Theater poster - reviews of the performance. The good man from Szechwan The good man from Szechwan

« a kind person from Sichuan"(translation option: "The Good Man from Szechwan", German Der gute Mensch von Sezuan listen)) is a parabolic play by Bertolt Brecht, completed in 1941 in Finland, one of the most striking embodiments of his theory of epic theater.

History of creation

The play, originally entitled "Die Ware Liebe", was conceived in 1930; the sketch to which Brecht returned early in 1939 in Denmark contained five scenes. In May of the same year, already in Swedish Liding, the first version of the play was completed; however, two months later its radical redesign began. On June 11, 1940, Brecht wrote in his diary: “Once again, together with Greta, word by word, I am reviewing the text of The Good Man from Sichuan.” Only in April 1941, already in Finland, did he state that the play finished . Originally conceived as domestic drama, the play eventually took the form of a dramatic legend.

The first production of “The Good Man from Szechuan” was carried out by Leongard Steckel in Zurich, the premiere took place on February 4, 1943. In the playwright's homeland, Germany, the play was first staged in 1952 by Harry Bukvitsa in Frankfurt am Main.

In Russian, “A Good Man from Sichuan” was first published in 1957 in the journal “Foreign Literature” translated by E. Ionova and Yu. Yuzovsky, the poems were translated by Boris Slutsky.

Characters

Van - water bearer
Three gods
Shen Te
Shui Ta
Young Sun - unemployed pilot
Mrs. Yang is his mother
Widow Shin
Family of eight
Carpenter Lin To
Landlady Mi Ju
Police officer
Carpet dealer
His wife
Old prostitute
Barber Shu Fu
Bonze
Waiter
Unemployed
Passersby in the prologue

Plot

The gods who descended to earth are unsuccessfully looking for a good person. In the main city of Sichuan province, with the help of the water carrier Wang, they try to find accommodation for the night, but are refused everywhere - only the prostitute Shen Te agrees to shelter them.

To make it easier for the girl to remain kind, the gods, leaving Shen Te's house, give her some money - with this money she buys a small tobacco shop.

But people unceremoniously take advantage of Shen Te’s kindness: the more good she does, the more trouble she brings upon herself. Things are going from bad to worse - in order to save her shop from ruin, Shen Te, who does not know how to say “no,” dresses up in men's clothing and introduces himself cousin- Mr. Shui Ta, tough and unsentimental. He is not kind, he refuses everyone who turns to him for help, but, unlike Shen Te, his “brother” is doing well.

Forced callousness weighs heavily on Shen Te - having improved matters, she “returns” and meets the unemployed pilot Yang Sun, who is ready to hang himself out of despair. Shen Te saves a pilot from a noose and falls in love with him; Inspired by love, she, as before, refuses to help anyone. However, Yang Sun also uses her kindness as a weakness. He needs five hundred silver dollars to get a pilot’s position in Beijing, such money cannot be obtained even from the sale of a shop, and Shen Te, in order to accumulate the required amount, again turns into the hard-hearted Shui Ta. Yang Song, in a conversation with his “brother,” speaks contemptuously about Shen Te, whom, as it turns out, he does not intend to take with him to Beijing, and Shui Ta refuses to sell the shop, as the pilot demands.

Disappointed in her beloved, Shen Te decides to marry a wealthy city dweller Shu Fu, who is ready to do charity work to please her, but after taking off the Shui Ta costume, she loses the ability to refuse - and Yang Sun easily convinces the girl to become his wife.

However, just before the wedding, Yang Sun learns that Shen Te cannot sell the shop: it is partially mortgaged for $200, long ago given to the pilot. Yang Sun counts on Shui Ta's help, sends for him and, while waiting for his “brother,” postpones the wedding. Shui Ta does not come, and the guests invited to the wedding, having drunk all the wine, leave.

Shen Te, in order to pay off the debt, has to sell the shop that served as her home - no husband, no shop, no shelter. And Shui Ta appears again: having accepted from Shu Fu financial assistance, which Shen Te refused, he forces numerous parasites to work for Shen Te and eventually opens a small tobacco factory. Young Sun eventually gets a job at this rapidly growing factory and, as an educated person, quickly makes a career.

