by VK
Director-Producer Garik Sukachev gathered journalists after major Russian cultural media sources published reviews of the play “Anarchiya” (“Anarchy”) at the Sovremennik (Contemporary) Theatre. Well-known as a rock musician and less well-known as a film director, Sukachev explained why he had decided to stage the “tHe dYsFUnCKshOnalZ!” by Mike Packer and why he had chosen his friends Mikhail Yefremov and Dmitry Pevtsov to play the punks.
Sukachev could have started his cooperation with the Sovremennik three years ago, when Galina Volchik sent a script for her new play. But Sukachev found the script “unsuitable for the spirit and name of the theatre”. A suitable play was found a year ago, when Sukachev called Mikhail Yefremov. “It is all Mikhail Yefremov’s fault. Ever since we staged the “Villain or the Scream of the Dolphin” at the Moscow Academic Art Theatre 15 years ago, he has kept dragging me to the theatre all the time, I was constantly resisting,” Sukachev says.
“Anarkhiya” was a sellout. “I believe the audience was indeed greeting the actors with exaltation. The play is very modern and regards international problems concerning everyone one way or another. Every theatre is an independent organism. It is a home for people working there and when you enter a group, you see certain moral norms you must take into account. It was a very complicated change for us, because my whole team used to work in the cinema before that. I even asked for permission to work at the Gorky studios, which I was accustomed to.”
The Sovremennik will host four premieres this season. If Sukachev were to share the stage with other directors, he would lack time. “We worked very scrupulously and, although we had only four days for rehearsal of the play at the Sovremennik before the premiere, we were fully prepared. We were working flat out,” Garik Sukachev recalls.
Commenting on plans to return to active musical activities in the near future, Sukachev said that he had new plays, but was opposed to locking himself away from the world in a studio and finishing his new material: “In order to make a good record I need to really miss the process. I cannot do that at the moment, because I am busy with other stuff. But I do not feel sorry about it.”
