On January 26, the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre was inaugurated in Moscow. The architectural bureau Wowhaus reconstructed a complex of buildings for the theater at 23 Tverskaya in a short time - about a year after joining the K. S. Stanislavsky's new artistic director - Boris Yukhananov, who started the rebranding of the theater and renovation of its premises. The first part of the new name of the Yukhananov theater is borrowed from the "ARS Electrotheatre", arranged in this building in 1915 by the jeweler Abram Gekhtman - at that time cinemas were called "electrotheatres". In the new name, the word "electrotheatre" sounds not so much retrospectively as cocky; The logo, with a portrait of Stanislavsky in an electric light bulb, makes an equally mysterious impression - according to Yukhananov, the point is that the renovated theater “brings light”. One of the main tasks of the theater is “a synthesis of a radical search with the classical theatrical tradition,” renewal “does not break, but carefully preserves the spirit of the place,” the theater's press release says. The above applies not only to the troupe, from which no one left, but also to the architectural project.
The building was built in 1874 and initially housed "furnished rooms". In 1915–1916, the architect Pavel Zabolotsky rebuilt it in the neoampiric style for Gechtman's "electrotheatre": the facade of that time was preserved almost entirely, and the interiors of the foyer were redone in the 1950s, when the building was moved to expand Tverskaya. Now the theater occupies several buildings: house number 23 in 1915, later completed with a long building in the depths of the courtyard, neighboring house number 25 on Tverskaya; he also owns several small buildings, of a very economic kind, in the courtyard.
All this, docked rather chaotically, by the time of the renovation was not in a very strong state - the architects and designers had to correct the project several times after the start of work, additionally strengthening the historical structures, which in some places were kept "on parole." Again, in the process of work, it turned out that the heating mains laid in the courtyard needed to be removed underground by the city authorities, which slowed down the implementation of the project - the arrangement of the courtyard and the small stage had to be postponed to the second stage of work. Meanwhile, the process of reconstruction turned out to be, albeit difficult, but fascinating, the architects admit: in particular, they managed to find one of the rails with which the building was moved when Tverskaya Street expanded. The reconstruction was carried out quickly, both thanks to the efforts of everyone who worked on the project, and because it was paid for from private funds.
The main plot of the reconstruction, since it was intended for a completely experimental theater, was, of course, the stage. All spectator seats were removed from the box of the main stage, turning it into a completely empty space, or rather, a space open for various transformations. Chairs for spectators can now be arranged as desired; you can sit on a wooden floor.
“The auditorium seems to be hanging in space,” says Oleg Shapiro. - He has no room for grates: the top is a rehearsal hall and administrative premises, and below is a foyer and a cafe. Therefore, we have placed all the structures needed to hang the scenery at the top of the existing volume of the stage; in particular, 120 winches located on the sides of the hall box make it possible to place stage structures and decorations anywhere in the space. Video, audio and other equipment are attached to the same lattice”- this stage has many possibilities from the point of view of modern theater, involving a variety of non-standard moves, of which the spectator's participation in the performance is probably the simplest thing that comes to mind.
The area of the main stage box is 423.9 m2, it is long and high. The walls are covered with white gypsum panels in a zigzag shape, ideal for good acoustics; in front of them, with a small gap, is a rectangular lattice of thin black racks; visually, it supports the theme of an equally checkered ceiling design, and practically serves to mount lamps facing white walls, whose ribbed shape adds a distinct note of eccentricity to an incorporeal light network (more than three hundred lighting options are provided, including different colors with different dynamics of changing the backlight) …
In other words, the viewer will feel the otherness of the space of the main stage as soon as he gets inside. Entering, we find ourselves inside a theatrical machine: if Meyerhold, for example, set his circle with mechanisms in the center of the stage, then here the audience and actors are in the center, and the machine is around, and they all play some, each their own, role in the director's idea … Not that this effect is completely new - rather, it follows trends in contemporary theater; the mechanization of the theater space surrounding the audience may resemble a circus, for example, on Vernadsky Avenue. Not that all the mechanisms are open - it will probably depend on the performance; but the black lattice itself, with illuminated ribbed walls, already creates a feeling of maximum openness, exposure and minimal decoration of the theater - in many ways the opposite of a classic theater built on camouflage. For example, it is known that the recently restored baroque plaster decor in the auditorium of the Bolshoi Theater also served and is serving to improve acoustics; here, instead of gilded curls, there is whiteness, a geometrically simple, although complexly illuminated form and something in front of it, partly similar to scaffolding, to the unwrapped lines of a perspective construction of a drawing, but in essence - showing the structural basis of a theater, inevitably tied to a grid of spatial structures. Entering the auditorium - it is also the stage, the audience finds themselves inside the space that has been drawn and prepared for performance, mastered by the human imagination, almost inside the perspective construction of the picture. I will say more than that: the audience gets inside this structure as soon as they enter the theater, but more on that later.