Six months pass, Shen Te’s absence worries both the neighbors and Mr. Shu Fu; Yang Sun tries to blackmail Shui Ta in order to take over the factory, and, having failed to achieve his goal, brings the police to Shui Ta's house. After finding Shen Te's clothes in the house, the policeman accuses Shui Ta of murdering his cousin. The gods undertake to judge him. Shen Te reveals her secret to the gods and asks them to tell her how to live next, but the gods, pleased that they have found their good man, without giving an answer, fly away on a pink cloud.

Yuri Butusov staged a performance based on Bertolt Brecht's play that was precise, frightening and beautiful in its definiteness.

For the sake of social experiment imagined himself as a god who could teach people how to get out of poverty - the cause of all evil on earth. And he composed a parable: the Chinese gods were ready to forgive humanity if they could find at least one kind person. Pretending to be beggars, three of them went down to Sezuan, starved of crop failure, where they met the kind prostitute Shen Te, who let them under her roof. So the gods put all the responsibility on her: they say, come on, hurry to do good, and we’ll see. Shen Te began diligently distributing rice to the hungry and shelter to the homeless, until both of them sat on her head. Then in kind woman her second self woke up - the tough and resourceful businessman Shui Ta, who began to exploit and profit from this lumpen.

“Distributing or exploiting” is not at all the problem that worries the one who put “The Good Man of Szechwan” in. Is good possible today? How can a person who cares about others survive? And is love now primarily about vulnerability?

The director, together with co-writer and set designer Alexander Shishkin, stripped the stage naked, turning it into a huge dark world pulsating with flashes of harsh light and rhythms electronic music Paul Dessau performed live by the Pure Music ensemble. Nothing here has a cover: in a bare box without walls, the door does not close anyone from anyone, it is not covered iron bed It’s like on the Jurassic River, the trees are hanging without leaves. The inhabitants, in order to hide behind something, turn themselves into masks, grotesque and one-dimensional. Thus, the brutal actor Alexander Matrosov, before the eyes of the audience, turns into a weak fool - the water seller Vanga. When people lose their words from powerlessness or rage, they begin to chant and sing zongs in German, which sounds tough, demanding and beautiful. And into this world Butusov releases a lonely God - a fragile, silent girl whose legs were worn out in search of a kind person (). And she meets the lonely and fragile Shen Te (), worn out by other people’s desires. And they both decide to love their neighbors.

Ursulyak plays Shen Te, who does not turn into Shui Ta for a minute. But when despair rises in her throat, she allows herself to put on the mask of a cynical pragmatist (she simply glues on herself a paper mustache and sideburns) in order to have the strength to say “no.” And in the mask of an evil one, she continues to distribute the wealth he has acquired to those in need. Distribute anonymously, not out of modesty, but so as not to reveal the secret and ruin a good deed. Walking like a little gentleman, wrapped in a scarf, she hides the same suffering eyes under her frowning eyebrows. Shen Te, at least for a moment, is still allowed happiness: she loves an unemployed pilot, handsome Yang Sun, and hears his reciprocal confessions. And Shui Ta is forced to listen to the brazen revelations of his beloved, who, it turns out, only needs money. Alexander Arsentiev is the only one who plays Young without a mask, because his egoism is so natural.

After a shaky, excessive and driving performance, he staged a performance that was calibrated to the point of gesture, frightening and beautiful in its certainty, throwing a kind man onto the stage as if onto a hot roof. But Alexandra Ursulyak plays Shen Te without fear of getting burned.

