The best one-act plays. Plays for enterprises

Play

Alexander Volodin, 1958

About what: Finding himself in Leningrad on the occasion of a business trip, Ilyin suddenly decides to go into the apartment where seventeen years ago, when he went to the front, he left his beloved girl, and - lo and behold! — his Tamara still lives in the room above the pharmacy. The woman never married: her student nephew, for whom she replaces his mother, and his eccentric girlfriend - that’s her whole family. Wading through the fear of misunderstanding, insincerity, quarrels and reconciliation, two adults eventually realize that happiness is still possible - “if only there was no war!”

Why it's worth reading: The meeting between Ilyin and Tamara, stretched over five evenings, is not only a story about the late, restless love of the foreman of the Red Triangle factory and the work manager Zavgar- garage manager. northern village of Ust-Omul, but the opportunity to bring real, not mythical Soviet people onto the stage: smart and conscientious, with broken destinies.

Perhaps the most poignant of Volodin’s dramas, this play is filled with sad humor and high lyricism. Her characters are always not saying something: under the speech clichés - “my job is interesting, responsible, you feel needed by people” - there is a whole layer of difficult questions driven deep inside, related to the eternal fear in which a person is forced to live, like a prisoner in a huge camp called "homeland".

Next to the adult heroes, young lovers live and breathe: at first Katya and Slava look “unafraid,” but they also instinctively feel the fear that eats the souls of Tamara and Ilyin. Thus, uncertainty about the very possibility of happiness in the country of “victorious socialism” is gradually passed on to the next generation.

Staging

Bolshoi Drama Theater
Directed by Georgy Tovstonogov, 1959

You can imagine a little bit of the shock that this performance was for the audience, thanks to a radio recording from 1959. The audience reacts very violently here - they laugh, get excited, and calm down. Reviewers wrote about Tovsto-Nogov’s production: “Today’s time - the end of the 50s - revealed itself with amazing accuracy. Almost all the characters seemed to come onto the stage from the streets of Leningrad. They were dressed exactly as the spectators who looked at them were dressed.” The characters, riding from the back of the stage on platforms with partitions of poorly furnished rooms, played right under the noses of the first row. This required precise intonation and absolute pitch. A special chamber atmosphere was created by the voice of Tovstonogov himself, who delivered the stage directions (it’s a pity that in the radio play it’s not him who reads the text from the author).

The internal conflict of the play was the contradiction between imposed Soviet stereotypes and natural human nature. Tamara, played by Zinaida Sharko, seemed to be peeking out from behind the mask of a Soviet social activist before throwing it off and becoming herself. From the radio recording it is clear with what inner strength and amazing richness of nuances Charcot played her Tamara - touching, tender, unprotected, sacrificial. Ilyin (played by Efim Kopelyan), who spent 17 years somewhere in the North, was internally much freer from the very beginning - but he did not immediately manage to tell the truth to the woman he loved, and pretended to be the chief engineer. In a radio play today, Kopelyan’s performance can be heard with a lot of theatricality, almost pathos, but he also has a lot of pauses and silence - then you understand that the most important thing happens to his character in these moments.

"In Search of Joy"

Play

Victor Rozov, 1957

About what: Klavdia Vasilyevna Savina’s Moscow apartment is cramped and crowded: four of her grown children live here and there is furniture that Lenochka, the wife of her eldest son Fedya, is constantly purchasing - once a talented young scientist, now a successful careerist “in science” " Covered with rags and newspapers in anticipation of the newlyweds' imminent move to a new apartment, cabinets, pot-bellied sideboards, couches and chairs become bones of discord in the family: the mother calls her eldest son a “little tradesman,” and his younger brother, high school student Oleg, chops down “Lenochkin’s” furniture with a saber deceased father - a war hero. Attempts to explain only worsen the situation, and as a result, Fyodor and his wife leave their home, while the remaining children assure Klavdia Vasilyevna that they have chosen a different path in life: “Don’t be afraid for us, mom!”

Why it's worth reading: This two-act comedy was initially perceived as a “trifle” by Viktor Rozov: by that time the playwright was already known as the author of the script for the legendary film by Mikhail Kalatozov “The Cranes Are Flying.”

Indeed, touching, romantic, irreconcilable with dishonesty and money-grubbing, the younger children of Klavdia Vasilyevna Kolya, Tatyana and Oleg, as well as their friends and loved ones, formed a strong group of “correct Soviet youth”, numerically superior to the circle of “money-grubbers, careerists” presented in the play and bourgeois." The schematic nature of the confrontation between the world of consumption and the world of ideals was not particularly disguised by the author.

The main character, 15-year-old dreamer and poet Oleg Savin, turned out to be outstanding: his energy, inner freedom and self-esteem were associated with the hopes of the Thaw, with dreams of a new generation of people sweeping away all types of social slavery (this generation of uncompromising romantics came to be called - "Rozov boys")

Staging

Central Children's Theater
Director Anatoly Efros, 1957

The most famous scene of this play is the one in which Oleg Savin chops down furniture with his father’s saber. This was the case in the performance of the Sovremennik Theater Studio, released in 1957, and from the film by Anatoly Efros and Georgy Natanson “Noisy Day” (1961) this is what primarily remained in the memory - perhaps because Oleg played in both productions young and impetuous Oleg Tabakov. However, the first performance based on this play was not released at Sovremennik, but at the Central Children's Theater, and in it the famous episode with the checker and the dead fish, the jar of which Lenochka threw out the window, was, although important, still one of many.

The main thing in Anatoly Efros’s performance at the Central Children’s Theater was the feeling of polyphony, continuity, and fluidity of life. The director insisted on the significance of every voice in this populous story - and immediately introduced the viewer to a house filled with furniture, built by the artist Mikhail Kurilko, where precise details indicated the life of a large friendly family. Not a denunciation of philistinism, but a contrast between the living and the dead, poetry and prose (as noted by critics Vladimir Sappak and Vera Shitova) - this was the essence of Efros’s view. Not only was Oleg, played by Konstantin Ustyugov, alive—a gentle boy with a high, excited voice—but also Valentina Sperantova’s mother, who decided to have a serious conversation with her son and softened the forced harshness with her intonation. Very real is this Fedor himself, Gennady Pechnikov, who, in spite of everything, loves his pragmatic wife Lenochka very much, and another lover - Gennady Alexei Shmakov, and the girls' classmates who came to visit Oleg. All this can be clearly heard in the radio recording of the performance made in 1957. Listen to how Oleg pronounces the key phrase of the play: “The main thing is to have a lot in your head and soul.” No didactics, quietly and deliberately, rather for yourself.

"My poor Marat"

Play

Alexey Arbuzov, 1967

About what: Once upon a time there lived Lika, she loved Marat, she was loved by him, and Leonidik also loved her; both guys went to war, both returned: Marat as a Hero of the Soviet Union, and Leonidik without an arm, and Lika gave her hand and heart to “poor Leonidik.” The second title of the work is “Don’t be afraid to be happy”; in 1967, London critics named it the play of the year. This melodrama is a story of meetings and separations stretched over almost two decades of three characters growing up from episode to episode, once united by war and blockade in cold and hungry Leningrad.

Why it's worth reading: Three lives, three destinies of Soviet idealists stung by the war, trying to build a life according to the propaganda legend. Of all the “Soviet fairy tales” by Alexei Arbuzov, where the heroes were necessarily rewarded with love for their labor deeds, “My Poor Marat” is the saddest fairy tale.

