| Alla Demidova | |
|---|---|
Alla Demidova at her literary presentation in Moscow, 2009. |
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| Born | Alla Sergeyevna Demidova September 29, 1936 Moscow, Russian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Occupation | actress, writer |
| Years active | 1962–now |
| Spouse | Vladimir Valutsky |
| Awards | USSR State Prize (1977) People's Artist of Russia (1984) Order of Friendship (1997) Order of Merit for the Fatherland (IV, 2007) |
| Website | |
| http://www.demidova.ru/ | |
Alla Sergeyevna Demidova (Russian: А́лла Серге́евна Деми́дова; b. 29 September 1936, Moscow) is a Russian actress internationally acclaimed for the tragic parts in innovative plays staged by Yuri Lyubimov in the Taganka Theatre. She was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1977.
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Alla Demidova was born on September 29, 1936 in Zamoskvorechye, Moscow, and spent her first years at the Osipenko (now Sado′vnicheskaya) street. Father Sergey Alekseevich Demidov, of the legendary Russian industrialist’s line,[1] was jailed in 1932 in the course of the Stalinist purges, then was acquitted; in 1941 he joined the Red Army as a volunteer and was killed in 1944 at battle for Warsaw.[2] Alla's mother, Aleksandra Dmitrievna Demidova (née Kharchenko) worked at the Economy department of the Moscow University (later at Cybernetics and economic programming section)[3] Mother and daughter spent the War years in Vladimir to the East of Moscow. Demidova remembered her childhood as full of peers' cruelty and general lack of warmth. "I've got too little love from others in those early years to remember them fondly", she later wrote.[4] At the age of five, answering people's questions as to her future ambitions, she was already mentioning 'becoming greatactress' (pronouncing two words as one) as her ultimate goal. It was on the amateur school stage that she started acting and recite poetry, enjoying her first taste of success.[2]
As a schoolgirl, Demidova studied drama in the well-known Moscow actress T. Schekin-Krotova' course. Having graduated, she tried to join the prestigious Shchukin Theatrical School but failed (due to certain flaws in diction)[4] and enrolled in the Moscow University's Economics department which she was graduated from in 1959[5] and went on reading political economy at the University's Philosophy department for some time.[6] As a third year student she joined the MGU Students' Theater, led first by Igor Lipsky, then Rolan Bykov.[7] Under the latter's guidance, Demidova in 1958 played Lida Petrusova in a successful Such Kind of Love (Такая любовь) Pavel Kohout's adaptation which amounted to her major stage debut.[8] "Subtleness in which she managed to bring out her heroine's repressed sufferings later became Demidova's trademark feature which she was continuously going back to and developing in the course of her career", a biographer wrote years later.[2] Her second attempt to join the Schukin School was successful. She joined the class of Anna Orochko who proved to be a source of whole host of new ideas (one being an attempt to employ her young protégé in the role of Hamlet).[7] While a Schukun School student Demidova performed in Vakhtangov Theater's production of Death of Gods (Гибель богов, cast as a bikini-clad showgirl),[4] Princess Turandot (a slave girl) and in A Cooking Girl («Стряпуха»). It was then that she's been noticed for the first time by the French theater man Jean Vilar who, after having watched her fencing in a gymnasium, informally invited her to join the Théâtre National Populaire theater.[9] On Schukin stage she's got the leading role in Aleksander Afinogenov's The Distant Things (Далёкое), Mrs. Moon in The Scandalous Affair of Mr. Kettle and Mrs. Moon (after John Priestley's play of the same title) and Madame Frisette in Frisette (Eugène Marin Labiche adaptation.[8] In 1957 Demidova debuted on screen in director Zakhar Agranenko's The Leningrad Symphony, followed by Nine Years of One Year (dir. Mikhail Romm, 1961, student), What's a Relativity Theory? (Semyon Raitburg, 1963, student again) and in Komask (1965, chief meteorologist), which she remembered later as being "a kind of reconnaissance".[10]
In 1964 Demidova graduated from Schukin School, having presented Mrs. Young role (in Yuri Lyubimov's adaptation of Bertholt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan) as her diploma work.[2] "In Good Person she could come out, make a gesture and make this gesture instantly ingrained in people's memory. Her role was not the leading one there but that didn't matter. Her physical presence effect was enormous", colleague Boris Khmelnitsky later remembered.[11] Dissatisfied with the way she's been treated by the director, though, the young actress tried to return to the Vaktangov's (and failed), spent several months in Mayakovsky Theater, again without any role to cling to, and in the end of 1964 returned to Taganka where she's been employed regularly but mostly in insubstantial roles, quite for some time.[4] The reason for Lyubimov's mistrust might have been the fact that in her first leading role in Taganka, that of Vera in A Hero of Our Time, Demidova, admittedly, "failed miserably", being just "a young theater school graduate facing a giant of Lermontov". Several years of hard work in mass scenes and pantomimes followed as a kind of reprimand. The master-and-servant type of relationship that formed between the theater director and the actress in those early never altered even after the latter have become a major film star.[9]