Photo by Sergei Petrov

Legendary performance of the Taganka Theater. This is not a review of the performance, but rather an attempt to declare my love for the legendary performance.
For me, my acquaintance with it began with this performance. It so happened that it was from him. This happened back in 1986. Then the Taganka Theater played performances on two stages: New and Old. At that time, the old stage was closed for renovation, and all performances were staged New scene theater The theater was directed by a wonderful and legendary director of the 20th century. The theater simultaneously staged old performances by Yu. Lyubimov and new performances by A. Efros. Interestingly, the programs for the performances did not indicate who the director or artist of the performance was. For the first time I saw the play “The Good Man from Szechwan” on the New Stage of the Theater (in three more acts).
What I saw in 1986 was still for me then young man, was a real discovery, a breakthrough in my knowledge theatrical arts. The performance, which had already been 22 years old, was probably as childishly fresh and pure as in the days of the premiere student performances of the play. I was immediately struck and made to fall in love by the successful harmony of the performance: music (and always live), a unified team of actors, successful scenography. The performance actually lived on stage, which is something you rarely see in theaters these days (continuous existence and performance). With all this, it seems to me that Yu. Lyubimov successfully came up with a stage form for presenting B. Brecht’s dramaturgy. This is a grotesque that skillfully bordered on light buffoonery. A quick and skillful transition from funny to tragic and vice versa. Plus direct appeal to the audience, i.e. the desire somewhere to voice as much as possible, to convey the problems expressed in the play, were solved by Yu. Lyubimov as a rapid exit of the actor from the stage image into the image of a person from the author, the person from the podium (speaker). This combination gave such a strong emotional release to the audience that it could not leave the audience indifferent to what was happening.
I always remember those chords at the beginning of the performance, when everything characters jump onto the stage to deliver the prologue to the performance. The prologue sets the tone for the rest of the performance. And then the performance itself began. The performance rushed by so quickly that while watching it you always had the feeling that you yourself were a living participant in this story. It was at this performance that for the first time I felt the harmony between auditorium and the stage. I had heard a lot about this before, but never experienced it myself. But the interesting thing is that I was struck by a performance of such an unusual, innovative form. Before him, I had seen many performances of the classical form, but none of them stuck with me. for a long time. But as they say, it is in classical performances that you have the opportunity to force the audience to control it, to subjugate it to yourself. And here is the harmony of the entire performance, I emphasize the entire performance, and the auditorium.
After many years, I return to it again and again. And again and again I experience the feeling that I experienced at the first viewing of the play. This is my performance. He sits inside me. And every time I want to return to him again and again. I guess I have the right to say that. The performance gives me an emotional and vital charge for a long time, until the next viewing. This is a play about sadness, human lies, joy and life's truth. We must live and love. And be able to forgive, and not look for right and wrong. Life is striving, but questions remain eternal. But fewer and fewer real people solve them. That's what this play is about, about life's eccentrics.
To date, I have seen the performance six times already. I always try to take people I know and are close to with me to this performance. Some people like him, others end their relationship with Taganka, but the problems raised in the play still build up in them. At least for a while.
Now about those who once played in the play, i.e. actors I saw. By name: (the inimitable timbre of the voice, conveying the full depth of feelings and compressed nerves), (the sensitive and sincere water-carrier Wang, saw his short new return to the play), (the angry and selfish Yang Sun), (here the naive and simple water-carrier Wang) , (unsurpassed and inimitable Mi Tzi, landlady), (sincere and honest carpenter Lin To with beautiful and pure eyes),

You see, Lyovushka, no matter what happens, the main thing is to be able to remain human.
(E. Radzinsky “104 pages about love”)

He knows how to do this - to be different, new, unexpected, while maintaining his unique author's style, which the Moscow public has passionately and faithfully loved for more than 10 years. It is his distinctive feature. And he does not become cemented, does not ossify in his remarkable skill - somehow he remains alive, light, youthfully desperate and passionate, perhaps even progressing in this from performance to performance. And you can’t create this artificially, it comes from within, from yourself. Yes, probably like this: he creates his performances in his own image and likeness and necessarily breathes into them a part of his soul, in the sense of his own. That's how I feel about it. And from performance to performance, he seems to push the boundaries of his capabilities - easily and confidently - and takes the viewer with him into a new space. He repeats in an interview: “the viewer is a friend and ally.” Emotional exchange with the audience - finishing touch, the last layer on each of his works - this is probably also why we love them so much and are so involved in them. He is completely restless, inexhaustible with energy, ideas and plans. And the theaters are tearing it apart. And I don’t understand how he manages everything and does it in a bright, extraordinary, high-quality and powerful way. He is best director countries - Yuri Nikolaevich Butusov.

Just now, in October, at his Lensoveta Theater in St. Petersburg, he released the strongest, absolutely fantastic “Macbeth” (if the performance does not collect a harvest of prizes at the end of the season - honestly, all these prizes are worthless), as in February, in Moscow Pushkin Theater - also like nothing hitherto in his director's biography a different, complex and serious work based on Brecht, “The Good Man from Szechwan” with a marvelous original music Paul Dessau, a live orchestra "Pure Music" on stage and zongs performed live by artists on German(and since in terms of stage techniques Yuri Nikolaevich is in some sense a trendsetter, then wait in coming years around Moscow, a series of performances with authentic music and songs in Japanese, Hungarian, Yagan or Tuyuka). The play itself is very complex and everything inside is in hypertexts, but Yuri Butusov, of course, plowed and overhauled Brecht’s text and sowed it with his own hypertext. Now all this will gradually (this is how all his works affect eyewitnesses) will germinate and emerge in our heads. For now, these are just first superficial impressions.