The only classic element in the hall is a balcony, a subject of protection; it is red with an exquisite wooden handrail.
The rest of the building, or rather a few buildings lined up around the core of the scene, exist as follows. The façade has, of course, been meticulously restored, including new doors that mimic historic doors; double-glazed windows are framed with wooden frames. Inside, on the one hand, thoroughly cleansed elements of old architecture and emphatically neat new inclusions interact everywhere. On the other hand, the architects, in their own words, looked at the building through the eyes of actors who call the lower rooms of the wardrobes “hell” and the stage “heaven”. Indeed, the wardrobe arranged in the formerly empty basement is no stranger to "hellfire" already starting from the staircase leading down: the walls are covered with panels of polished copper (remember the pans), the light in the spotlights is warm. However, subtle humor can only be discerned by a warned and attentive viewer; besides, in the theater it is quite appropriate, it sets you in a fantastic mood. Reasoning further in the same way, one can imagine the black plastic pipes in front of the entrance as a reminder of the trumpets of the archangels, although they are more like Pan's flute - which, strictly speaking, is also not alien to the theater, especially one that intends to combine the classics and the modern. It is not for nothing that the first performance in the new building - "Bacchae" by Euripides, translated by Annensky and staged by the Greek Theodoros Terzopoulos.
Meanwhile, from an architectural point of view, it is not so much the references to the Dionysian mysteries and their role in the image of heaven as well as hell that are interesting, but the interaction of Wowhaus architects with the space and details of the historical building and the city. Here, first of all, it is striking that all the preserved classicist decor, and these are caissons with rosettes on the ceiling and balustrades of stairs, the architects cleaned of many layers of paint completely and did not paint again, but covered with transparent varnish. It is clearly seen that the decorative elements are molded from stone chips, rather large, with a lentil grain - you can feel it with your hands. Of course, initially this texture required at least one layer of paint, it was not intended for viewing - the architects reveal it, arranging a kind of "archaeological theater" for the audience - and achieve the desired effect: the foyer, although not literally, has become like a museum. to the ancient ruin, although the whole decor is not that very valuable, Stalinist. But classicizing, which came in handy.
The second similar, and even more radical gesture of revealing the old building for the audience is the pillars in the foyer of the first floor, in the same extension building that once adjoined the Zabolotsky building from the courtyard side. Initially, the architects planned, literally following the image of an "electrotheatre", to make the pillars glow at their full height. Ultimately, they did differently - they completely stripped the metal support rods and left them as they were, painting them with black paint along with rivets and soldered pieces of metal designed, in fact, to support the decorative "skin" of the posts. In a word, the most perfect ecorche. Thanks to which the space of the foyer, saturated with metal, began to resemble the workshop of an old factory, for example, somewhere on Krasny Oktyabr, and again a somewhat theatrical effect arose, reinforced by the sloppiness of welding, of an industrial building turned into a cultural one.