The leading role in Igor Talankin's (heavily censored)[12] Daylight Stars (Дневные звезды, 1966), that of Olga Berggolts, proved to be the starting point of Demidova's film career. "That one was very close to my heart and artistically intriguing too. I had to play not just any woman, but a poet which involved exploring the process of poetry's getting born, and also finding this thin balance between my heroine’s every day life tribulations and the film’s sublime philosophical essense", she said in Yunost magazine 1968 interview. Interestingly, this success did very little to dispel Demidova’s intrinsic mistrust with cinema as an art form. "What a pity such a full-bloodied role had been given to me in film, not on in theater", she complained in the same interview.[10]
1968, when six of her films came out, was the year of Demidova's major breakthrough. Some of her earlier roles (like that in Vladimir Basov's War-time thriller Shield and Sword) Demidova later dismissed as unworthy of any attention, others she regarded as curious for some specific reasons (like that af a comissar in Two Comrades Were Serving). More significant for her was the SR party activist Maria Spiridonova's character in The 6th of July (1968), a very much 'against-the-grain' kind of person, the actress later said to have been in many ways identifying herself with.[5]
I’ve never been a dissident, I’ve always shied politics. Could it be because of my grandmother having been staroobryadka? Whatever the reason, 1917 for me had always felt like a catastrophe and never in my life did I play politics - neither in reality, nor in films, excepting of course Spiridonova, but then again, she was Lenin's opponent. - Alla Demidova, 2006.[9]
Demidova's performance as Liza Protasova in The Living Corpse (1968) was praised by critics,[9] even if Vladimir Vengerov's film itself was not.[13] In 1969 she appeared in Igor Talankin's Tchaikovsky as Yulia von Mekk.
1968 was also the year Demidova started to get major roles in Taganka, Elmyra in Molliere’s Tartuffe being first in the line.[14] Much lauded was Demidova's pani Bozhentska in the adaptation of Jerzy Stawiński's Rush Hour (the role she soon came to detest and refused to do anything with).[15] 'Outstanding' was the word that's been most often used in regard of her Gertrude next to Vladimir Vysotsky's Hamlet (1971).[8][16] "In a play both phantasmagorical and strikingly real, Demidova artfully portrayed a woman who was misguided rather than vile," critic Raisa Benjash wrote.[17] Critics started to speak of the acresses' unique ability of approaching new, never seen before dimensions in classics, bringing new light and shade to the well known characters of Russian theater's past. All the while Demidova felt she'd been underrated and ignored at Taganka; despite theater critics' later assertions that it was Lyubimov who 'discovered' her, she herself insisted to have been totally out of place in the theater and classified herself as a much more Efros-type actress. This was later corroborrated by her colleagues. "She definitely wasn't what one may call a director's favourite and her life in Taganka was difficult. She managed to retain her individuality and refine her distinctive style only by using all of her inner strength, intelligence and talent", Veniamin Smekhov wrote.[15]
The results of the Gertrude triumph were ambivalent. On the one hand, film directors started pestering Demidova with countless scenarios, on the other, (as one critic put it years later) "having realised that in depicting intellectual reflection and spiritual struggle she just had no equal they were all trying to exploit most obvious aspects of her rather unusial image". Nevertheless, much furore was caused by Demidova as Arcadina in Yu. Karasik's Seagull 1970 movie (based on Anton Chekhov's classic), where the actress, making her character going through unexpected metamorphoses, totally outplayed her colleagues.[18] Demidova excelled as a new-fangled (and rather attractive at that) Lesia Ukrainka in I’m Going to You (Иду к тебе, 1971, directed by Nicolay Maschenko). Her Anna Stenton (in All the King’s Men, 1971)[19] won praises from Oleg Efremov (who was heard saying: "Of all our actresses, Demidova’s eyes are the liveliest").[15] Demidova played Lizaveta Pavlovna in Andrey Tarkovsky's The Mirror (1974), then Magic woman in Irina Povolotskaya's Scarlet Flower (Аленький цветочек, 1977), the only fairytale in her film career (which she "single-handedly transformed into a fable", according to critic A.Smolyakov),[20] followed by the impressive Duchess of Marlborough in Yuly Karasik's Glass of Water (1979), facing Kirill Lavrov's Henry of Bolingbroke.[21]