I almost forgot: artist Alexander Shishkin and choreographer Nikolai Reutov helped him create the performance - that is, it is obvious full composition star team.

Again I have to mention one thing. About my interpretation of the works of this director. I really like to understand them, or rather, I try to do it. His creative thinking pushes me into the space of images, but, getting carried away, I can wander somewhere completely wrong. In other words, Yuri Nikolaevich puts on plays about something about his own, and I watch them about something about mine. And I can’t imagine how often we intersect with him, or whether we intersect at all. In general, don't take anything for granted.

So, “The Good Man of Szechwan.” In Brecht's play, socio-political motives are clearly read, which, as they say, was emphasized in the famous (and which I did not see) Yuri Lyubimov's performance at Taganka. Yuri Butusov is much more to a greater extent(and traditionally) are occupied by questions concerning the complex and contradictory nature of man, human personality and features of interpersonal relationships. Strictly speaking, this is the base, the foundation on which it is then built, incl. and the socio-political platform and in general any other one you want. A man with his complex inner world- primary.

On stage, as usual with Yuri Nikolaevich, there is little, but all this is from his “director’s backpack.” MacBett's (Magritte's) door, gray stones-boulders (from Duck hunting) scattered all over the floor, at the back of the stage is the dressing room (from The Seagull and Macbeth) - this is the house of Shen Te (who, while waiting for the client, will be dressed in a cloak made of black “polyethylene” - Macbeth - and a black wig from The Seagull), planed boards (Lear), in the left corner of the stage there is a bed (Macbett, Richard, Lear, The Seagull), figurines of dogs that look more like wolves (Yuri Nikolaevich’s dogs live in almost all performances), on the proscenium there is a small table-“stool” and chairs everywhere , some are overturned (a loose, shaky, rotten world? think about it). Actually, that's all. Before us is a poor quarter of Szechwan, in which the gods are trying to find at least one kind person. Over the almost 4 hours of the performance, the set design will change very little (he knows how to fill the stage with other things: energy, acting, music, riddles), and, of course, every object that appears will not be accidental.
The aesthetics of the performance sends us associations to Foss’s “Cabaret” (in fact, the zongs in German are obviously for the same reason). Parallel. Voss's film shows Germany during the birth of fascism, i.e. on the eve of the world catastrophe, just as on the eve of the catastrophe the Brechtian world froze. At the beginning of the performance, Wang will say harshly and emphatically: “The world CANNOT remain like this any longer if there is not at least one kind person in it.” In the public translation of the play, the phrase sounds different: “The world CAN remain like this if there are enough people worthy of the title of man.” Both phrases are about an unstable balance - that the world has frozen at a dangerous line, beyond which there is an abyss. I don’t know German, I don’t know what the original phrase of the play sounds like, but it’s quite obvious that the second phrase is about the fact that the world is still before the line, and the first – that it’s already a spade, that’s all.
The same boulder stones associatively signal that “the time has come to collect stones” (Book of Ecclesiastes). The expression “time to collect stones,” as an independent expression, is used in the meaning of “time to create,” and in relation to Brecht’s play, I would translate it as “time to change something.” Until it's not too late.
Or the fine sand that the water-carrier Wang will pour first onto the white material on the proscenium, and then onto his own head. This is not sand. Or rather, it is sand for God (sand is a symbol of time, eternity). For Wang, this is rain, water. Yuri Nikolaevich conjures water here, just as he can conjure snow. But now I won’t go into detail about the props; there’s a lot more that needs to be said.

