams. We sat in the audience and waited, he was about to appear. At that time, my theatrical knowledge, to put it mildly, did not shine: I had never set foot in the Maly Drama Theater and I, naturally, had no idea what its artistic director looked like. As soon as any man appeared at the door, I immediately turned to Vanya Nikolaev, who was sitting next to me, my future classmate and friend, and asked: “Is this him?” I was wrong every time. When he finally came in, I didn’t bother Vanya, and that’s how I understood everything. Remember, in the movie “Independence Day” the spaceship slowly descends to the ground and none of the earthlings asks: “Excuse me, what is this? Spaceship? They watch him silently and fascinated. So am I. He comes in - and this picture is still before my eyes, it is with me forever. Lev Abramovich is an unpredictable person in the best sense of the word, he constantly surprises me: with his judgments, actions, decisions that arise during rehearsals. Sometimes it even makes me despondent: why am I not so bright, paradoxical and unexpected? When our theater accepted the production of “Cunning and Love,” I honestly overcame this play by Schiller and was absolutely convinced that even if it was great, it was still incredibly verbose, rattling, old-fashioned and uninteresting to modern audiences, including me. I took the risk of sharing my thoughts with Lev Abramovich. “Let's not rush to conclusions,” he replied, patiently listening to my tirade. “Let’s just try it first.” After just two rehearsals, I sincerely asked him for forgiveness for my own stupidity. Now this is one of my favorite performances and, it seems to me, one of the most modern in our theater. My teacher’s influence on me is not just extensive, but, I would say, total, and so is his help to me. I can’t single out any special areas of its influence in my life: let’s say theater, or theater and cinema, or theater, cinema and something else. He came into my life, not only my professional life, and changed it. His lessons helped me understand important things, and I know they will help me again and again. This is what, I hope, gives me the happy right to consider Lev Abramovich Dodin my teacher.”