Alexandra Lovyannikova

Name: Lovyannikova Alexandra Nikolayevna

Date and place of birth: 28.12.1985, Moscow

Education: In 2012 Alexandra graduated from the first experimental class of D. Krymov and E. Kamenkovich at the director’s department of RATI (GITIS), majoring in set design.
In 2013 she got her MA Degree studying under K. Serebrennikov in the Moscow Art Theatre School. In 2014 she participated in the project The School of Theatre Leader.

Favorite authors, subjects, stories:
Productions
The Great War (production of the group Hotel Modern, the Netherlands, Festival NET), Fin de Terres (Philippe Genty), Sutra (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui ), Earth (by choreographer Gabriela Carrizo), Much Ado about Nothing and Mi gran obra (David Espinosa), Notebooks (director S. V. Zhenovach), The Seagull (Y. Butusov).

Books
Shishkin Letter Book, J. C. Foer Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, K. Murashova All of Us Go Back to Our Childhood, To Love or to Nurture, Richard Feynman Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!

Productions in Puppet Theatre
KukCafe At Shakespeare’s, The Encyclopedia of Dragons (Theatre Tenj), Yana Tumina Kolya’s Composition (director Yana Tumina), The Odyssey (director Alexei Lelyavsky), Shakespeare-Laboratory by Ruslan Kudashov and Yana Tumina (I am not sure if it is puppet theatre, but I liked it a lot), Evgeny Ibragimov’s production When I Am Little Again.
Jordi Bertrand – Jumper, Sophie Crock – House, Rod Burnett – Punch and Judy.

What would you like to stage in puppet theatre and why with puppets? In my opinion, puppets are the best format for baby theatre, which I am dealing with a lot. In baby theatre it is important that the production looks like a game, so that children would be able to repeat something similar at home and develop their imagination. Therefore, ideally, what we need in puppet theatre is not just puppets, but puppets made of materials at hand – paper, fabric – or ready toys from the store. Directing baby productions I do not always draw from a book or a fairy tale. Sometimes it is much more useful to draw from material, texture.  For instance, to stage a production about a tree – where a wooden ship would sail through the sea of sawdust, and on the beach there would be trees made of real branches. Otherwise, one could stage a production, using folk rag dolls, using the sound of whistles and other folk instruments. Also,
I want to create a production about New Year in the same format: it is interesting to adapt winter motifs and New Year paraphernalia for baby theatre.

Also, for a long time I have wanted to direct an ‘adult’ production with puppets. I have been thinking about the myth of Minotaur — I want to tell it from the point of view of Minotaur himself, starting with his birth and ending with his imprisonment in the labyrinth and subsequent death.  A lot of things in this story can not be shown through the means of drama theatre: for instance, a child’s growing up and coming-of-age. Yet, for example, for shadow theatre this is a perfect story.

Another idea I have lived with for a long time, — to direct a show about the war. This important subject has not been sufficiently mastered by our theatre. In my opinion, the scale of war can only be presented in puppet theatre. Only in puppet theatre one can show battlefields with trench lines, bombed houses, a large number of casualties and other horrors of war.

Is the expression “puppet theatre” still relevant today? Puppet theatre, similarly to other forms of theatre, is understood today in a much wider sense than 40-50 years ago: it includes work with ready-made objects, elements of drama theatre, movement-based theatre. However, the term itself is quite relevant: if in the center of the performance there are animated characters, this unmistakably is puppet theatre, and it does not matter whether these puppets were made in theatre workshops, bought in the shop, or cut out of paper during the course of action.

What, in your opinion, is the difference between puppet theatre in Russia and the West? In Russia a puppet theatre is, more often than not, a state permanent repertory theatre with directors, acting company, etc., in the west it is a small independent group of people, performing at various festivals. Usually, in such companies there is no director per se, director’s work is done by an actor. Unfortunately, one can often tell this, watching the performances. On the other hand, western puppet theatre is more versatile: in our theatre the history, the narrative are still the cornerstones of the production, whereas this is often not the case in European theatre.

What is useful about collaboration and cultural exchange? We could have learnt from Europeans a freer, more inventive approach to the genre, find out how they work with ready-made, how they use animation elements, etc. We could have taught them the importance of directing in puppet theatre: often, in western productions the potential of a certain idea is exhausted in the very first moments of the production, it stops developing, and the audience loses interest.