Meanwhile Yuri Lyubimov, invited to direct at Milan's La Scala, left Taganka for Anatoly Efros for a while to reign. The latter chose to stage Cherry Orchard, aiming from the outset to come up with something drastically different from the old-fashioned 'textbook Moscow Art Theater version of the Chekhov's classic.[22] Demidova as a 'modernist' (for some, predictably, - 'decadent')[1] Ranevskaya totally re-vamped the all too familiar character of the classic Russian theater with new aesthetics, tragedy and eccentricity, sentimentalism and irony going hand in hand.[23] Critics were divided in their assessment of Efros' concept and the quality of its overall realisation, but even detractors agreed that what saved the experiment from flopping was Demidova with her powerful performance, supported by Vladimir Vysotsky as Lopatin. "If there was any harmony, it was not her-with-others, rather her with the Orchard’s truly poetic self", critic Emma Polotskaya remarked.[22] "Initially the <Chekhov’s> heroine for me was totally alien. As time went by, I was beginning to see myself as ‘my Ranevskaya’ more and more", Demidova said years later.[24] One of the Efros interpretation's harshest critic was Lyubimov who described Demidova's performance as 'mannered' and 'grotesque'. Tellingly, several years later he asked Demidova to 'repeat her Ranevskaya algorythm' in the final act of Chekhov's Three Sisters (1981) where her Masha, ironically aloof, had to burst out into disturbing overemotionalism in the end.[22] Among Demidova's other roles in Taganka of the time were Raskolnikov's mother in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1979) and Marina Mnishek in Pushkin's Boris Godunov (1982), promptly banned by the Ministry of Culture's special decree (and premiered on June 12, 1988).[25]
In the late 1970s Demidova and Vysotsky, having gravitated into a strong tandem (where, as one critic put it, "ice and fire clashed"), both irritated by Lyubimov's artistic dictatorship, started to experiment with ideas of their own.[2] "We both realized that a massive, colourful theatrical show was becoming old-fashioned and the new era of a private, chamber theater was approaching", Demidova recalled.[4] Having in mind exclusively Vysotsky and Demidova 'solo project', Vitaly Vulf translated into Russian Tennessee Williams' Out Cry, a play for two characters: an acting bother and sister. Lyubimov saw it as nothing more that an 'ego act' (seeing as the original had been written for a couple of Broadway stars). Fellow Taganka actors apparently took their bosses' side.[4] "As the first Act was ready, we've made the local advertisement, inviting everybody to come and see. Only two people showed up: <designer> David Borovsky and his friend. What would you expect: it's... theater!" Demidova later bitterly remarked.[9] The experiment was shelved, along with another project, their own version of Jean Racine's Phaedra. Months later Vysotsky died. "It was only after he was gone that I suddenly realized how much he'd meant to me as a partner... He was an exceptional actor, especially in his last years, the one who reigned the audience by literally magnetizing the air around him", she later remembered.[4]
In the early 1980s Demidova started to produce her own recital shows, each staged as a miniature theater play. Some, being shown on the Soviet TV, became highly popular. In Pushkin's Queen of Spades (directed by Igor Maslennikov, 1982) she not just recited the poem but was acting too, taking upon herself one character after another, "casting a shade of Siver Age over the whole of this three cards' story", as a critic wrote.[20] Highly successful was Demidova’s collaboration with Anatoly Vasilyev in a film The Stone Guest and Other Poems which involved lots of role-juggling too.[20] On stage she recited Anna Akhmatova (Requiem, Poem Without a Hero), Pushkin, Bunin, assorted Silver Age poets.[7] As a director of her own act, Demidova, a highly individual performer, was now being reviewed as an innovator, developing a genre of her own. There was one major influence, though: that of Giorgio Strehler, then a Theatre of Nations director, who in May 1987 invited Efros with two of his shows (At the Bottom and Cherry Orchard) to be performed in Milan. "It was Strehler who shaped my whole concept of the way those solo performances could be staged and designed... An easel, a candle, some music, synchronized translator - that was his initial composition which since then I've made my own", Demidova was saying later.[9] "Just music and me, totally alienated from the audience: that was the idea that since then remained unchanged", she said in a 2010 interview.[26] Theater specialists later argued that it was in her solo stage projects that Demidova managed finally to fulfil what's been left of her potential that Lyubimov and Efros, two renown Russian theater directors failed to notice and use.[27]
After Lyubimov's exile to the West, Demidova gradually withdrew from the Taganka Theatre. In 1986 Efros revived Cherry Orchard with Demidova in the leading role. The production won the BITEF 1st Prize, then had a successful run in Paris, albeit in the wake of its director’s death.[22] With Lyubimov coming back, she returned too, to play Marina Mnishek (Boris Godunov, 1988) and Donna Anna (Feast Amidst Plague, 1989), the two roles loaded with deeply tragic overtones.[2][8]
