THE PLACE WHERE YOU BECOME MORE HUMANE

YUĞ Theatre can be called the most unusual theatre in the whole of the Caucasus. It has no traditional stage, while actors resemble wise shamans, who awaken ancient memory in the audience with their play and return them to their origins. The director of YUĞ Theatre, Tarlan Rasulov, told R+ how one of the most mystical temples Melpomene lives on and off the stage.

- Tell us about the history of your theatre.

- YUĞ Theatre was established in 1989 at the Azerbaijan Drama Theatre on the initiative of Vaqif Ibrahimoglu and Hasanaga Turabov. It all started with a theatre studio, which "grew" into a full theatre and received the status of a state-owned theatre. The name of the theatre comes from the funeral ritual of ancient Turks. When one of rulers, military chiefs and heroes died, special actors-"yuğcular" were invited. They staged theatrical performances, which focused on the life of the deceased and his exploits. Incidentally, theatre originated not in ancient Greece, as is commonly believed, but in the East. Ancient Turkic peoples had various folk games, performances, rituals of shamanism and other imitation ceremonies that can be considered the first theatre art.

Our theatre has no stage as such - all the action takes place at the site, on the four sides of which there are several seats. It's always cool here, the acoustics are unusual and it's difficult to immediately determine where the entrance and exit are - the theatre is located inside an old bath, which is over 150 years old! Performances in YUĞ Theatre are aimed at a very close contact with the audience. We don't erect boundaries between actors and spectators. We don't have static seats. Chairs can always be rearranged at your own discretion. Our room is flexible, which gives us plenty of opportunities.

 - There are legends about the unique technique and special philosophy of YUĞ. A little bit more, and the experience of your theatre will be studied as a manual...

- There's no secret at all. The whole point is about the unique and only creative concept in the Caucasus - "psychosophy" ("psyche" - soul, "sophia" - wisdom), which was developed by our late chief director and founder of YUĞ Theatre, Vaqif Ibrahimoglu. Psychosophy examines the scope of the priorities of man, his own ideas about his inner world and his possibilities. YUĞ Theatre involves contact with the audience not at the emotional and conscious level, but at the spiritual and unconscious level. During the actor's action on the stage certain energy and a certain mental promise are transferred, which "wakes up" deep intuitive feelings recorded in man's genetic memory. Something similar underlies the creative practice of the well-known Russian director Anatoliy Vasilyev. Our actors have a different approach to their roles. In preparation for the play, they go through a kind of psychic initialization - self-consciousness. To understand yourself and determine the way of self-expression, it's necessary to know the basics of the analytical psychology of Jung, the irrationalist doctrine of Schopenhauer, the mathematics of Vasilyev, the geometry postulates of Lobachevskiy, the philosophical theories of Deleuze and even the basic tenets of Lotfi Zadeh's theory of fuzzy sets. When the famous mathematician learned that while preparing for performances, the Azerbaijani theatre YUĞ relies on his famous theory, he was very surprised.

- What performance is the "favourite" of the audience?

- It's difficult to determine ... The audience welcomes our productions with warmth and doesn't skimp on applause. "Unknown Axundzada" - a kind of mix of three works of Mirza Fatali Axundov, "Fana" based on the novel "Loss" by writer and publicist Orxan Fikratoglu, "The method of digging a grave" based on a novel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, "Taboo" based on the novel "Bad Woman" by Borges, "On the Border" staged by Polish director Tomasz Lesinski on the basis of a play by Slawomir Mrozek and many other performances.

- What is theatre for you, director and producer of YUĞ? Surely it's not just a job...

- Theatre is a special world, another reality, sometimes a mirror, sometimes a magnifying glass that shows the processes taking place in our society. It only seems that a lot is going on here as if by magic. In fact, any premier, performance and production entails a huge number of nerves, labour and talent spent on the implementation of a creative idea. It's only then that "special magic" arises, because of which the viewer has been aspiring to the theatre for several centuries. We spend a huge amount of time on preparing the performance. The production itself takes from several days to two weeks. For example, the master spent three days to produce one of the last performances of Vaqif Ibrahimoglu "Hello from Kafka" based on a novel by Franz Kafka. Vaqif gathered 10 actors and gave them homework - read Kafka and prepare a short text, in which you need to describe your own conclusions about what you read. After all, it's not enough for an actor to play his role professionally, it's more important to understand your mission and experience the nature and causes of certain actions by the character. This was followed by a long process of discussion and reflection, the end result of which was the production itself. Success on the stage depends on how efficient the preparation for the play was. We believe that if a director is going to stage, for example, Chekhov, at the theatre, he should read all the works of Anton Chekhov and study his biography. The director should determine how close he is to Chekhov and how close Chekhov is to him.

- By what criteria was the YUĞ team put together?

- All of our actors are the best and promising students of the University of Culture and Arts - they've gone through the school of Vaqif Ibrahimoglu and have been working here since the birth of the theatre. We give them complete freedom in the choice of material and staged solutions.

- How do think you should interest the viewer and attract him to the theatre?

- We don't set such a goal, so the commercial aspect is not important for us. It's like selling an icon at an auction in the church. All this is not right and somewhat against human nature. To develop the theatre and ensure that it fills a decent niche and raises the status of your country, you need to understand the specifics of the work of actors and have infinite love for your profession. Our audience is special for whom theatre is not a distraction and entertainment, but experience and a process of creation. YUĞ is visited by a lot of young people who are fed up with the same type of mindless TV programmes and the Internet. Young people need not only information but something else, which is deep in their hearts. And it's precisely the theatre that has a high mission - to fill the spiritual gap that arises in contact with society. And no other art form will give it to you.

- Tell us about the last production of YUĞ Theatre - the play "Fight".

- This performance was staged based on the ancient epic "Kitabi D?d? Qorqud". According to many orientalists, some mythological scenes of the epic, for example, the story about Qaragoz gave food to create a similar story in ancient Greece. The image of Tapagoz in "Kitabi Dada Qorqud", in comparison with the image of Polyphemus from the poem "The Odyssey" by Homer, can be considered even more ancient. There is another version related by Dada Qorqud. It's possible that he's the prototype of the Scandinavian supreme god Odin, who, according to the epic, "came from the distant land of the Turks" and was "a wise man, shaman, connoisseur of runes and tales". I "encoded" all these coincidences and signs in the script of the play "Fight". While we were preparing for the performance, we studied a lot of literature on world mythology and learnt a lot from each other. In total, we prepared for the performance for 3-4 months. We spent a long time debating, arguing and discussing the history of mythology, the plot and the characters. In our theatre, the actors are required not to portray the characters of the play on stage, but to play themselves. This is one of the basic principles of the psychosophic method. After all, the basic principle of the performance of an actor is not just true feelings, but the ability to communicate thoughts and emotions not at the level of consciousness, but at the subconscious level and in our case - at the unconscious level. The actor must be able to establish contact with the audience, enter into a dialogue with it and at the same time, show a stately person on the stage regardless of the character he's playing. The viewer may not understand anything from the play, but he will have a feeling, which he will experience again and again for a long time. Emotions experienced by the actor must be genuine. If an actor can do something believing it as much as possible, he can play the role as correctly as possible.

- What do you think is the merit of the theatre? What does it give the audience?

- "The theatre should be the place where the viewer encounters himself. Revealing a man's spiritual basis, we magnify moral principles too, and only talent makes it possible to achieve success on the field." Thus, in one of his last interviews, Vaqif Ibrahimoglu identified the main problem of YUĞ Theatre. Theatre makes people more humane, better and cleaner. It teaches them to analyze and think.