In the Lithuanian Russian Drama Theater (LRDT), intensive rehearsals of the musical "Into the Woods" began with the actors and guest performers of the LRDT. The premiere of the musical for adults, which is popular in the West and richly awarded, is scheduled for November 29 and 30 on the main stage of the LRDT.
The musical by the author of one of the world's most famous musicals, Stephen Sondheim, is directed by Vilius Malinauskas, the musical director is Joseph Bates (JAV), costume designer - Jolanta Rimkutė, stage designer - Kristina Kasparavičienė, performance choreographer - Leokadija Dabužinskaitė. The performance will be shown in Russian with Lithuanian subtitles.
The roles in the musical "Into the Woods" are created by the actors of the LRDT Aleksandr Agarkov, Yevgenija Karpikova, Aleksandra Metalnikova, Valentin Novopolskij, Telman Ragimov, Artur Svorobovič, Andrius Darela, as well as well-known actors and performers who performed well in the open audition, Vaidotas Baumila, Girmantė Vaitkutė, Larisa Kalpokaitė, Elžbieta Latėnaitė, Monika Valkūnaitė, Tomas Žaibus, Rokas Spalinskas and others.
V. Malinauskas, who has considerable experience in directing musicals, says that he is happy to take up this world's favorite genre, working with great pleasure and excitement, because musical traditions are still missing in Lithuania, professional musical creators and performers are not yet trained in our country, so it is a great event that the LRDT musical Famous American musician, conductor, educator Joseph Bates works in the Into the Woods team.
"The invitation of Olga Polevikova, head of LRDT, to stage a musical was a pleasant surprise for me, especially since the musical material and musical director are excellent. This is a very high-quality and professionally "forged" musical, and its author Steven Sondheim is one of the most famous living composers and lyricists. There is not a single scene in his musical that you could cut out or refuse, because everything is very logically and technically cleanly composed," says V. Malinauskas.
You have considerable experience in directing musical performances and musicals, you are a drama director, a graduate of Rimos Tumin's course. How much does directing a drama help when directing, and what are the specifics of creating a musical performance?
I really like musical theater and the musical genre. If there are many components in a drama performance, then in a musical there are even more of them - this is where music and dance appear, which may or may not be present in a drama performance. In a classic, well-arranged musical, all the elements - dramatic acting, music, singing, dancing - are harmoniously and naturally interwoven into one event, and the director or the audience does not have any questions as to why the performer started singing or dancing from this or that.
In a good musical, the music and dance are natural – in time and place. The specificity of the musical is that the relationship between the musical material and the dramatic material is very important here, and the director's task is to solve the dramatic scenes in such a way and rise to such a necessity that the actor has no other means of expression to move to the next scene of the work, except to sing. You have to figure out how to heat up the conflict between the characters to such a degree that instead of yelling at each other they start singing, or how to raise the love scene to such a level that the lovers can no longer contain themselves and sing.
Speaking of musical theater, maybe someone would like to compare its genres - operetta and musical, because in operetta there is also singing and dancing, and to call a musical a light, entertaining genre, but my teacher Rimas Tumins, speaking about the genres of drama theater, said that at all there are no such things as drama, comedy, tragedy, but there is one human genre in which everything happens as in life: next to tears, next to laughter, and everything is a kind of tragicomedy with a little good farce - then you get what is really happening outside the window, in our life. I think this can be applied to musical theater as well.
It is clear that there is a great need for professional musicals in Lithuania, but the musical culture and professional level have not yet been formed.
Unfortunately, there are no musical theater directing studies in Lithuania and there never were, even though such study programs are popular in the West. It is true that drama directors look a little mockingly at those studying musical theater direction, who, perhaps, did not enroll in drama direction, but chose an allegedly easier path of study. But directing musical performances is really not easier, well, maybe only because some scenes are decided by the choreographer (the director smiles), perhaps even more complicated, because it is necessary to control more elements, and experience does not help at all, because when creating each performance, you start from scratch, as if learning to walk all over again.
Although we have several legendary Lithuanian musicals, I think that there is a huge need for musicals in Lithuania today. In Lithuania, the image of the musical has formed as a light genre, superficial, we usually consider the musical as an entertaining, festive genre, but in fact a musical can be both deep and fun, and very funny or tragic.
What fascinates the audience about S. Sondheim's musicals, of which in Lithuania we probably know best the production of "Svynio Tod: Demon Barber" a dozen years ago, in which opera soloists sang?
