The 4th World Theater Olympiad which took place in Delphi, Greece, was dedicated to Sophocles. In July, theater companies from all over the world presented their interpretations of tragedies created by this ancient author. The Meyerhold Theater Center represented Russia at the Olimpiad in Delphi. Alexey Levinski conducted a workshop on biomechanics and performed fragments of “Oedipus”. A young theater director Nikolai Roschin and his actors staged the tragedy “Philoctetes” (its Moscow premiere is scheduled in October).
Many scholars agree that this tragedy has a lot in common with the psychological drama. The Greeks need the bow of Heracles kept by Philoctetes who suffers from a terrible disease. It has been prophesied that only with this bow can Troy be conquered. Thus, Odysseus accompanied by Achilles’s son Neoptolemus sets off to retrieve the bow. Odysseus fears that Philoctetes could kill him, therefore Odysseus convinces Neoptolemus to win Philoctetes's trust and take the bow. Neoptolemus gets the bow, and deeply moved by witnessing Philoctetes's misery firsthand, confesses the truth to him. The only thing that helps to solve the situation is the sudden appearance of Heracles who comes out of the blue like deus ex machina.
— I became interested in the ancient dithyramb which had been in existence prior to the times of Aeshylus who developed the dithyramb into the drama. In the ancient theater, there was a leading hero or two heroes accompanied by the chorus. I intended adapting the tragedy of “Philoctetes” into the dithyramb. So, I left no elements resembing the psychological drama. Our staging does not feature Neoptolemus, Odysseus and Heracles . We have only Philoctetes and the chorus which recites some original lines of Neoptolemus and Odysseus. To be more precise, there is Philoctetes and his pain. Sometimes the chorus demonstatres tough physical force, and sometimes it expresses incredible rationality. And this blasting mix is showered onto Philoctetes. The final scene features Philoctetes joining the chorus, as his pain transforms and overrides him; at the same time the pain changes its quality. Finally the stage action takes shape of a story built on emotion and energy, and this story is not subject to the main plot. One might say that this story resembles a dance, a hymn or something that helps transform the leading hero. For all of us it was important to experience those tensions of tragedy and to trace the way that brings performers into a certain state which allows them to perform such conflicts on stage. An approach known as “an actor in the given circumstances” will not work. During six months we have been doing training sessions in order to develop the qualities required for performing the tragedy.
— Did you invent training exercises of your own?
— We drew on experience of Terzopoulos and Tadashi Suzuki (I attended his training sessions in Japan). Alexey Levinski taught us biomechanics. We also incorporated some exercises which we invented on our own. Training activities create a unique, extremal state which is to be maintained through the entire performance. We were striving to reach the balance between the actors’ inner strain and its external manifestation. We had to avoid situations when an actor goes through an emotional experience and cries out his lines, while all his body and his arms are sluggish and untrained. The most challenging task was combining the inner and the outer, the body and the soul.
— Who designed and built the sets for your production?
— I designed the scenery, and then we built all the sets according to my model. Everything was executed perfectly, including the electromechanical system which sets in motion the huge pillars symbolizing the entrance into Haides. These pillars separate the two worlds which comprise the scenic space of our production. One part is an intermediate space between the world of the alive and the world of the dead. Philoctetes resides in this intermediate space. Another part is the kingdom of the dead, and warriors who were killed in the battle of Troy emerge from this part when they come visiting Philoctetes. When we performed in Delphi, the actors-warriors emerged from behind a huge mass of ruins and then marched along for about 150 meters.
— Women never performed in ancient tragedies. What was the reason for involving actresses in your production?
— We looked for another incarnation of the chorus and for a somewhat queer and mystic atmosphere, the one which can be created exclusively by women. With their eight-meter-long braids hanging down, the women are perched on the pillars and resemble birds of prey. There are a lot of unconventional things in our production: our actors move and pronounce their lines in an unusual manner, and music is also very unusual. We composed all melodies during our rehearsals. The tunes grew up from sounds which expressed the core of acting. Finally, our actors and composers, brothers Ivan Volkov and Dmitry Volkov, put everything together and made a written score. The music conveys the idea that Odysseus and Heracles are opposites. Odysseus plays the European drums, and their rhythm is rather familiar to our ears. While Heracles (presented by a Korean actor, a recent graduate of the Schukin Theater School) plays the Korean drums. These sounds and rhythms are absolutely enchanting. In the course of the performance the drums carry on a dialogue and an argumentation. There are moments when the drums start playing the same aria, the same melody. There is also a long thick string fixed on each pillar. Each string corresponding to a certain note, the pillars’ sounding contributes to the performance.
— Where did you perform “Philoctetes” in Delphi?
— We performed at the stadium where, back in ancient times, the Delphian Games had taken place. This oval arena is two hundred meters long. The authentic semicircle rows for spectators have been preserved till nowadays. Before mounting this production we were going to cover the stage with claydite, but they did not allow us to do this as the sand could get into cracks and spoil ancient stones. Thus we had to shred paper and covered 60 square meters of the stage with shredded “Craft” paper. We performed “Philoctetes” late at night, after the sunset. The sounds and voices flew away towards the mountains and echoed back in fantastic reverberations. We realized that for ancient performers playing the tragedy required enormous efforts. On stage, tragic actors used cothurns and masks with bell-mouths. Gestures, movements and voices of actors had to be in tune with energies of nature surroundings.
Some stage productions we saw at the stadium during the Olympiad were out of place because they were performed according to the laws of psychological theater. Just try to imagine: the starry sky, mountains, gigantic fir-trees covering the slopes, the stadium, and there - on the vast arena - a human being strives to reflect on the inner feelings. I could never understand the reason for doing this.
— In each new production you introduce a new setting with new rules for your actors. What makes you continue your theatrical experiments? Do you believe that in future the theater at large should turn into an experimental art?
— I would say that our approach discovers some unfamiliar, or maybe totally forgotten, theatrical methods. I am not sure whether we can name all this the theater of the future. However, we are interested in working on unique productions one would never expect from a routine theater. Applying our vision of the theater we create wondrous things to which spectators respond in an entirely different way. We don’t influence intellectual perceptions, rather we appeal to spectators’ human feelings and senses. For example, spectators might fail to grasp the subject, however they emotionally respond to a strange sound on the stage. Unexpectedly, the body responds to this sound, and then the brain steps in trying to perceive what has happened. Thus a strange sound is perceived emotionally, and only after that people start reflecting on their new impression. What happens at this point is most interesting: The spectator invents a story which should explain these new feelings and emotions. Though we have to admit that we have never made it a point to discover some universal means of influencing the theater audiences.
— Usually people attend a theater performance in order to watch a story. In your opinion, how should the theater audiences respond to experimental or unconventional productions?
— When a stage production is executed perfectly, the audience should observe the performance, tune in and emotionally participate in the stage acting. Sports fans call it «to root for the team». Yes, spectators should turn into fans. I think that in Ancient Greece actors were athletes, and spectators were fans who participated in a grandiose sacrifice. This vision of the theater is gone. The tragedy as a ritual is virtually non-existent in modern theater. Rituality has gradually ceased away. The theater got focused on reflections over the inner world of a human being, and so theater spectators turned into observers. | 