In 1988 Alla Demidova joined forces with theater director Roman Viktyuk who, driven much by her enthusiasm towards the role, staged Marina Tsvetayeva's Phaedra. "The result was intriguing, it just never fitted into Taganka's repertoire. We were invited to festivals, toured a lot but were being accused by Lyubimov for allegedly exploiting 'his brand'. As an opportunity presented itself, I simply bought the whole production off: costumes, decorations and all, never sure what to do with this purchase," Demidova later remembered.[26] In the Modern History of Soviet and Russian Cinema Phaedra was described as the best Soviet theater production of the 1980s and arguably Viktyuk's most serious work.[28]
Electra (in Sophocles' Electra) which premiered in Athens, Greece, in 1992, happened to be Demidova's final role under Lyubimov.[8] The production itself was short-lived, but the actress's performance again was praised (notably, by Literaturnaya Gazeta's Mikhail Shvydkoy who decades later was to become Russia's Minister of Culture).[29] As the major conflict broke out in the theater and Taganka divided into two camps, Demidova, grudges of the past aside, went to support Lyubimov.[2] "I just coulndn’t understand how could pupils betray their master", she later explained.[9] Once it became obvious the confrontation started to seriously undermine the quality of Taganka's work, Demidova left it for good.
| External videos | |
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| Her Life's Line.. TV Kultura, 2002 (fragment) Alla Demidova speaks of psychic energy and the way she uses it on stage, specifically in interpreting Greek tragedy. |
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In 1992 Demidova's own A Theater opened - with the production of Phaedra. Then in 1993 came out Quartet, Heiner Mueller's play based on de Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons novel. Staged by Demidova in collaboration with Greek director Theodore Tersopulos, it introduced to the Russian audiences the work of a German playwright.[2] Quartet, according to theater critic A. Smolyakov, proved to be one of the best theater premieres in Russia that year.[30] The A Theater's next work (again with the Greek master), Mueller's version of Medea, premiered on April 29, 1996; Russian critics saw it as an attempt to create the new style of a contemporary tragedy - by "breaking through into origins, an arch-myth, buried in human subconscious". Collaboration with Tersopulos changed Demidova’s perception of theater completely: "After having played Electra, Phaedra and Medea all things that went before tasted insipid," she remarked. Finally, in 2001 Hamlet the Master Class was staged by A Theater and the Greek Attis theater. This production, premiered at a Moscow Theater Olympiad, featured Demidova as Hamlet (her early tutor Anna Orochko’s idea thus having finally been revived), as well as Gertrude and Ophelia.[7]
In the 1990s Demidova still appeared in several fims: as Lebyadkina (The Obsessed, 1992), Miss Minchin (Little Princess, 1997) and Elizaveta Alekseevna (Unseen Traveller, 1998).[2] For two years she's been teaching at the Schukin School (refusing any payment, "so as not to feel tied up to it") but left disappointed with young pupils' attitude.[26] Now firmly under impression that theater both in Russia and the world was in a deep crisis, Demidova quit it completely. "In the past several last years I came to realise: what I do like, my audience doesn't. So I left theater for good", she explained in an interview.[31]
In 2000-2002 Demidova appeared on screen twice, as Lora Lyons (in Remembering Sherlock Holmes Russian TV series) and mad Elsa (in Letters to Elsa, a film based on Arcady Vysotsky's screenplay).[9] In Boris Blank's Tairov’s Death (2004) Demidova played Alisa Koonen. "That was the role I was really longing for, being really intrigued by this character, but there wasn't any dramatic scenes in this film at all, and the script was bizarre, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, I managed to achieve some things: a portrait similarity, reproducing her voice and plastics - people who remembered her assured me as much," she later commented.[31] Interestingly, at one point Yuri Lyubimov was supposed to play Tairov, but was hospitalised and substituted by Mikhail Kozakov. For Kira Muratova's The Tuner (2005), Demidova's won the Nika Award and the Golden Eagle Award for Best Actress the same year, having portrayed a kind of 'modern day Ranevskaya', as she put it, a pure and sad post-Chekhov character.[9] After two more films - Igor Maslennikov's Russian Money (2006, based on Ostrovsky’s play) where she played Murzavetskaya, and S. Kostin's historical documentary Waiting for the Empress (about Maria Fyodorovna)[32] - Demidova declared she had lost all interest in being filmed.[33] All through the 2000s she was staging her poetry recitals regularly (performing in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Israel) and continued to do so in the 2010s.