Surprises begin from the first moments of the performance. Yuri Butusov's Brechtian three gods turned into a quiet, silent girl (Anastasia Lebedeva) in a long black coat thrown over sports shorts and a T-shirt. She is an inconspicuous, quiet girl, but the holy fool - the water-carrier Wang - unmistakably recognizes her as the messenger of the Wise, for holy fools are God's people, and how can they not recognize God in the crowd. And while the unfortunate Shen Te courageously tries to bear the overwhelming burden of the mission placed on her shoulders by the gods, Wang watches what is happening and, in dialogues (and in fact, monologues) with the gods, tries for herself to answer the questions asked by Brecht in the Epilogue of the play, which Yuri Butusov logically omitted it, since these questions are its essence:

Surely there must be some sure way out?
For money you can’t imagine which one!
Another hero? What if the world is different?
Or maybe other gods are needed here?
Or without gods at all?..

As we unwind and comprehend this tangle of questions, Wang’s attitude towards the Gods changes - from blind enthusiastic worship (with kissing feet) through complete disappointment (then he will drag her onto the stage like a sack) to conscious... I can’t find the words... let there be a “partnership”. When disappointment in the gods reaches its limit, Wang begins to talk and act like a common person(without stuttering, cramped muscles) - as if he refuses to be man of God. And, perhaps, I’ll adjust my assumption regarding sand. Still, for Wang this is also not water, but sand, a symbol of God. By pouring it on his head at the beginning, he denotes both his closeness to the Wise Ones (like a holy fool) and his unquestioning worship of them.

Yes, here it is also important, in my opinion, why Yuri Nikolaevich deprived the girl-God of almost all words, making her almost mute at times. Whether there is a God or not is a deeply personal, intimate question for each individual person, and that is not what we are talking about here (by the way, Gorky’s Luke in “At the Lower Depths” gives a wonderful answer to this question: “If you believe, there is; if you don’t believe, - no. What you believe in is what it is”). Here we are talking about this reciprocal silence. There is great benefit in silence: having reflected from it, the question returns to the one who asked it, and the person begins to deal with it himself, think, analyze, weigh, and draw conclusions. And this is what all the sages and philosophers seem to be talking about: the answers to all questions can be found in yourself. The silence of the girl-God in the play by Yuri Butusov allows Wang to answer the questions that are important to him.
“..if you continue to look within - it takes time - little by little you will begin to feel a beautiful light within. This is not an aggressive light; he is not like the sun, he is more like the moon. It doesn't sparkle, it doesn't blind, it's very cool. He is not hot, he is very compassionate, very softening; it's a balm.
Little by little, when you tune in Inner Light, you will see that you yourself are its source. The seeker is the sought. Then you will see that the real treasure is inside you, and the whole problem was that you were looking outside. You were looking somewhere outside, but it was always inside you. It's always been here, inside you." (Osho)

Well, while the finale is still far away, Shen Te, chosen by the gods to be the savior of the world (amazing work by Alexandra Ursulyak), gradually comprehends the bitter truth that if a person wants to live, it is impossible to be ideally kind (and therefore impossible to complete the mission). Kindness that cannot repel evil in order to simply protect itself is doomed (“a predator always knows who is easy prey for him”). And in general it is impossible to be an exemplary bearer of any one quality. If only because (I know this is a banality) everything in the world is relative. For ten people you are kind, and the eleventh will say that you are evil. And everyone will have arguments in favor of their opinion. You can even do nothing at all: neither good nor evil, but there will still be both people who consider you good and people who consider you bad, and, by the way, they can change places. This world is a world of assessments. Subjective momentary assessments that instantly become outdated (I really love this quote from Murakami: “The cells of the body are completely, one hundred percent, renewed every month. We change all the time. Here, even right now. Everything you know about me is no more than your own memories"). Even you yourself don’t know what you really are, because in unforeseen situations you sometimes reveal things you didn’t even suspect about yourself. Or, on the contrary, you were absolutely sure that you would do something, but the moment comes and you remain inactive. Every human action and deed (like every word, even thrown casually, for a word is also an action, moreover, a thought is also an action), like any coin, has two sides, two results opposite in sign.

For example, Shui Ta, wanting to “correct” Sun Yang, gives him the opportunity to work off wasted money and generally find a permanent job and make a career. Noble mission. Good deed. And Song, in fact, is gradually becoming right hand Shui Ta, but at the same time - a complete beast in relation to other workers, causing nothing but hatred towards himself. And also - he doesn’t want to fly anymore, he’s lost his “wings”, which is heartbreaking mother's heart Mrs. Young, who knows what a first-class pilot her boy is, and remembers how happy he was in the sky, because he was created for him.

