LOVE FROM HATE

The 88th theatrical season of Baku's Youth Theatre opened with a staging of Romeo and Juliet by People's Artist of Azerbaijan Cannat Salimova. This play, one of Shakespeare's most famous and beloved tragedies, has been captivating performers, audiences, and directors alike for centuries. The fate of the young lovers from the warring Montague and Capulet families has become the object of rapturous scenic interpretations for many theatres in a range of centuries and countries. It would seem that after Zeffirelli's film, which showed the mores of 16th century Verona with such honesty and poetry, theatrical directors have nothing else to seek out in Shakespeare's tragedy. Even in modern-day Verona, in the Capulet home, in Juliet's bedroom, costumes from the characters of this film are kept, along with the props, furniture, and bed. Tourists are not allowed to photograph the exhibits even for a fee! Then in the courtyard stands a statue of Juliet, which according to a legend thought up by someone for tourists, brings lovers luck when its bosom is rubbed. Tourists of all ages carry out the ritual without embarrassment, genuinely believing that it will work.  Romeo's house (literally two steps around the corner!) was less lucky. Now there's a little restaurant with food made to 16th century recipes. A place quite attractive to tourists. Residents of Verona assert that it was in this house that the Montague family lived, and that it was from there that Romeo left for Padua.  

Before and after

Cannat Salimova offers us her version of the tragedy of the two lovers - and it is arguably more horrible than the one written by Shakespeare. This is because Shakespeare's characters - all of them, without exception! - are destroyed by passions: love, hate, enmity, and again hate. Destructive and ruthless, they bring forth heated emotions and  trembling, get the blood moving and dull reason. In Cannat Salimova's staging, Shakespeare's heroes are killed by an environment devoid of love. The people who kill are people who do not want to change anything in their lives, who do not want to change themselves. The life of the people of Verona is filled with passions of an entirely different order. They are all occupied with matters that are more important than life itself. For that reason they are cold, haughty, ambivalent, and pragmatic. In a world with these values, people rely on common sense and a clear head, and not on emotions and feelings. Here there is no place for Romeo and Juliet's feelings. They are doomed to death from the very beginning. These two, having fallen in love at exactly the wrong time, get in everyone's way - their parents, Escalus, those in the warring clans. They get in everyone's way because they have violated the accustomed way of life in Verona, which is divided into two worlds: the hatred of the Montagues and the hatred of the Capulets. And only the Nurse (Nubar Novruzova) has pity on Juliet. But she, being a practical woman, suggests that Juliet nevertheless marry Paris, whom she does not love. 

Juliet cannot even think of it! When the moment comes to make the tragic decision, she suddenly begins to look like the rag doll she held in the play's first scene. The doll looked like Juliet, and the Nurse used it as a visual aid, flinging it on the floor and lifting it up, flinging it to the floor and lifting it up again! Over and over again, until the scene acquires an ominous tone, even though the Nurse's story was about the girl's early years, how she learned to walk and how she fell. At a certain point in the story the rag doll starts to seem a phantom of Juliet. Things get uncomfortable. The Capulet parents look on all this with gloomy indifference. They have no time for the Nurse's old wives' tales: today they are throwing a ball in honour of their daughter's coming of age. On this day Juliet turns 16, and she still does not know that it will become a dividing line in her fate: a before and after for her meeting with Romeo. Later, dying alongside Romeo's lifeless body, she will be exactly like that doll: helpless before death and decisive - she could not live without love or her lover. Gunel Mammadova acts in this scene dynamically and movingly. The young girl Juliet suddenly becomes strong in her desire to share death with her lover. Later, when Laurence discovers the lovers' bodies, they all come in - Escalus, the Montagues, the Capulets. They come together only to go their separate ways as soon as possible. Preserving their hatred for one another, they hurry on to their everyday affairs, as if unaware that their children are in front of them…

Reality breaks in

Escalus uttered a commonplace - a very short phrase, not even trying to reconcile the families. The death of the teenagers did not unite the warring families. The lovers' bodies remain lying on the platform, alone, with no one to mourn them. Only gravediggers indifferently put their bodies into burial bags. Isn't this like real life? Tragedies now occur too often on the streets of big cities. The reality of today. That's how teenagers die on the streets now. That is also reality, which invades our live from the TV screen. A reality that does not leave the play's director unmoved. The distance between family and loved ones increases, leading to tragedy. The play belongs to the love story genre. A sad story, a story that could happen today in our city or in any other. But it has and will always have a specific address. Just as in this production. Its audience - you and I. On us depends not only who our children grow up to be, but who we ourselves are. How far will we go today in our cynicism? Our betrayal? Our avarice? And how will that reflect on us and our children? The director has the play's action begin and end with Benvolio (Elnur Huseynov). On the bare stage he, lying down, pulls pistachios from his hat and eats them and throws them to the birds, the cast of the play, and with them - us, the audience. The seeds are the seeds of thoughts, which should bloom after we see the play with our own eyes. Benvolio is Romeo's cousin, as well as an unbiased witness to lover's passions and bloody retribution.