The Soviet myth “live for others” is justified for the characters – still teenagers – by the losses and exploits of the war, and Leonidik’s remark: “Never change our winter of 1942... right?” - becomes their life credo. However, “days pass”, and life “for others” and a professional career (Marat “builds bridges”) does not bring happiness. Lika leads medicine as the “unexempt head of the department,” and Leonidik ennobles morals with collections of poems published in a circulation of five thousand copies. Sacrifice turns into metaphysical melancholy. At the end of the play, 35-year-old Marat announces a change of milestones: “Hundreds of thousands died so that we could be extraordinary, obsessed, happy. And we - me, you, Leonidik?..”

Stifled love here is equal to strangled individuality, and personal values ​​are affirmed throughout the course of the play, which makes it a unique phenomenon of Soviet drama.

Staging

Director Anatoly Efros, 1965

Reviewers called this performance a “stage research”, a “theatrical laboratory” where the feelings of the characters in the play were studied. “The stage is laboratory-like, clean, precise and focused,” wrote critic Irina Uvarova. Artists Nikolai Sosunov and Valentina Lalevich created a backdrop for the performance: from it, three characters looked at the audience seriously and a little sadly, looking as if they already knew how it would all end. In 1971, Efros filmed a television version of this production, with the same actors: Olga Yakov-leva - Lika, Alexander Zbruev - Marat and Lev Krugly - Leonidik. The theme of a scrupulous study of characters and feelings was further intensified here: television made it possible to see the eyes of the actors, giving the effect of spectator presence during close communication between these three.

It could be said that Efros’s Marat, Lika and Leonidik were obsessed with the idea of ​​getting to the bottom of the truth. Not in a global sense - they wanted to hear and understand each other as accurately as possible. This was especially noticeable in Lika-Yakovleva. The actress seemed to have two game plans: the first - where her heroine looked soft, light, childish, and the second - which appeared as soon as Lika's interlocutor turned away: at that moment the serious, attentive, studying gaze of a mature woman glared at him. “All real life is a Meeting,” wrote the philosopher Martin Buber in his book “I and You.” According to him, the main word in life - “You” - can be said to a person only with his whole being; any other relationship turns him into an object, from “You” - into “It”. Throughout Efros’s performance, these three said “You” to the other with their whole being, most of all appreciating each other’s unique personality. This was the high tension of their relationship, which even today it is impossible not to get carried away and with which one cannot help but empathize.

"Duck Hunt"

Play

Alexander Vampilov, 1967

About what: Waking up in a typical Soviet apartment on a heavy hangover morning, the hero receives a funeral wreath as a gift from friends and colleagues. Trying to unravel the meaning of the prank, Viktor Zilov recalls the pictures of the last month in his memory: a housewarming party, his wife leaving, a scandal at work and, finally, yesterday’s drinking session in the Forget-Me-Not cafe, where he insulted his young mistress, his boss, colleagues and I got into a fight with my best friend, the waiter Dima. Having decided to really settle accounts with his hateful life, the hero calls his friends, inviting them to his own wake, but soon changes his mind and goes with Dima to the village - on a duck hunt, which he has been passionately dreaming of all this time.

Why it's worth reading: Viktor Zilov, combining the features of a notorious scoundrel and an infinitely attractive man, may seem to some to be the Soviet reincarnation of Lermontov’s Pechorin: “a portrait made up of the vices of our entire generation, in their full development.” A smart, thoroughbred and perpetually drunk member of the ITAE who appeared at the beginning of the era of stagnation engineers- engineer and technical worker. with energy worthy of better use, he consistently freed himself from family, work, love and friendship ties. Zilov’s final refusal of self-destruction had a symbolic meaning for Soviet drama: this hero gave birth to a whole galaxy of imitators - superfluous people: drunkards who were both ashamed and disgusted to join Soviet society - drunkenness in the drama was perceived as a form of social protest.

Zilov's creator, Alexander Vampilov, drowned in Lake Baikal in August 1972 - at the peak of his creative powers, leaving the world one not too weighty volume of drama and prose; “Duck Hunt,” which has now become a world classic, barely overcoming the censorship ban, burst onto the Soviet stage shortly after the death of the author. However, half a century later, when there was nothing Soviet left, the play unexpectedly turned into an existential drama of a man in front of whom the emptiness of an organized, mature life opened up, and in the dream of a hunting trip, to where - “Do you know how quiet this is? You're not there, do you understand? No! You haven’t been born yet,” a cry was heard about paradise lost forever.

Staging

Moscow Art Theater named after Gorky
Directed by Oleg Efremov, 1978

The best play by Alexander Vampilov is still considered unsolved. The closest thing to its interpretation was probably Vitaly Melnikov’s film “Vacation in September” with Oleg Dal in the role of Zilov. The performance staged at the Moscow Art Theater by Oleg Efremov has not survived, not even in fragments. At the same time, he accurately expressed time - the most hopeless phase of stagnation.

Artist David Borovsky came up with the following image for the performance: a huge plastic bag containing felled pine trees hovered above the stage like a cloud. “The motif of the conserved taiga,” Borovsky told critic Rimma Krechetova. And further: “The floor was covered with tarpaulin: in those places they wear tarpaulin and rubber. I scattered pine needles on the tarpaulin. You know, like the New Year tree on the parquet floor. Or after funeral wreaths..."

Zilov was played by Efremov. He was already fifty - and his hero’s melancholy was not a midlife crisis, but a summing up. Anatoly Efros admired his performance. “Efremov plays Zilov fearlessly to the extreme,” he wrote in the book “Continuation of the Theatrical Story.” - He turns it out in front of us with all its giblets. Ruthless. Playing in the traditions of the great theater school, he does not simply expose his hero. He plays a generally good person, still able to understand that he is lost, but no longer able to get out.”

The one who was deprived of reflection was the waiter Dima, played by Aleksei Petrenko, the other most important character of the play. A huge man, absolutely calm - with the calm of a killer, he hung over the other characters like a cloud. Of course, he had not killed anyone yet - except for animals on the hunt, which he shot without missing a beat, but he could easily knock out a person (after looking around to see if anyone was watching). Dima, more than Zilov, was the discovery of this performance: a little time will pass, and such people will become the new masters of life.

"Three Girls in Blue"

Play

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, 1981

About what: Under one leaky roof, three mothers - Ira, Svetlana and Tatyana - while away the rainy summer with their constantly fighting boys. The unsettled nature of dacha life forces women to argue day and night about everyday life. A wealthy suitor who appears takes Ira to another world, to the sea and the sun, she leaves her sick son in the arms of her weak mother. However, heaven turns into hell, and now the woman is ready to crawl on her knees in front of the airport duty officer in order to return to her lonely child.

Why it's worth reading: The play continues to amaze contemporaries of “Three Girls” to this day by how accurately it captures the era of “late stagnation”: the range of everyday concerns of a Soviet person, his character and the type of relationships between people. However, in addition to external photographic accuracy, the inner essence of the so-called scoop is also subtly touched upon here.

