SHADOW Theatre Company is the winner of several GOLDEN MASKS (the National Theatre Award), participant and winner of major international theatre festivals in Russia and abroad; it is widely known around the world due to its out-of-ordinary experiments with theatre form.
SHADOW was founded in Moscow in 1988 by a family couple, actress Maya Krasnopolskaya and designer Ilya Epelbaum. This company is the first private theatre in post-Soviet Russia, as of today it is a state theatre and has its own venue. Having started with shadow theatre productions, the authors endlessly experiment with different genres, forms, kinds, and even scales of theatre productions (some of the productions are intended for no more than 5 audience members).
The theatre’s characteristic feature is their love of mystifications. Visiting SHADOW Theatre, you can see touring productions of the Grand Royal National Lilikan Theatre of Drama, Opera, and Ballet – classical plays in abridged “puppet” versions; you can also pop into William Shakespeare’s KukCafe (Puppet Café), where an audience member may choose a play he or she would like to see; the Theatre First Aid is available on request, etc. Extraordinariness and experimental character of the SHADOW’s projects constantly draw attention of celebrated artists. At different times the theatre worked in collaboration with Anatoly Vasiliev, Tonino Guerra, Nikolai Tsiskaridze, and many others.
Name: Ilya Epelbaum
Date and place of birth: 21.07.1961, Chelyabinsk
Education: Moscow State Academy of Art and Design named after S. G. Stroganov
Career: My graduating project at the Academy was titled “The Mobile Partition in Portable Puppet Theatre.” Getting introduced “from the inside” to all Moscow puppet theatres existing at that point, I decided to do something on my own. My first teachers (willingly or not) were actress Maya Krasnopolskaya, director Felix Feinstein, art scholars Viktor Novitsky and Irina Uvarova. Riding on the wave of Perestroika, Maya Krasnopolskaya and I created our own theatre SHADOW – the first after the end of the Soviet rule private puppet theatre in Moscow and perhaps in the entire Russia. At the moment this is a state municipal company with the staff of 15 people, and Maya and I continue to run it. We advocate the creative idea of theatre as art, first and foremost, and therefore our productions do not depend on form, genre, target audience, and other prejudices of puppet theatre. The projects of SHADOW Theatre Company were at different times joined by actors Nikolai Tsiskaridze, Valery Garkalin, Nikolai Fomenko, Alexander Filippenko, Igor Pismenny, Valentin Gaft, and etc.; singers Alexei Kosarev, Alisa Gitsba, Natalia Barannikova, and etc.; directors Anatoly Vasilyev, Pyotr Fomenko, Kama Ginkas, Roman Viktiuk, Mikhail Levitin, and etc., screenwriters Tonino Guerra, Sergei Plotov, Sergei Kokovkin, Lev Rubinstein, and etc.; composers Alexander Bakshi, Andrei Semyonov, Alexander Manotskov, Vladimir Nikolayev, musicians Tatyana Grindenko, Andrei Kotov, and etc.
Favorite authors, subjects, stories: It is hard to choose. It is easier to say what my “don’ts” are: I tend NOT to work with “kitchen-sink realism” and political/social theatre (but not always – it depends…).
Favorite traditional system of puppets/texture: Shadow theatre, wooden puppets, naïve art.
Does a performance need text? Sometimes YES, sometimes NO – because sometimes yes and sometimes no.
Is the expression “puppet theatre” still relevant today? It does not matter, as long as your work results in an interesting “product”. I would say that in most cases the expression “puppet theatre” should be used in reference to traditional productions in this genre. If the creators of a theatre want to emphasize that the orientation of their theatre is not quite traditional, they usually choose a different title for their company.
What, in your opinion, is the difference between puppet theatre in Russia and the West? The advantages of Russian theatres: in many cities theatre companies receive permanent direct funding from the state which gives them an opportunity to plan their creative work for several years in advance (the reverse side of this is becoming “over-organized” and being “overburdened with bureaucracy”). The advantages of Western theatres: existence of indirect public and state support (reducing or waiving the taxes on this kind of activity, easy registration process for theatre companies, often – giving the companies venues where they can conduct cultural activities), compared to the Russian Federation, they have a large number of public, state, and private grants given to cultural institutions. (The reverse side of this: fighting for these grants takes the time and energy which could have been spent on solving creative tasks).
What is useful about collaboration and cultural exchange? In the first place, it gives us a chance to encounter and accept someone or something different: a person, a way of thinking, traditions, worldviews, schools, forms, materials, techniques, styles, cultural codes… with far-reaching consequences of such acceptance.