Space

Minimalism is an approach that is currently popular with theatrical artists. This staging was one in which the stage was not overloaded with needless objects and details. Shota Glurdzidze (Georgia) lifts up the platform of Juliet's balcony such that it seems to be a bridge between the lovers - a very thin path into the future that could have been, but was not. The settings are indicated through the language of various colours: the Capulets' house, the Montagues' house, Laurence's cell, the square in Verona; or by items of theatrical furniture (a table, a chair). Red carpets accompany all actions, and sometimes mark places where blood is spilled or has already been spilled. Cherubs appear with a white sheet, which will later become a shroud for the lovers; they later carry in a red covering that symbolizes love and death simultaneously. The lovers' dance of love and death looks beautiful and expressive with this covering. All of the character's costumes, including the crowd scenes, are stylized to match different epochs. What I wouldn't give for the costume of Prince Escalus (Rasad Safarov) alone - a hat with ear-flaps and cockade, riding breeches, and a tri-coloured shoulder strap! The 19th century, the 20th century, the 21st century… in a word, nothing limits the imagination. The most important thing is to look and see, to listen and hear!

The actors, crowd scenes

Have you ever wondered: why do so many people want to become actors? What is it about this profession that forces people to make peace with all its hardships? The pay is low, a lot of time is spent on rehearsals, there are no perks, etc., etc. But people nevertheless continue to enter the profession. Belinsky once proposed that his readers (viewers) learn to love the theatre and die in it. Of course, not die literally. They were to die of love for it. And, it has to be said, many people heeded this advice and continue to love the theatre as before. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people love our Azerbaijani theatre, but gladly pay out their hard-earned money for expensive tickets to foreign theatre ensembles. Why don't our theatres get this money? There are a good number of reasons. But we will discuss only one aspect - the actor's attitude to what he must or should do (since he's already entered the profession!) when he steps on the stage. A few words on the crowd scenes. In the context of directing, crowd scenes should do as much "work" for the director's staging concept as the production's central characters. 

But what does the viewer see? A wan, amorphous crowd of characters who, as the play goes on, have trouble remembering what and how they should perform after coming to the ball! The actors were all over each other and for some reason all went to the wings on the left side of the stage, leaving an enormous empty space to the right! That was the first scene of the ball. Roughly the same occurred during the fight scene between Tybalt and Romeo. The actors in the crowd scenes were absolutely aloof and did not seem too concerned with the problem that arose between Romeo and Tybalt. The complete absence of presence (forgive the wordplay!) of any actor/character during the play destroys the staging's concept, robbing it of the expressiveness necessary for conveying the significance of what is going, for expressing the staging's idea.  And meanwhile in the audience the viewer, who sees this, understands and is saddened by such an attitude to oneself and doesn't want to see anything like that next time. Meaning that he won't buy a ticket and won't go to the theatre. The cherubs, conceived by the director as heaven's blessing for the lovers, look pathetic and helpless. Sometimes four, sometimes three girls come on to the stage, their hair casually thrown over their shoulders - one girl's hair covered half her face. On top of their hair were wreaths of an uncertain degree of disarray. As a result, we do not see Angels at all, but some kind of Valkyries. Or maybe some sort of pagan priestesses. Something from that same uncleanness, which by its very nature is not capable of blessing. In result, the scenes in which they appear look buffoonish and ridiculous, even though they should evoke completely different emotions and thoughts. Which brings up another question: what do the make-up artists think about this? And do they think at all? Or maybe for them it is only unnecessary convention? And the assistant director? It's offensive. The image of contemporary theatre is created from the small things, the details. Increasingly we talk about how nothing pleases us and nothing works, all because people are poorly paid. Excuse me, but surely talent and an honest attitude (I deliberately do not use the word "service") toward one's chosen field cannot be measured by the money one receives. Today many actors receive financial support from the government, but surely that does not mean that their talent, their devotion to their profession, their loyal service to the ideals of the theatre increase in direct proportion to the amount of money they receive? Have they become more expressive or brilliant? No. Does that mean the problem isn't money - it's picking the wrong profession? Not every person who goes on stage becomes a true artist. The viewer determines who is an artist and who is not. It is the audience that either condemns or backs the actor with their attention - or lack thereof. With this in mind, I would like express my thanks to actors who held together the "director's construct" with their professionalism, despite everything else: Gunel Mammadova in the role of Juliet, Nubar Novruzova in role of the Nurse, Anar Seyfullayev in the role of Peter (the Nurse's servant), Vusal Mehraliyev in the role of Tybalt. But one thing will remain a mystery - why did Juliet fall in love with this Romeo? He couldn't even be picked out of the crowd of guests. How did she do it?