Leading a dialogue with Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” Petrushevskaya’s play initially presents its “girls” as three variations on the theme of Chekhov’s Natasha. Like Chekhov’s bourgeois Natasha, Petrushevskaya’s Ira, Svetlana and Tatyana constantly care about their children and wage a war for the dry rooms of a dilapidated dacha near Moscow. However, the children for whom mothers argue are, in fact, no one needs them. The play is permeated by the weak voice of Ira Pavlik’s sick son; The boy’s world is full of fairy-tale images, in a bizarre form reflecting the realities of his frightening life: “And when I was sleeping, the moon flew to me on its wings,” - no one hears or understands the child in this play. The “moment of truth” is also connected with his son - when, realizing that he could lose him, from a “typical Soviet person” Ira turns into a person capable of “thinking and suffering”, from Chekhov’s Natasha into Chekhov’s Irina, ready to sacrifice something For others.

Staging

Theater named after Lenin Komsomol
Director Mark Zakharov, 1985

This play was written by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya at the request of the chief director of the Lenin Komsomol Theater Mark Zakharov: he needed roles for Tatyana Peltzer and Inna Churikova. The censorship did not allow the performance to pass for four years - the premiere took place only in 1985; On June 5 and 6, 1988, the play was filmed for television. This recording still makes a very strong impression today. Set designer Oleg Sheintsis blocked the stage with a translucent wall, behind which silhouettes of branches are visible; in the foreground there is a table, on it there is a bouquet of dried flowers, and in a tin basin placed on a stool, endless washing is going on; There were squabbles around, flirting, confessions. Each was ready to get into the other’s life, and not just get in, but thoroughly trample around there. But this is only superficial participation: in fact, no one really cared about each other. The old woman Fedorovna (Peltzer) mumbled, indifferent to the fact that there was a sick child lying behind the wall. Svetlana (actress Lyudmila Porgina) instantly became agitated in a fit of hatred towards the intellectual Irina and her son: “He’s reading! You’ll finish reading!” And Irina herself - Inna Churikova looked at everything with huge eyes and remained silent as long as she had the strength.

A recognized master of stage effects, Zakharov built several reference points in the performance, calibrated like a ballet. One of them is when the dacha boyfriend Nikolai kisses Irina and she, out of surprise, does an almost clown somersault. At that moment Churikova almost falls from her chair, falls on Nikolai’s shoulder, immediately jumps off him sharply and, throwing her knees high, makes her way to the door to see if her son saw the kiss.

Another scene is the tragic climax of the play: Irina crawls on her knees behind the airport employees, begging to put her on the plane (at home the child was left alone in a locked apartment), and hoarsely, annoyingly, she doesn’t even scream, but growls: “I may not make it in time!” In the book “Stories from My Own Life,” Lyudmila Petrushevskaya recalls how once at a performance at that moment a young spectator jumped out of her chair and began tearing out her hair. It's really very scary to watch.

E.V. Nikulina

DRAMATIC CYCLE OF ONE-ACT PLAYS BY L. PETRUSHEVSKAYA “COLOMBINE’S APARTMENT” AS AN ARTISTIC WHOLE

The principles of cyclization of one-act plays by L. S. Petrushevskaya (the cycle “Colombina’s Apartment”) are considered. The aesthetic and problematic-thematic dominants that ensure the artistic integrity and unity of the cycle are explored. Key words: one-act play; cycle; L.S. Petrushevskaya; chronotope

The origin of the one-act play is associated with the interlude (15th century). This is a small comic scene of everyday content, performed between acts of a mystery or school drama. In this capacity, the interlude was borrowed by Russian theater of the 16th-17th centuries. Another source of the one-act play could be the comic scenes of the folk, “square” theater: Italian comedy of masks, French farces, Russian theater “Petrushka”. In the 19th century The one-act play is actively included in the repertoire of home amateur performances. It appeared on the big theater stage only at the end of the 19th century. An unsurpassed master of “skit scenes” and “jokes” “in one act” was

A.P. Chekhov. And the one-act play became widespread and popular in the 20s. XX century, demanded, on the one hand, by the mass propaganda movement of folk theatrical performances, on the other hand, by experimental theaters focused on folk entertainment forms

B.E. Meyerhold, N.N. Evreinova, E.B. Vakhtangov. The small format, efficiency in creation and production, relevance, and eccentricity of the one-act play met the spirit and demands of the new time. Within the framework of experimental theaters, the experience of cyclizing one-act plays also arises: performances were often constructed as a series of stage fragments, improvised scenes, connected thematically and by the performance ensemble. In Soviet times, dramatic works of small forms exist as a repertoire for amateur “folk” theater, losing their significance for the professional stage and drama.

As an aesthetically valuable phenomenon, the one-act drama receives its development in the Western theater of the absurd, which also relies in its poetics on folk entertainment forms of theatrical art: farces, sketches, sideshows, clowning, buffoonery, etc. Perhaps, under the influence of one-act plays of the theater of the absurd, A creates his own small-format plays Vampilov. He unites them under the general title “Provincial Anecdotes,” marking the beginning of the cyclization of one-act plays in the Russian theater.

Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya gained recognition and popularity in theater circles as the author of full-length plays: “Cinzano” (1973), “Smirnova’s Birthday” (1977), “Music Lessons” (1973), “Three Girls in Blue” (1980). Less known and almost never staged in theaters are her one-act plays, which, nevertheless, occupied a predominant position in her dramaturgy.

L. S. Petrushevskaya, following the tradition of A. Vampilov, creates her one-act plays as independent works in different years, then combines them into

cycles of 4-5 plays: “Granny Blues” (1996), “Dark Room” (1996), “Columbine’s Apartment” (1996),

“Twenty-five again” (2006).

The cycle “Columbine’s Apartment” includes “Love” (1974), “Staircase” (1974), “Andante” (1975), “Columbine’s Apartment” (1981). It should be noted that the order of the plays in the cycle by L. S. Petrushevskaya is not constant. Thus, in a book published in 2006, the author edits previously created cycles, changing the composition of the plays and their arrangement. In an early version, the cycle “Columbine’s Apartment” began with the play “Staircase”, followed by “Love”. In the latter version, “Love” turns out to be the first play in the cycle, and “Staircase” - the second. The change in the order of the components significantly changed, as we will see, the semantic unity of the whole. Let's focus on the latest edition.

The semantic integrity of the cycle is already manifested at the level of titles, forming an opposition: the world of everyday life (“Love”, “Staircase”) - the world of art (“Andante”, “Columbine’s Apartment”); the opposition is removed by the title of the entire cycle “Columbine’s Apartment”, in which there is a merging of real-life and theatrical-play meanings.

Common to the entire cycle and, more broadly, to the work of L. S. Petrushevskaya, the themes of family, home, and women’s fate determine the internal connections of individual plays, the action of each of which and the entire cycle as a whole is organized by the chronotope of the chamber home space-time of the characters’ existence: apartment, room , staircase. In relation to this chronotope, all the characters in the plays form 2 groups: those who have their own home and those who are homeless. The interaction between them creates the main collisions, the drama of which intensifies in the 3rd play of the Andante cycle, dissipating in its finale and final play. The consistent deployment of the semantic potential of the lexeme “apartment”, included in the name of the entire cycle, becomes action-forming.

For the first plays of the cycle “Love” and “Staircase”, the meaning of the word “apartment” is relevant as “a living space in a house with a separate entrance, usually with a kitchen, antechamber.” In the plays “Andante” and “Columbine’s Apartment,” on the contrary, the meanings of the lexeme are updated, bearing the sign of temporaryness and fragility: “a room rented from someone for housing, a temporary location for members of a detachment, a working group.”