In the West, S. Sondheim is very popular, he is called the most famous living musical author, a great storyteller who creates melodious music and great texts. This only shows that there is a lot of everything in the world, and we in Lithuania are forced to settle for an extremely poor selection of performances of this genre. The charm of S. Sondheim's musicals is manifested not only in the wonderful music and story, but also in how masterfully the author juggles all the theatrical tools, the same, let's say, genres, when near completely art comedy an absolutely profound Strindbergian drama emerges from close scenes or characters, or a seemingly superficial and well-known plot is filled with deep philosophy.
Complaining about our lives, burying our worries, coming to the musical for entertainment, we can also get depth in the musical form that is attractive for thinking in S. Sondheim's musicals.
The musical "Into the Woods" is based on the plots of five fairy tales, although the performance is aimed at an adult audience. What is your personal attitude towards the world of fairy tales, especially in S. Sondheim's unexpected treatment? What is the main idea of the piece?
Here we have combined five famous fairy tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Baker and His Wife, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel. The musical "Into the Woods" was born already in the postmodern period, in 1987, and in it the deconstruction of fairy-tale plots is a much more difficult dramaturgical quest.
The main point of this musical is that all fairy tales begin with wishes, but we rarely think about how the fairy tale ends when those wishes come true. Then it turns out that we didn't want that, we didn't want it that way, we didn't dream about it, but after all, it seems, we wanted such concrete and precise things. In the musical, Cinderella's mother asks her daughter from the grave if she really knows what she wants, because if you really know, your wish will always come true.
Our brains (we try to play with their image in the play's posters) are stuffed with stereotypes since childhood, which are mostly taught to us by fairy tales, which have been followed since the seventeenth century, when the lawyer Charles Perrault wrote folk tales about Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and many others. Cinderella must definitely marry a prince, and must be handsome, have children, that Little Red Riding Hood must in no way stray from the track, go directly to her grandmother, although she does not want to go to any grandmother at all, and would rather hide and stuff some sweet. Stagnant stereotypes lead us to those desires that we want out of impulse, and not in reality, because you are afraid of not wanting something that everyone else wants.
In one of the songs of the musical, the Witch warns us to think carefully about what we tell children: "Beware of deceitful words, children hear us. Be afraid of treacherous actions, your lesson will be useful to the children." But maybe I won't reveal the libretto of the play, in order to create intrigue for the audience.
This time the musical will be in Russian, which is not very common in the context of Lithuanian musical theaters. Does this language not cause difficulties for the creative team and Lithuanian performers?
Yes, this will be the first production and performance of this musical in Russian that I know of. The excellent translator Pavel Šišinas made an extremely complex translation from English especially for this performance - it is a poetic translation that has to "fit into the sheet music". Translators understand that this is an extremely difficult job, especially when translating from English, where many words are monosyllabic (for example, in Lithuanian the only monosyllabic noun is "dog", the others are pronouns, emoticons or random words). Although there are more monosyllabic words and their forms in the Russian language, they are basically similar to Lithuanian. Mr. Shishin is an expert not only in Russian, but also in the old Irish or Celtic language, so the translation of the musical libretto is filled with shades of a literary fairy tale.
With the creative group of the performance, in the jargon of musicians, you work "in one key". Perhaps this is not your first work with costume designer Jolanta Rimkutas and scenographer Kristina Kasparavičienes?
Certainly not the first - almost all my performances are created together with these artists. This time, the scenography will be conceptually clean, so that the audience will pay more attention to the impressive costumes. She has been creating a lot lately in Latvia, active in the world of fashion design, Jolanta has long wanted to create costumes for a fairy tale - not to dress actors, but to create costumes for fifteen characters. There will be about forty costumes she designed in the musical!
The musical director of the show, Joseph Bates, is a world-renowned composer, conductor and vocal teacher of operas and musicals. Those who have heard more about him are surprised that a professional of this level comes to work in Lithuania.
It is a real miracle that he will work in Vilnius, at the Russian Drama Theater, with our performers and actors. Joseph is a very professional person, and he has staged the musical "Into the Woods" four times, he knows every note and nuance by heart. He is a private teacher of Broadway stars, a famous ace in his field, who himself sang in operas and musicals in his youth, and later directed them.
Let's keep in mind that nobody teaches the tricks of singing in musicals in Lithuania, there is a lack of pedagogues, and the tradition of musicals is still being formed, so a person who has graduated from the Academy of Music and Theater with a specialty in opera singing or jazz vocals is not yet ready to sing professionally in musicals. So to have an educator of this caliber come and work with our creators is definitely a unique event and will be an invaluable experience for the artists who are currently working very hard in vocal rehearsals. It is to be hoped that as the demand for musicals increases and professional premieres become more frequent, the future of the musical genre in Lithuania will be much brighter, when we will not say "oh, here's that American musical", but will create our musical tradition on its foundations.
Interviewed by Laura Pačtauskaitė
