THE RESCUER ON THE STAGE

What the theatre should be - diverting, enlightening, or educational - is something that leading directors and creative directors decide. The position that has been chosen is to not only reveal what lies within, but also to understand to what extent they are professionally and morally responsible for what goes from the stage out into the world. This is not as harmless and insignificant as might seem at first glance. The folk wisdom in the saying "you sow what you reap" is nothing other than a statement of fact supported by the experiences of many past generations.

No one ever forgets this at the Azerbaijani State Theatre of Pantomime, where the creative director is Baxtiyar Xanizada. This is why each play has an intended audience and each staging is a precisely constructed dramatic concept presented to the viewer. At this theatre it is always clear what the actors are telling the theatre-goer and why. The premiere of the play People and Disaster is no exception, being addressed not only to children, but also to their parents. The play was written by Baxtiyar Xanizada, and the staging done by Bahruz Ahmadli. 

What is the play about?

What a person should do when he finds himself in extreme situations. It is a collection of guidelines and recommendations performed by actors as a practical visual aid for the preservation of human life and the protection of the environment from barbaric human actions. 

What's so special about that, some readers might say. And really, what? We answer: everything! Because it only seems that we know all that we know what we need to about proper behavior when unexpectedly faced with floods, earthquakes, fires, etc. In reality not only children, but adults as well do not actually know. The theatre's actors live through these events with us with enthusiasm, in an accessible and playful manner immersing their characters - and with them the audience - in a series of hypothetical situations.

What should we do?

Dear adults, test yourself by mentally answer the question - what should you do when an earthquake occurs, and what should you not do? Many of you will probably come to the conclusion that there was something you didn't know after all. Acting out the scenario not as a natural disaster, but as a lesson for know-it-alls, the actors at the theatre of pantomime simply and light-heartedly present playful tableaux of this theme, and the audience quickly learns the following: don't head for the stairwell if you are in a multi-story building, don't stand in an open space, don't panic. Do: get under a table, stand in the corner of a room or in a doorway. If you are in a single-storey building and you have the opportunity to leave a structure filled with many other people, how will you do that? There were many options, but only one was the right one: you need to leave the building without panicking, following each other, calm and composed, through the exit door. In that situation it is important to remember that panic and a rush for the doors could lead to needless deaths. In an extreme situation caused by the elements, there is no such thing as rank, the social position of parents, etc. And it doesn't matter whose son or daughter you are. It is important that you act appropriately in life-threatening conditions. 

The actors perform the same way in situations involving fires and floods. They act with gusto and fun, drawing the audience into the solution of these life-saving questions. The audience gladly participates, in most cases answering the questions incorrectly, but nevertheless enthusiastically interacting with the actors. A little boy kept refusing to agree that a frying pan with hot oil should not be filled with water, but simply covered with a lid!

Guaranteeing an intellectual future

The trend for interactive theatre does not always pay off. Not everyone can retain uninterrupted attention to the performance's plot and emotional structure. Directing, after all, also means directing attention. Sadly, not everyone is able to pull it off. Before the beginning of the play one theatre-goer, a middle-aged man who introduced himself as Maharram, the father of a nine-year-old boy, answering our question as to whether he often took his son to the theatre, said: "I take my child to all kinds of children's performances and see how they constantly fill their heads with nonsense. They jump around, dance, show them all kinds of stupidity. All the children's performances I've attended were as stupid as they could be. Events like those don't get the child interested in learning more or developing. Pointless 'fun plays' don't improve our children. And theatres, chasing ticket sales, have stopped paying attention to children like they once paid attention to us. Any type of development requires effort. That leads to the question: are theatre directors capable of making that effort in our day? And it's probably high time that we think about the generation of children we're raising. Theatres used to think about that. And now no one is interested in children as a guarantee for our intellectual future. I don't get it. I discovered the Theatre of Pantomime and now I only take my child to this theatre. Mime is just as understandable and interesting to him as the spoken word. It's simply that actors at the theatres of drama read their lines formally. The word has ceased to be living. It has lost its meaning and become a lie." The theatre-goer summed it up with this: "It's harder for an actor to lie with a gesture than with a word." 

We objected, recommending that he go to the Russian Theatre of Drama and the Youth Theatre to watch plays that would more than likely satisfy his demands as a theatre-goer. He politely refused. He probably has the right. However, in our opinion these theatres have plays for children that reflect the interests not only of children, but also of their parents. That the Theatre of Pantomime, to this theatre-goer's taste, was beyond compare, intrigued us even more. After seeing this outstanding performance, with superb staging by Bahruz Ahmadli and wonderful music by Elman Rafiyev, we were convinced that the theatre has an excellent grasp of the structure of interactivity, and is capable not only of capturing an audience's attention, but also of unobtrusively enriching them with knowledge and skills. It seems that a theatre with only forty seats is too small for a city as large as our Baku. Why couldn't the Ministry of Education help the theatre perform this play in our city's schools? Practically all of them have an auditorium. Not only that, but our city is in а zone of seismic activity. This play could be a priceless service to parents, who have a duty to preserve the lives of our children!