The action of the first play takes place in a room “crowded with furniture, in any case, there is literally nowhere to turn, and all the action goes around

big table." But what could symbolize important family values ​​(a large table in the center of the room, gathering a large family around it) does not fulfill its purpose. As it turns out in the course of the action, it does not unite, but divides the heroes. Newlyweds Sveta and Tolya sort things out “across the table”; they will never be destined to sit down at it together.

The cramped and closed world of the home, which does not bring people together, but seems to squeeze the heroes out of itself, is contrasted with the consistent expansion of space beyond its borders as the space of all of Russia: Tolya studied at the Nakhimov School in Leningrad, then at the university in Moscow, worked on drilling rigs in the steppes of Kazakhstan, in Sverdlovsk. At the same time, a school, university, drilling rigs are signs of a fundamentally impersonal, official, social existence of a person, essentially homeless, especially since he sold his mother’s house in a certain “former hometown”. In addition, Tolya’s childhood and teenage years passed in a space of gender isolation: at the Nakhimov School, on a submarine, on a drilling rig, “and there was only one woman who was a cook, and even then she had a husband and a boyfriend, and she was fifty-three little year!” The result is emotional impairment and lack of communication in the young man.

Sveta, on the contrary, is the personification of a domestic existence rooted in her native world: she has her own city, her own house, her own bed. She lives in Moscow - the center, the heart of Russia. Her name and her white wedding dress are clearly intended to indicate a bright, calm family element in the heroine.

But despite the difference in life situations and characters, both heroes are the same in the main thing: contrary to the title of the play, both are not loved by anyone and do not love each other, but both are burdened by their loneliness and want happiness, understood by each in their own way: Sveta cannot imagine happiness without love, Tolya has enough home and family.

Critics L.S. Petrushevskaya is invariably noted for the paradoxical nature of her works. This principle of her poetics appears most clearly in one-act plays. In this case, L.S. Petrushevskaya, contrary to tradition, begins the play about love with where the classic love narrative ends - with the wedding. Moreover, two young people marry not for love, but each according to their own special calculation. The newlyweds are engaged in clarifying these calculations before they have yet taken off their wedding clothes.

The threat of separation between spouses who were barely legally married becomes real with the appearance of Sveta’s mother, who is also not satisfied with this marriage, because... For the sake of her daughter’s “happiness,” she will have to sacrifice the living space of her apartment and her usual peace. Therefore, taking advantage of the quarrel between the young people, she literally “pushes Tolya out the door.” But it is precisely at this moment of final separation that both the heroes and the audience realize that everything necessary for a love affair has already happened: the first acquaintance, the first date, the first quarrel, jealousy, and the realization that it is no longer possible to live without each other. “He opens the door by force. Evgenia Ivanovna. I'll crush you! Sveta (grabs his hand extended through the gap). Tolik! (leaves). Evgeniya

Ivanovna. Life begins! End" . Since “life” should be understood as family life, the ending returns the action to the beginning - the wedding.

The connection between the first and subsequent plays creates a plot junction. In the finale of the first play, the characters are expelled from the apartment, and in the second, the action takes place on the landing.

The compression of space to the limits of the “stairwell” takes on a multi-valued meaning. This is also a biological cell of life, the formation of which requires the fusion of male and female principles. There are 4 characters in the play: Yura, Slava, Galya and the neighbor. Yura and Slava came to meet each other based on Gali’s marriage announcement.

In a figurative sense, a cell is a unit of society - a family. However, in the conditions of the eternal “housing question” in Russia, the cell-cage takes on its direct meaning: “And then in one room there is a mother-in-law, a family, and a child. Some kind of porridge." Such an existence gives rise to a desire to break out of the cage, the consequence of which is a return to a certain archaic social structure: “The family does not exist in our time (...). There is a female tribe with cubs and solitary males." Such a primitive model of “our time” suits the “single males”, but does not suit the “female tribe”, from which another meaning of the image of the “staircase” follows: a cage-trap. The mechanism of intrigue is based on the collision of multidirectional goals and motives of the characters' actions: Galya creates a hitch in front of the door of her apartment, supposedly in search of a key, trying to guess, choose, and catch her future husband; Yura and Slava, playing grooms, just want to drink, have a snack and have a good time “as a man can with a woman,” so they don’t knock on the door either. The metaphor of a ladder, which is an ambivalent symbol, also plays a role in the movement of meaning: it leads both up and down. Up - to the high, from the author’s point of view, values ​​of human culture: love, family, home. Down - to a wild, semi-animal way of life. The ending of the play is falsely optimistic: Yura and Slava, it would seem, got what they wanted: “Galya. Right here. Bread. I cut the sausages. Cheese. And so (...). Only you will go down to the floor." Yura and Slava joyfully settle down on the steps of the stairs leading down.

In the next play of the Andante cycle, one of the single males remaining on the landing will have to embody the designated behavioral model in relations between the sexes. The only object and sign of home space here becomes the “ottoman” - the place of the dumping sin of a single male and an entire female tribe. In the first plays of the cycle we see heroes born, raised and living in Russia. In Andante, the problem of the national identity of the heroes is the leading one. Exotic names and nicknames - May, Aurelia, Buldi - reflect the Russophobic tendencies of their parents, developed by their children. May - Russian ambassador to the eastern country; with his wife Yulia and his mistress Buldi, he comes to Russia only for the duration of his vacation, to his empty apartment, which Aurelia rents. Moreover, the nomination of the characters in the poster - Au, Buldi, May, Yulia - does not reflect

It eliminates age characteristics and practically blurs their gender, so the names are followed by definitions: “man”, “woman”. As the action progresses, Yulia talks about modern methods of erasing individual physiological characteristics (age and appearance) with the help of special pills: “beskayts”, “metvits”, “pools”, which make women “irresistible”.

The driving force creating a dramatic situation in ancient theater was the will of the gods, evil fate, in the Middle Ages - the will of the passions and desires of the characters, in the 19th century. - social traditions and norms, the power of society. At the end of the 20th century. The leading force is the force of fashionable, social standards, actively replicated by the media. The semantics of the nickname of one of the heroines of the play by L.S. Petrushevskaya’s “Au” reflects modern simulative-sign reality; the heroine, like an echo, captures in virtual space the formal elements of the image of a worthy existence and reproduces them in accordance with the changed value hierarchy, which brings to the fore the external material correspondence to the created image, and to the second - signs of culture: “Okay, sheepskin coat... Paper knitwear. Boots... Cosmetics... underwear, but not synthetics.<...>Perfumes: France, books: Toulouse-Lautrec, all impressionists. Detectives: America. Equipment: hi-fi, quadraphonic, like Levin's. Music! Graphics by Picasso, album of erotica, Chagall, reproductions.<...>Tickets to Taganka, Russian churches! Interesting, highly paid position! Bach, Vivaldi, records,” - at the end of this catalog of signs of dignity of a modern “real person,” the heroine “utters” a hidden desire designed to justify and approve the existence of a woman: “Kuznetsov and Sons porcelain! House on the waterfront! Car! Time Machine! A trip to the water! Frigate Pallas! Son! . The listed attributes of a “happy” life fill the characters’ consciousness, performing compensatory and replacement functions, obscuring and decorating, at least in dreams and practical jokes, their unsettled life.