I can’t resist.. This is what Chekhov’s “The Black Monk” is about. While Kovrin was not entirely adequate and had conversations with a ghost, he was absolutely happy, believed in his chosenness and indeed showed great promise and was, perhaps, a future genius of science. But loving wife terrified of him state of mind, with the best of intentions, she put him on pills and took him to the village to drink fresh milk. Kovrin physically recovered, stopped seeing the Black Monk, stopped believing in his chosenness, lost the desire to work, went out, faded and became nothing, no one. What is good and what is evil here? What is normal, what is pathology? Delusions of grandeur grew in a person a great scientist who was able (and eager) to benefit humanity. The woman’s desire to save her beloved husband from illness led to her ruining him.

A person learns about the Law of unity and struggle of opposites in school, before going to school. great life. Concepts that are opposite in meaning “go in pairs” - everything is interconnected, interdependent, one cannot exist without the other and in pure form rarely occurs (if at all). Without its opposite, good is not good and evil is not evil - they are such only against the background of each other. Quote from E. Albee: “I realized that kindness and cruelty on their own, separately from one another, lead to nothing; and at the same time, in combination, they teach you to feel.” And no matter how you weigh the facts or subject them to spectral analysis, when assessing something, you will almost certainly make a mistake, not in general, but in particular. We live in a world of misunderstanding and delusion and persist in it. “Do not rush to judge and do not rush to despair” - the translation of a phrase from one of the zongs will appear on the electronic line.
There are no perfectly good people on earth. And not at all ideal people, and if there were - what a melancholy it would be to be among them (on this topic - a person getting into some ideal space according to his ideas - a lot of things have been written and filmed. It’s really scary). And in vain the tired God - a quiet girl in worn-out shoes - wanders the earth in search of an ideally kind person (on stage she will walk on a treadmill and ride a bicycle - this is all about her search). Her legs were wiped bloody (already in her first appearance), then she was barely alive (in Brecht’s text, “good people” gave one of the Gods a bruise under the eye, and this girl-God has bloody bandages on her arms, head, neck , belly) Wang will drag her to the front of the stage, and for the third time he will carry her out completely lifeless. God himself could not survive in the world, which he ordered to live according to his, divine, rules. People mutilated God, abused him (in the play - not knowing that this is God (the townspeople don’t recognize her at the beginning), but the deeper meaning is that people don’t need such a God with his commandments, is beyond their strength), and God died. And Wang contemptuously throws a handful of sand on the lifeless body, uttering a phrase that in the original play belongs to one of the gods (I use a publicly available translation of the play, and for the play YN specially translated the play again by Yegor Peregudov):

“Your commandments are destructive. I'm afraid all the rules of morality that you have established must be crossed out. People have enough worries to at least save their lives. Good intentions bring them to the brink, but good deeds bring them down.”