Automated partitions attached to the ceiling on rails move parallel to the rows of supports in the foyer, and the illumination varies in a wide range. Everything is prepared for arranging exhibitions, performances, mini-performances here, for example, preparing the audience for the main performance, or even independent ones. Thus, the main foyer not only precedes the stage as a banal vestibule, but develops and in some way repeats its capabilities; it itself is also partly a stage. There is also an element of almost literal similarity: the cages of the caissons are duplicated by a grid of metal rods with illumination directed to the ceiling and highlighting its geometric logic - it looks like black stripes with illumination reflected by the walls in the hall. The black grid - a common technique - unites the spaces available to viewers into something whole, structurally unified - reminds us that we are all inside a three-dimensional space, which is easiest to understand by drawing into cells. And at the same time he contrasts the magnificent caisson with the simple and technical modern thrust with its simple and clear task, just like in the theater - to carry light.
The ground floor lobby will be accessible to everyone, not just spectators with tickets. Even for visiting the exhibitions held there, it was decided not to take tickets. The loss of two restaurants that used to exist on the first floor of the theater is compensated by the Noor bar; also a bookstore has already been opened, run by the team of the “Word Order” project from St. Petersburg. Another practical thing: six rehearsal halls are located in the building stretched along Tverskaya to Mamonovskiy lane; the theater has got its own shops for the production of scenery and costumes; a ventilation system was installed in the building, which was not there, and all the engineering was completely changed. Make-up rooms are comfortably equipped, where on the ceilings - with a hint, reproduced an old map of the starry sky, and in the corridor - an enlarged sketch of Yukhananov for one of the performances.
But back to the project. As already mentioned, everything that has been done is the first stage. The second, the implementation of which was forcedly delayed, in particular, because of the heating main in the courtyard, involves placement in a small separate wing of the Small Stage of the theater and complete landscaping of the courtyard. The ideas are the same: the space will be diverse, automated-transformable and multifunctional. Nowadays the theater's small courtyard is sloppy (it is especially disfigured by heating pipes), but a typical example of the inner city spaces of the Moscow center. You can enter it to the left of the main entrance to the theater.
It is planned to surround the courtyard with several tiers of metal galleries - they simultaneously resemble fire escapes, balconies of southern cities and continue the mesh of the black metal structure that we liked so much inside. As if the frame of a modern theater has not only grown into the building, but also sprouted outward.
It is planned to move the long edge of the Small Stage box to the wall of the shed being reconstructed in the courtyard, which adjoins the courtyard space. And make this wall drop down. Thus, in winter, when the courtyard is cold, the Small Stage will be a small enclosed space for a small number of spectators, and in summer, the courtyard will become the auditorium, galleries will become a gallery, and the stage will be located in a more familiar way. The courtyard can be accessed both from the lobby of the first floor and along the street.
The emergence of such a theater is a completely logical step in the development of the Wowhaus architectural bureau, which does not build offices, housing, or even a shopping center, but specializes in public spaces of varying degrees of complexity. The architects began their careers at the Praktika Theater on Patriarch's Street; then there was the Strelka courtyard, which became one of the best spaces for concerts and lectures in Moscow and, unfortunately, will soon be closed; "Green Theater", and several more amphitheaters, in particular, recently built into the space
Berlin Architecture Gallery. In a word, the theme of the theater as the apotheosis of public space, which the Romans knew well, is close and familiar to the architects of Wowhaus. In this case, in addition, we are dealing with the reconstruction of a historical building, and here I would like to emphasize a somewhat deeper than usual exposure of the elements of the old architecture of the building, a conscious emphasis on "antiquity." Not having at their disposal an antique ruin dear to the heart of a modern theater-goer, the architects followed the path of the Russian Empire style: they dug up antiquities among Moscow, even if there is not much of it and it is not very ancient - but the image, akin to theatrical scenery, turned out.
By the way, the interiors of the casual, administrative and technical premises of the theater are solved much more calmly: the even color of the walls, coziness and comfort, the walls are occasionally enlivened by graphics; quiet working life, a place to relax. Spaces intended for display, on the contrary, have all the signs that in everyday consciousness are associated with the theatrical backstage. Letting the viewer go backstage, in fact or figuratively, has long been one of the theater's favorite techniques - but in this case, it is interesting that this technique is picked up and reinforced by architecture, which begins to “strip” the building, removing from it a slightly larger layer than is usually required during restoration plaster, allowing viewers to observe not only the theater, as it were, from the inside, but also architecture - also, to some extent, turned inside out.