All three heroines are without a home, family, education, or work. In the paradigm of the new reality, which has abolished the national, social, professional and gender-age affiliation of a person, the only evidence of their own existence and support for understanding their place in the world are fashionable external standards of a prosperous life, which have also lost their national and clan specificity.

The basis of the dramatic conflict is the key theme for the cycle - homelessness, family instability of a person. In this play, the rightful owner of the apartment is May. Yulia has no place of her own, no job, no profession, and is completely financially dependent on her husband: “... the apartment is registered in her husband’s name. Who will I be without a husband? . The second heroine, Buldi, has a “major renovation of the bathroom” in her parents’ apartment. Just in time for our arrival, everything was flooded.” The third heroine Au (Aurelia) also has nowhere and no one to go to: “My husband divorced me when I was in the hospital and lost my child.” At the same time, all three, spellbound

“beautiful life” of virtual worlds, they do not strive to make any persistent efforts to change their plight, hoping for a quick profitable marriage, at the mercy of circumstances. All three, ultimately, come to terms with a certain surrogate of the Eastern type of polygamous marriage, realizing its immorality, humiliation in the conditions of Slavic behavioral norms, and the unnaturalness of their own national psychology. The only way to reconcile consciousness with what is happening is to eliminate it with the help of drugs.

In this context, the semantics of the title of the play is updated: in accordance with “andante” (moderate, average, tempo in music), the action slows down, the anxieties and worries of the characters are calmed, and conflicts are resolved by removing moral prohibitions. Universal reconciliation and happiness are illusory and will end simultaneously with the effect of narcotic substances. The final remark of the play “They Walk in a Round Dance” is an expression of the same archaic collective (prepersonal) existence, continuing the theme of the previous play.

The semantic junction between the play “Andante” and the last play of the cycle is the motif of illusory, unreal existence as a way of solving pressing problems. The round dance of the characters in a state of drug intoxication in Andante precedes the theatrical metamorphoses of Columbine's Apartment. The last play most closely corresponds to the classical genre types of one-act skits. A traditional farcical plot of adultery with an invariable twist - the appearance of a husband at the moment of a wife's meeting with her lover - with a man dressing up as a woman, with a mustache pasted on and falling off. The names and roles of the characters are repeated by the leading masks of the commedia dell arte: Columbine, Pierrot, Harlequin. The text of the play imitates the improvisational nature of Italian comedy in satirical attacks on the topic of the day: about Soviet public catering (“in cooking -<...>waste from their restaurant<...>My neighbors fed their dog these cutlets.<...>The veterinarian was called. He gave the dog artificial respiration and said: “Eat these cutlets yourself, but it’s harmful for the dog”), about the problems of employment and salaries of young specialists, about the eternal shortage and speculation in imports, etc.

A cascade of puns (“Columbine. He left home a long time ago! Pierrot (jumps up). To the rehearsal. Columbine. Oddball! Come to me. Pierrot (comes out from behind the table). How long ago? Columbine. Yes, it will be two months already. Sit down" or “took boiled cabbage - these boiled rags”) also goes back to the style of folk comic shows.

However, the cheerful comedic tone of the play, as always with L.S. Petrushevskaya, ambiguous and contradictory, implies another side of this gaiety. The heroes of the play are theatrical figures: the director, actors, who, during the course of the action, realize their professional tasks in “rehearsals” at home for scenes from “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Jellyette”. These parody and parody scenes, on the one hand, enhance the theatrical-carnival element of the play, on the other hand, they break through from under the theatrical masks and parodies -

the cruel reality of “behind the scenes” life is revealed: homelessness, family instability of “guest performers”, the “drama” of unrecognized young talents who have been playing “cats with mustaches” at children’s matinees for years (Pierrot), aging “soubrettes” (Columbine) and a complete “tragedy” self-loss of personality, unable to identify one’s age, gender, social and marital status: “Pierrot. Where is your husband? Columbine (slowly). What... husband?<...>I'm not married, what are you talking about? Pierrot. For a long time? Columbine (counts in her head). Already a week. Pierrot. And where he? Columbine. He? I went to the store. Pierrot. For what? Columbine. For the cabbage."

Theatrical names and roles erase their national, tribal and individual identity. Columbine is called “Kolya”, she tries to play Romeo, Pierrot grows neither a beard nor a mustache, and when the glued mustache of the “cat” who ate the sausage from Harlequin’s table falls off, he appears in the guise of a “girl”, for whom the director has a penchant .

The growing chaos of persons, genders, roles and positions is overcome by the unexpected reincarnation of Columbine as “chairman of the struggle commission... for working with young people.” And this familiar repressive discourse of power gives the viewer the opportunity to identify the characters and action of the play with the real space and time of the Soviet era.

Thus, each play in the cycle individually represents an autonomous, complete work of art, different from others in genre, plot, and system of characters. “Love” is a lyrical scene, “Stairwell” is a stage metaphor, “Andante” is an eccentric comedy, “Columbine’s Apartment” is a farce. At the same time, in proximity to the others, each of the plays, while maintaining its aesthetic and problematic-thematic dominant, actualizes the semantics relevant to the metatext of the cycle.

Thus, the initial order of the plays: “Staircase” - “Love” - “Andante” - “Columbine’s Apartment” - determined as the leading motive the house, house-building in an ascending gradation: staircase - room - exodus - return - preservation of home, private space of any at a price.

Moving the play “Love” to the beginning of the cycle emphasizes the motive of family and marriage, developing in a descending gradation: legal marriage, the emergence of love as the spiritual basis of a family union and the loss of its material basis - an apartment (“Love”) - the weakening of family ties, the devaluation of the institution of marriage ( “The Staircase”) - a surrogate family (“Andante”) - a bad game of family and love in the absence of both (“Columbine’s Apartment”).

In addition, the artistic logic of the cycle, as already mentioned, is created by a consistent increase in entropic tendencies from play to play - the dispersion of spiritual resources in the overall picture of the world, the deepening of the crisis of human identity in the entropic process. At the formal creative level, this logic of the cycle as an artistic unity is supported in the semantic connections between plays, in the dynamics of rhythm and genre-aesthetic modality (from lyricism to parody and farce), in the development of a tendency from realistic stylistics (“Love”) to metaphorical ( “Staircase”) and conditional gaming (“Andante”, “Colombina’s Apartment”).

The general aesthetic principle of the cycle, which includes it in the theatrical system of L. Petrushevskaya, is the position formed by the playwright himself about the “fallen fourth wall”: “The fact of the matter is that Othello at the moment at which the audience caught him (the fourth wall fell off) ), is not busy with the movement of history, but with his wife and family squabbles in general.”

LITERATURE

1. Ozhegov S.I., Shvedova N.Yu. Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language: 80,000 words and phraseological expressions / Russian Academy of Sciences.

Institute of Russian Language named after. V.V. Vinogradova. 4th ed., add. M., 1997. P. 271.

2. Petrushevskaya L. Apartment Colombina. St. Petersburg: Amphora, 2006. 415 p.

3. Petrushevskaya L. Ninth volume. M., 2003. 336 p.

Chapter II. One-act plays of a conventional nature.

In the early stages of its development, the one-act play was closely associated with jokes, farces, and also, a little later, with propaganda art. That is, the one-act play was predominantly conventional in nature. Let us first consider the form of a one-act propaganda play.

Propaganda theater.