Why is God a girl here? (I'm just guessing). Here it is necessary to summarize and name by name what I have been unnamed for a long time above in the text. In “The Good Man from Szechwan” (as in “The Black Monk”) one of the main themes is the theme of duality (of man, phenomena, concepts, etc.). Yuri Butusov loves this theme very much - it sounds in all his works. Moreover, this term has many meanings, but for us, as non-specialists, the most understandable (conditionally) is direct and reverse duality. Those. in one case - a copy, in the other - the opposite, the reverse, the shadow side. If you look closely, almost every character in the play has his own double. And even more than one. Such a mirror labyrinth of doubles. (Yuri Nikolaevich again drew such a clever pattern inside the performance - I can’t recognize everything). I didn’t keep track of the video sequence well (you get carried away by the action and forget to keep your nose to the wind) - / the back wall of the stage, as well as the light curtain falling onto the proscenium from above from time to time, act as a screen - the video projector creates a video sequence on them / - but two almost-twin prostitutes (in black dresses, black glasses) against the background of an image of two little twin girls (sad and smiling; I remember this photo of Diana Arbus - Identical Twins. And here they are, pairs of antagonists: childhood - adulthood; innocence - vice ; joy and sadness.
More. I wondered why Alexander Arsentiev’s (Sung Yang) eyes were lined with red. Red eyes.. “Here comes my mighty enemy, the devil. I see his terrible crimson eyes...” And then - “Elegy” by Brodsky.” Yes, this is "The Seagull". Former pilot Sun Yang is a “mail line pilot” who “alone, like a fallen angel, chugs down vodka.” Fallen Angel, Lucifer. Sun Yang's eyes are the red eyes of Lucifer that he talks about World Soul in the monologue of Nina Zarechnaya. And then Lucifer’s dance with God is also about duality. And about the struggle and interaction of the Light and Dark principles in man. And these are Yang and Yin in the Eastern symbol, in which each of the concepts carries within itself the grain of its opposite. One thing gives rise to another and itself comes from this other.. And this is life (red balloon, symbolizing first sparkling wine in a glass of Sun, and then “turning” into the belly of Shen Te and the God Girl, although one became pregnant from a loved one, and the other was probably raped). And if we further develop the theme of Sun’s Luciferism: after all, he (again conditionally) competes with God in the right to a Good Man, manipulates what for a woman is the energy of life, love. In general, Shen Te found herself in that very monstrous situation when everyone needs something FROM you, but no one cares about you. Her only friend, Wang, again, trying to help her, eventually exposed her and declassified her secret. Throughout the entire play, no one asks her herself: how she feels, what she thinks, what she feels, whether she feels good or bad. In fact, only God talks to her about her (the entire scene of the dialogue between Shen Te and Mrs. Shin on the eve of Shen Te’s arrest was rewritten by Yuri Butusov under Shen Te and God, “I’ll be there when this happens,” God says to Shen Te, this about childbirth, but you need to understand this much more broadly).
More about doubles: Shen Te with her unborn son, Mrs. Yang with her son, Mi Ju’s double (when she is dressed in black and cradles a birch log wrapped in a blanket). Yes, in fact, we are all mirrors and doubles of each other.
And I didn’t finish talking about God the Girl. The main and obvious pair of doubles in the play, of course, are Shen Te and Shui Ta (for such a double, which is hidden in the person himself, Wikipedia suggested a sonorous German word - Doppelganger). But towards the end, when Shen Te is already 7 months pregnant (and when she has long been in the “guise” of her brother, “godfather” and tobacco king Shui Ta), she looks in the mirror, and her reflection in the mirror is a girl- God with the same 7-month belly. Before Shen Te's last time decides to take advantage of her brother, the God Girl will be dressed like Shui Ta (Shen Te suggested that she need to do this). She, the girl-God, will fold something wrong on the floor Chinese character(which one?), or a house made of empty cigarette packs that rained indifferently on her head. Shen Te, aka Shui Ta, the Godfather and the tobacco king, was God in her tobacco kingdom, established her own rules there, introduced her own regulations.. In general, the same scenario as the Gods with their rules and regulations for the world in general (recursion. the process of repeating elements in a self-similar manner). And everything is destroyed: the world that God built, and the tobacco empire that Shui Ta created.
Now it comes to mind beautiful phrase: this performance is about God’s search for Man and Man’s search for God. Both girls, through torment and suffering, come to the conclusion that something needs to be changed in the “regulations of interaction” between God and Man.

Brecht left the ending of the play open - questions remained unanswered. But Yuri Nikolaevich, even despite Shen Te’s call for help, still made the ending closed and giving hope, offering his own version of the answer to the question “what to do.” Wonderful final scene(again - as I heard her, maybe I misspoke), in which poor Shen Te begs the gods to allow her to become cruel Shui Ta at least once a week: the girl-God, smiling softly, will allow (will not wave away this permission in horror, as if not wanting to hear anything, like Brechtian gods, but will say calmly and consciously): “Don’t abuse it. Once a month will be enough.” Yuri Nikolaevich wisely did not remake this world (for we ourselves create the reality around us, these are the fruits of our own labors and beliefs, and not someone else’s, and if they are “someone’s”, and we continue to live in them, then they they just suit us too (“if you’re unlucky today, it’s okay, you’ll be lucky tomorrow; if you’re unlucky tomorrow, it’s okay, you’ll be lucky the day after tomorrow; if you’re unlucky the day after tomorrow, it means you just like it better”); so they’ll redo it for us, yes, we will return everything back anyway); did not change the hero, because Shen Te - in fact, perhaps best copy from the human race; did not cancel the gods (and everything that can be included in a group with such common name, i.e. both internal and external concepts) in general, because, alas, without any restraining factors at all, a person very quickly lets himself go, plunging the world into chaos, and this is a direct path to self-destruction. Yuri Butusov changed - Resolution. His God softened his demands on man, lowered him exorbitantly high bar, allowing a person, within much wider boundaries, to be what he is by nature: different - good, bad, kind, evil, strong, weak, etc. And such a God is acceptable to Wang - they will leave holding hands.

