Ruslan Kudashov

Name: Kudashov Ruslan Ravilevich

Date and place of birth: 5 March 1972, Leningrad

Education: SPbGATI: actor of puppet theatre (master teacher – Igor Zaykin, graduation year 1999), director of drama theatre (master teacher – Grigory Kozlov, graduation year 2001)

Career: In secondary school, my literature teacher Elena Vladimirovna Yakovleva had a great impact on me. She taught me to read all kinds of interesting books, and thanks to her I tried – for a long time and unsuccessfully – to get accepted by the department of philology… Then I was accidentally admitted to the Theatre Institute.

Naturally, I was strongly influenced by Rezo Gabriadze’s The Song of the Volga, which premiered around that time; Philippe Genty toured with his production Voyageur immobile. Then the production Potudan’ appeared which our small theatre group tried to preserve; thus we embarked on our own journey, gradually drifting away from Grigory Kozlov’s workshop.  At that time it was not as easy to create a theatre as it is now.  We started living our own life, a small theatre emerged – we worked there without any formal registration, any formal documents. We somehow survived, getting virtually no money for our work.  Later we were noticed.  The production Nevsky Prospekt appeared, winning both THE GOLDEN SOFIT and THE GOLDEN MASK. After that, two more productions – The Sky in a Suitcase, or Puppies in the Night and A Feast in Time of Plague – happened.  

Then the story with the Bolshoi Puppet Theatre (BTK) began: the time changed, and Potudan’ Theatre started experiencing problems. Here it became possible to admit a group of students, to transform the entire environment. That is what we were doing for 10 years – in collaboration with Sergei Byzgu and Yana Tumina.  Here we created a certain number of works, in which theatre text was delivered in a different way, where a theatre language was formed, where we were searching for our own path. Potudan’ Theatre had also looked for its own way and had had its own identity; that had also been a search in the same direction.

Now a new stage begins. I cannot yet understand what it is.

Favorite authors, subjects, stories: Somehow a thought about The Biblical Trilogy crossed my mind; there was some kind of an inner turning point. Then another – poetic – trilogy emerged. It is not related to puppet theatre or, rather, related to it to a smaller extent: Bashlachev – Vysotsky – Brodsky.

The Spire was vital to me at the time when it emerged. However, quite a few people do not recognize it as one of the most important works for me. Yet it is an important and, so to say, painful work – and very dear to me.

Favorite traditional system of puppets/texture: I do not have such a system. The texture changes, the puppet changes. Once, for example, I totally misunderstood the theatre of Pestrushka (Punch). However, today I find it interesting. I am attracted to some kind of brutal, fairground booth-like, folk energy. I have always been attracted to marionettes. In one way or another, there is magic in them. In a nutshell, I experience shifts in my attractions.

Does a performance need text? Absolutely! It is poetry, every poet continues working with the language, enriching and developing it – and, in one way or another, discovering something new. For me this is sine qua non, although for someone else this may not be important. The language has certain laws, whereas directing is connected with either reinforcing the law or searching for – and finding – one’s own regulations, one’s own law. Therefore the language is very important. Besides that, its roots are in the aspacial, atemporal field.

Is the expression “puppet theatre” still relevant today? The expression “puppet theatre” is less functional today than, say, “the theatre of form”, “formative theatre”, “visual theatre”, or “figurative theatre.” All of those are more relevant. Thus, it seems to me that “puppet theatre” is less relevant today, but in the future it might regain some of its relevance. In real life everything also unravels, overturns. Sometimes all of that “relevant” stuff becomes irksome.

What, in your opinion, is the difference between puppet theatre in Russia and the West?

It is hard to tell; this is not my forte. It seems to me that western theatre was not so impeded in its development: in our country there were very strong standards, set either by Obraztsov Theatre, or the Soviet perception of puppet theatre. Of course, there were certain “outbreaks” such as The Urals Zone or Sudarushkin’s individual searches, but very few people remember about them. Our poor country is seriously impeded by that.

What is happening now in St. Petersburg, to all those small and even smaller theatres, to our theatre – all that has a potential for some curious development. However, I have a feeling that we are still heavily lagging behind in certain aspects.

What is useful about collaboration and cultural exchange?

First of all, exchange should be useful to us. We look at others and see something which we do not understand at all. We see that Russian puppet theatre has a hard time treading some of the paths. The thing is that all the subconscious imagery, all those Freudian traits on Russian soil acquire terribly pathological undertones, which do not result in anything creative, whereas we see the work of Duda Paiva with his travel to the subconscious and understand that the person exists on the verge, but does not cross it. We find it hard to take a leap somewhere.  Of course, exchanges, contacts are meant to teach us something. Young and old people should also learn from them and find those curious…