The one-act play found new life in the 1920s. XX century, it became the most suitable form for expressing revolutionary sentiments, propaganda and reflection of reality. Many writers of that time turned to the genre of propaganda plays: V. Mayakovsky, P.A. Arsky, A. Serafimovich, Yur.Yurin, A. Lunacharasky, L.Lunts and others. The one-act propaganda play fulfilled ideological tasks, so the poster language, extreme convention and “character-sign” became a characteristic feature of such plays.

October 1917 was a radical turning point in the fate of Russia and Russian culture. Revolutionary events affected all spheres of Russian life. The political, social and economic crisis entailed a cultural and moral crisis. The ways of development of dramaturgy have also changed significantly, as theater has become one of the instruments of influence of the new state policy and ideology. A. Lunacharsky, speaking about the connection between socialism and art, in particular the theater, argued the following: “Socialism needs. All agitation is an embryonic art. All art is agitation. It is the education of souls, their cultural transformation.” This identity of the nature of theater and socialism served to further develop the theater.

The main goal of the theater was to promote communist ideas among the illiterate population. The propaganda theater was widespread and theater groups, studios, amateur and semi-professional troupes arose throughout the country. Another goal was the idea of ​​​​creating a new culture, relying on everything that was created by previous generations. Many movements of a similar theater appeared with their own ideas for creating a fundamentally new culture: the widespread Proletkult movement put forward the idea of ​​​​a “pure”, “absolutely new” proletarian culture, created by workers and having nothing in common with either the old, pre-revolutionary culture, or the classical heritage. A similar idea was in the Theater October program. The movements were led by famous artists: V. Meyerhold, V. Mayakovsky, N. Okhlopkov and others.

Also, on the basis of social and political events, there were conversations and debates about the “new theater”. Everyone understood the need for change, but saw it differently. Thus, V. Mayakovsky in “Open Letter to A.V. Lunacharsky" clearly outlined the agitational nature of the "new theater" necessary for the promotion of revolutionary ideas. “There is no need for a theater rally. “Are you tired of the rally? Where? Do our theaters hold rallies or did they hold rallies? Not only did they not make it to October, they didn’t make it to February. This is not a rally, but a zhurfix by “Uncle Vanya”. Anatoly Vasilievich! In your speech you pointed to the RCP line - agitate with facts. “Theater is a magical thing” and “theater is a dream” are not facts. With the same success we can say “the theater is a fountain”... Our facts are “communist-futurists”, “Art of the Commune”, “Museum of Pictorial Culture”, “production of “The Dawn””, “adequate “Mystery-Bouffe””... On On the wheels of these facts we are rushing into the future."

A. Lunacharsky foresaw a different path for the development of theater, which would appeal to the feelings and consciousness of people. In an article about the theater of the future, he said: “The public theater will be a place for collective productions of tragedies that should raise souls to religious ecstasy, stormy or philosophically calm.” He clearly understood the state of modern theater and had hopes of changing it. “The theater becomes either a department of the order of public charity or an office for preparing bills, and its moral truths are so insignificant that you blush... God forbid if the revolutionary theater were to follow the same path! God forbid if anyone wants to state in five acts the advantage of a short working day or even freedom of speech and press.”

The theater, in fact, is taking the path of agitation and propaganda. Agitation plays are coming to the forefront of theaters and studios. The emergence of a large number of propaganda plays was largely facilitated by the emerging state order system. Plays were written for hundreds of emerging amateur and professional propaganda theaters that needed a fundamentally new repertoire that had to correspond to the new ideology. The post-revolutionary period became a time of comprehension and assessment of the changes that had taken place, both in people's consciousness and in creativity. It was one-act plays that reacted with lightning speed to reality and created a close-up effect, highlighting what was important and essential on which the social process was based.

I. Vishnevskaya wrote about the superiority of a one-act play over multi-act plays in the new realities of life: “In a short play, intense in action, in the intensity of passions, it was easiest to tell about what worried people in the days of the revolution, civil war, and the first years of peaceful construction.”

Propaganda plays had their own characteristics and characteristics that separated them from the rest of drama. First of all, they always had a catchy character and were distinguished by their schematic and simplicity. They did not allow a “second plan” or subtext. This was due to the fact that the center of the play was always some kind of revolutionary task or idea, and not events or a person. Uvarova E.D. in her work on the pop theater, she also noted the following features of the propaganda theater: “The stage does not “embody”, but tells about the event, puts the viewer in the position of an observer, but stimulates his activity, forces him to make decisions, shows the viewer a different situation... The presentation of the propaganda brigade presupposes frequent collective rearrangements in the mise-en-scène, sharp runs to the front of the stage, elements of acrobatics and eccentricities, games with objects, addressing directly to the audience, directly to today’s viewer, but at the same time communication with a partner on stage should not be excluded.”

The propaganda theater was the predecessor of socialist realism, which made the demand to “depict reality in its revolutionary development” and set the task of “remaking and educating the working people in the spirit of socialism.”

Activities of the Blue Blouse.

The theater group “Blue Blouse” became famous for its propaganda plays and performances. This pop group represented a new revolutionary mass art and touched on a variety of topics, both general political and everyday. The "Blue Blouse" existed from the early 1920s until 1933. “The name was given by the overall outfit - a loose blue blouse and black trousers (or skirt), in which artists began to perform, which corresponded to the traditional appearance of a worker on propaganda posters” [Uvarova]. Theater artists had a distinctive sign: they wore a badge with a symbolic image of a worker. And those artists who were close to them in spirit were awarded such a badge and rightfully became “blueblouses”. The Blue Blouse's performances were based on sketches, interludes, small scenes, humorous parodies, short plays, and propaganda posters. “The Blue Blouse” was the cradle of an operational, combative, passionate, topical one-act play, the youth of which was spent in red corners, cultural centers, clubs of factories and factories.” Variety performances of The Blue Blouse were created by many Soviet writers, composers, actors, directors, and artists. Among them are Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sergei Yutkevich, Vasily Lebedev-Kumach, young writers, poets, playwrights A. M. Argo, V. E. Ardov, V. M. Gusev, V. Ya. Tipot, Semyon Kirsanov, Nikolai Aduev, founder theater studio of the Foregger Workshop (Mastfor) on Arbat Nikolai Foregger, pop artist Alexander Shurov, film director Alexander Rowe, actors Emmanuil Geller, Georgy Tusuzov, Elena Yunger, Boris Tenin, Vladimir Zeldin, Mikhail Garkavi, Lev Mirov, Evsei Darsky, Ksenia Kvitnitskaya, Alexander Beniaminov, L. M. Koreneva, B. A. Shakhet, M. I. Zharov, artist B. R. Erdman and many others.

The main objectives of the one-act play at that time were agitation and propaganda. This art called for the struggle for a new social system. The form of a one-act play and theatrical sketch, sketch were the most advantageous in terms of presenting new information and propaganda impact on the viewer. “The simplest performances were created under the cross-influence of large theatrical forms and mass events. Visually - with posters, with figures, in their faces, the live newspapers presented the international situation, the internal situation of the country, campaigned in connection with the next political campaigns... A kind of theatrical political information was more easily absorbed than the dry text of the report.” “The Blue Blouse” entered the history of small theaters as a phenomenon that fully and accurately responded to the social needs of the time. Gradually, having exhausted its possibilities and done a lot for propaganda, it left the stage.

TEFFY

This kind of theater was very close to Teffi, since she wrote one-act plays and preferred them to traditional plays for their brevity and closeness to her favorite short story genre. Her one-act plays were staged more than once in these theaters, including her first play, “The Women’s Question.”