This is probably Yuri Butusov’s “message” to this world, which is now also dangerously approaching the line:
“Man, be a man, with all your human weaknesses, flaws and imperfections, but still try to be a Man, then this world still has a chance to be saved.”
“You can do it, Shen Te. The main thing is to remain kind.”

You probably shouldn’t love all of Humanity, it’s very abstract and useless. You can focus on a narrower circle, for example, on those who are nearby. And if there is an opportunity to do something that will help someone else or at least just make him happy, why not do it? Sometimes just listening is enough. Such trifles and trifles can make a person happy - I am surprised every time, including myself. People are now terribly separated, distanced from each other, have lost mutual trust, are closed in on themselves, the main nature of contacts is mutual use of each other.
Life is difficult - it’s all true, but if you observe, it is precisely those for whom life is most difficult, or who themselves have experienced something terrible, for some reason who are most capable of compassion and sympathy for others. When in the summer they collected help for the Krasnodar drowned people everywhere, retired grandmothers brought their old, worn things to the collection points. It's not a matter of timing. “These are the times.” The times are always the same (“Do not say: How did it happen that the former days were better than these? For you did not ask this out of wisdom.” - Book of Ecclesiastes). There is something wrong with ourselves.
(Abstracting from the inconsistency and ambiguity of concepts and using the usual understanding of terms): good, like evil, has a chain reaction (motorists know: if you let someone go ahead of you on the road, then, as a rule, he will soon also let someone go ahead of him ). I repeat: life is a difficult thing, but while we are here, we have to live it somehow. In a world where there are more “good chains”, life is easier.
The heroine Doronina in the film “Once Again About Love” sent postcards to all her friends for the holidays: “People are pleased when they are remembered. There is not much warmth in life. In the past New Year sent 92 postcards."

AND last quote. Chekhov, "Gooseberry":
- Pavel Konstantinich! - said [Ivan Ivanovich] in a pleading voice. - Don’t calm down, don’t let yourself be lulled to sleep! While you are young, strong, vigorous, do not get tired of doing good! There is no happiness and there should not be, and if there is meaning and purpose in life, then this meaning and purpose is not at all in our happiness, but in something more reasonable and greater. Do good!

A good man from Szechwan. Moscow Taganka Theater. 1964

The Good Man from Szechwan (Bertolt Brecht)
Theater name: Moscow Taganka Theater Genre: Play-parable Premiere: 1964
Duration: 02:46:59
Author: Bertolt Brecht Director: Yuri Lyubimov
Music: Anatoly Vasiliev, Boris Khmelnitsky
Translation from German by Yu. Yuzovsky and E. Ionova, poetry translated by B. Slutsky

Add. information: The performance with which the history of the theater began.
The premiere took place on April 23, 1964.
Grand Prix International theater festival in Greece 1999
Video recording - October 2010

Fragment of the play "The Good Man from Szechwan"

A kind man from Szechwan with Vysotsky at the Taganka Theater.

Fragments of the play "The Good Man from Szechwan"

A fragment of the first part of the documentary trilogy " Theater sketch on Tagansky themes".
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Saint's Day Never Vladimir Vysotsky

Włodzimierz Wysocki - Pieśni [songs]. Więcej o Wołodii na mojej stronie http://www.vysotsky.neostrada.pl/ [Words: Bertolt Brecht]
Words: B. Brecht, music. A. Vasiliev and B. Khmelnitsky. Performed in the play "The Good Man from Szechwan".

On this day they take evil by the throat,
On this day, everyone is lucky,
Both the owner and the farmhand all walk together to the tavern,
On Saint Never's Day, the skinny man drinks at the fat man's house.

The river flows backwards,
Everyone, brother, is kind, you don’t hear about the evil ones,
On this day everyone rests, and no one urges -
On Saint Never's Day, the whole earth smells like paradise.

On this day you will be a general, ha ha!
Well, I would fly that day.
In [...], you will find peace,
On the day of Saint Never, woman, you will find peace.

We can't wait any longer,
That is why they must give us, yes, give:
people of hard work -
Saint Never's Day, Saint Never's Day,
The day we will rest!