The theme of this play clearly betrays the interests of determined contemporaries who advocate for women's equality. The 20th century became the century of emancipation in Russia, the century of women's struggle for their rights. It was in the 20th century that a number of serious changes took place in the fate of women. The Russian women's movement of 1905–1917 is a mature feminist movement, prepared both ideologically and organizationally. The revolutionary wave of 1905 raised women, who had previously only advocated access to higher education and professional work, to fight for civil and political rights. In January 1905, about 30 St. Petersburg women of liberal views announced the creation of the all-Russian “Union of Equality of Women” (URW), which operated until 1908. In April, it held the first rally in Russian history in defense of women’s political rights. All these events were assessed differently by society, including by women themselves. In her play “The Women's Question,” Teffi offers her own solution to this issue, or rather even completely removes it. The title of the play poses the “women's question,” which creates social conflict and reflects the fierce struggle for the rights and responsibilities of men and women. The dispute about the rights of women and men is ironically played out by the author and appears eternal and meaningless. That is why Teffi defined the genre of her first dramatic work as a fantastic joke in the 1st act. Fantastic in literature is a type of artistic imagery based on a total displacement and combination of the boundaries of “possible” and “impossible”. Violations of this kind are motivated by the hero’s (and/or reader’s) encounter with a phenomenon that goes beyond the framework of the picture of the world that is generally considered “ordinary” (“objective”, “historically reliable”, etc.) As for the “joke”, it has There are two definitions: “1. A funny, witty, funny prank, trick or witticism. 2. A small comic play." Based on the second definition, we can say that Teffi wrote a short comic play based on a total displacement and combination of the boundaries of “possible” and “impossible”, reflecting in it the social and everyday contradictions between women and men.

2) Methods of influence in the play.

Before moving on to the methods of influence in this play, let us turn to the artistic techniques that playwrights used to influence the audience. On the one hand, drama is devoid of many techniques, on the other hand, the advantage is that it comes into “live contact” with the audience. The specificity of the theater lies in the performer’s depiction of events that seem to be happening directly in front of the viewer; the viewer becomes their witness and accomplice, which determines the special strength of the ideological and emotional impact of the theater. The development of theater, its types and genres is closely related to the development of drama and the development of its expressive means (dialogue, conflict, forms of action, typification methods, etc.). Russian professional literary dramaturgy emerged at the end of the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was preceded by a centuries-old period of folk, mainly oral and partly handwritten folk drama. At first, archaic ritual actions, then round dance games and buffoon games contained elements characteristic of dramaturgy as an art form: dialogicity, dramatization of action, acting it out in person, depiction of one or another character (massing). These elements were consolidated and developed in folklore drama. To the middle of the 18th century. accounts for the formation of Russian classicism. Classicism formulated the purpose of literature as influencing the mind to correct vices and cultivate virtue, which clearly expressed the author’s point of view. This literary movement was characterized by strict adherence to unshakable rules taken from the poetics of Aristotle. In the works of classicism, characters were divided into strictly positive and negative, into virtuous, ideal, devoid of individuality, acting at the behest of reason, and carriers of vice, in the grip of selfish passions. At the same time, in the depiction of positive characters there was schematism, reasoning, that is, a tendency to moralizing reasoning from the author’s point of view. Characters, as a rule, were unilinear: the hero personified any one quality (passion) - intelligence, courage, etc. (for example, Mitrofan’s leading trait in “The Minor” is laziness). The heroes were portrayed statically, without character evolution. In fact, these were just mask images. Often the “speaking” surnames of the characters were used (Starodum, Pravdin). In the works of classic writers, there has always been a conflict between good and evil, reason and stupidity, duty and feeling, that is, the so-called stereotypical conflict in which good, reason, and duty won. Hence the abstractness and conventionality of the depiction of reality. The heroes of classicism spoke in a pompous, solemn, elevated language. Writers, as a rule, used such poetic means as Slavicisms, hyperbole, metaphor, personification, metonymy, comparison, antithesis, emotional epithets, rhetorical questions and exclamations, appeals, mythological comparisons. The theory of “three unities” prevailed - place (the entire action of the play took place in one place), time (events in the play developed over the course of a day), action (what was happening on stage had its beginning, development and end, while there were no “extra” episodes and characters who are not directly related to the development of the main plot). Supporters of classicism usually borrowed plots for works from ancient history or mythology. The rules of classicism required the logical development of the plot, harmony of composition, clarity and conciseness of language, rational clarity and noble beauty of style. All the principles of constructing a classic work were aimed at causing catharsis and teaching readers and viewers, showing them what “good” is and what “bad” is. XIX century becomes the “golden age” of literature, the dramaturgy of Russian theater is diverse and colorful. The traditions of educational drama and the rules of classicism are still observed, but they are gradually weakening. The first play of the new type was A. Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit.” The author achieves amazing mastery in developing all components of the play: characters (in which psychological realism is organically combined with a high degree of typification), intrigue (where love vicissitudes are inextricably intertwined with civil and ideological conflicts), language (almost the entire play is entirely proverbial, proverbs and popular expressions, preserved in living speech today). Griboyedov violates the principle of unity of action. In addition to social conflict, the play contains personal conflict. The author's position is expressed by the hero-reasoner. Also, Griboyedov’s innovation is that Chatsky plays a very strange role: a sounding board, an unlucky lover who has comic traits. Thus, we see the author’s ambiguous attitude. The influence and impact of the play are ambiguous: it evokes both laughter and compassion for the main character, and prompts various thoughts. In the mid-19th century, melodrama and vaudeville became widespread. The most common technique is “travesty”—dressing up. Sentimentalism and romanticism were very short periods in the history of Russian drama. From classicism she immediately stepped into realism. An explosive mixture of critical realism with fantastic grotesquery fills the amazing comedies of N. Gogol (Marriage, Players, The Inspector General). Using the example of “The Inspector General” we see what techniques the author uses. Among the plot and compositional techniques are inversion - first the plot, and then the exposition; silent scene at the end of the play; compositional gradation. The playwright uses a technique called hyperbole. For example, hyperboles in Khlestakov’s speech give the boasting scene an additional comic effect. Also telling names are Judge Lyapkin-Tyapkin, Derzhimord police officers, Svistunov, etc.; paired characters - Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky; stage directions; character typification and various skirmishes between heroes. Ostrovsky’s plays are distinguished by the individualization of the characters’ speech. Thus, the lyrically colored language of Katerina in the play “The Thunderstorm” has nothing in common with the rough, abrupt speech of the Wild. At the turn of the century, dramaturgy changed greatly under the influence of Chekhov's dramaturgy. He brought a new type of conflict to dramaturgy, a new type of construction and development of action, created a background, zones of silence, subtext and many other dramatic techniques. There was no dramatic conflict in the usual sense in Chekhov's plays, the action was not based on the confrontation of characters, and the characters were no longer divided into “good” and “bad.” The role of stage directions (“the room that is still called the nursery”) is increasing; the dialogues in the plays are very unusual compared to the plays of other authors. So, for example, in the play “The Cherry Orchard” the dialogues are more reminiscent of the conversations of the deaf. Everyone talks about their own things, as if not paying attention to what their interlocutor is saying. Thus, Gaev’s remark that the train was two hours late unexpectedly entails Charlotte’s words that her dog eats nuts too. In the fourth act of the play “The Cherry Orchard,” Chekhov introduces the sound of an ax knocking on wood. The cherry orchard becomes a symbol of passing life. The impact of the play is not only emotional, but also intellectual, which becomes characteristic of most plays at the turn of the century and subsequently throughout the 20th century. By the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. New aesthetic directions in dramaturgy were developed. The eschatological moods of the change of centuries determined the widespread dissemination of symbolism (A. Blok - Showcase, Stranger, Rose and Cross, King in the Square; L. Andreev - To the Stars, Tsar Famine, Human Life, Anathema; N. F. Sologub - Victory of Death, Night dancing, etc.). Futurists (A. Kruchenykh, V. Khlebnikov, K. Malevich, V. Mayakovsky). Tough, socially aggressive, darkly naturalistic aesthetics were developed in the dramaturgy of M. Gorky (Philistines, At the Lower Depths, Summer Residents). Playwrights sought to have an emotional or intellectual impact on the audience, resorting to various methods of influence, non-verbal elements-symbols (a thunderstorm in Ostrovsky, the sound of a broken string, an ax in Chekhov), violating all established traditions, breaking stereotypes.

Now let's move on to analyzing the methods of influencing the viewer that the author resorts to in the play. The main artistic device in it is comedy. One of Teffi’s favorite aphorisms, which she took as an epigraph to the first volume of her “Humorous Stories,” was a thought from Spinoza’s “ethics”: “for laughter is joy, and therefore in itself is good.” Teffi's laughter is special: it makes you not only laugh, but also think about the pressing problems of our time. And it often carries sad notes of awareness of the imperfection of reality. Nadezhda Aleksandrovna spoke about herself to the nephew of the Russian artist Vereshchagin, Vladimir: “I was born in St. Petersburg in the spring, and, as you know, our St. Petersburg spring is very changeable: sometimes the sun shines, sometimes it rains. That’s why I, like on the pediment of an ancient Greek theater, have two faces: laughing and crying.” And indeed, Teffi knew how to expose both the good sides of life and its imperfections, to point out vices and shortcomings, but not evil, but only slightly ironizing over “dear humanity.” Teffi's mocking tone permeates all levels of the dramatic work, and at each of them shows the comicality of the current situation. And the plot, and the mirror-ring composition, and the conflict, and the system of characters - everything becomes a tool for influencing the reader and viewer to create an artistic effect.

First, let's look at plot and compositional techniques. The play consists of three scenes: in the first we get to know the family, it depicts the real world, familiar to that time, where women cook, clean, raise children, and men work and bring money into the house. The second picture gives an inverted image of the world, a travestyed “wrong side”, a dream of the main character Katya, in which men and women change places. In the third picture everything returns to its place. The plot of the play is simple but modern. The play begins with a description of the usual way of life of an ordinary family, where the main character of the play, 18-year-old Katya, advocates women's equality and puts forward her arguments: “Outrageous! Downright outrageous! A woman is definitely not the same person... However, in many countries there is women's equality, and no one says that things have gotten worse because of this. Why can’t we do this?” Her brother Vanya argues with her. The father returning from work expresses his indignation: “Father serves all day like a mad dog, he comes home, and there is no peace here. And, mother, it’s her own fault. She dismissed it herself. Katerina spends whole days prowling around rallies, this idiot just kicks his legs... Father spends the whole day, like a horse, poring over papers, and instead of....” Before leaving, the father reports that Uncle Petya has been promoted to general and is going to organize a dinner for him on this occasion, so it is necessary to buy wine for the newly made general. Next we learn that Katya dreams of serving in the department, although this is considered a purely male matter, and at the same time dreams of infringement of the rights of the stronger sex: “How I hate you all. Now I don’t want equality. This is not enough for me! No! Let them [men] sit in our skin, and we, women, play with them as they play with us. Then we’ll see what they sing.” To Vanya’s question: “Do you think it will be better?” - the sister confidently answers: “Yes, we will change the whole world, we women...”

Then the stage slowly gets dark, and in the second picture we see that the men and women have actually changed places. Now Katya and mom serve in the department, dad and her brothers take care of the house, generals become generals - everything is turned upside down. Women switch roles with men, while remaining in female form, which creates a comic effect. After this dream, the heroine wakes up and is glad that dad is “not wearing an apron” and that everything has returned to its place. Katya wanted equality with men and even sincerely believed that if matriarchy came, life would change for the better. But in the play, the author showed that changing roles not only disrupts the natural course of events, but essentially does not change anything: cute domestic creatures, having received the opportunity to “rule the world” and command men, became louts and red tape, like their better halves. Life has not become better, only the “poles” have changed. Therefore, at the end of the play, Teffi, through the mouth of the same Katya, says: “We are all the same anyway... We are all the same. Let’s wait for a new humanity.” Women and men, according to the author, have the same flaws that manifest themselves when they function within the old world, no matter what roles they take on. Only a “new humanity” can eradicate these vices.

A number of others are superimposed on the main comic situation. One of these episodes is Katya’s explanation with her fiancé Andrei Nikolaevich, who in the second picture becomes her “mirror reflection”.

Andrey Nikolaevich: I came... to return your word to you... I can’t...

Katya: So you don’t love me! My God, my God! Speak up, speak up! I'll go crazy!

Andrei Nikolaevich (crying): I can’t... We’ll get married, and the next day you’ll ask: “Andryusha, what’s for lunch today?” I can not! Better than a bullet in the forehead... We came to an agreement with Vanya... We will study... I will be a doctor... I will feed myself, and you will do the housework...

Katya: Are you going crazy? I, a woman, at your expense?

Andrey Nikolaevich: Yes! Yes!... I love you so much, but I can’t do it any other way. Women are stupefied by power... We'll wait... until I feed myself.

As we can see, the play has a mirror-ring composition, since all events duplicate each other, the third picture restores the order of things as it is depicted in the first. The characters - men and women - having swapped places in the second picture, almost exactly reproduce each other's words and gestures. At the same time, the author uses the “montage effect” at the junction of the first two scenes of the play - a special cinematic technique to create the effect of switching frames. Towards the end of the play, there is a declaration of love between Katya and her fiancé Andrei Nikolaevich, who repeats verbatim the recent speeches of his beloved, but only with the proviso that “women have become stupefied by power...” The exhibition depicts the situation in which the conflict arises, and describes the family’s activities . The beginning of the conflict is Katya’s argument with her brother and the posing of the “women’s question.” In the fantastic development of the action, the author’s irony over the absurdity and unnaturalness of the new position of men and women is manifested, which leads to the inevitable denouement in which we get the answer to the question posed: the heroine’s dreams are utopian and meaningless, and the idea of ​​a new matriarchy is just a bad dream. Thus, Teffi’s one-act play has a complicated chronotope, including real and fantastic (dream) plans.

Let's turn to the actors. The main characters of the work are father, mother, and their children (Katya, 18 years old, Vanya, 17 years old, Kolya, 16 years old). It is noteworthy that the father and mother are named Alexander and Alexandra, which has a comic effect of duplicating the characters. They address each other with the same affectionate version of the name “Shurochka”:

Mother: Go, Shurochka, have some tea.

Father: I'm coming, Shurochka. I only have one glass. We need to run again.

The rest are minor characters, guests in the house. This is Andrei Nikolaevich, the fat Aunt Masha, the thin bald professor, her husband Pyotr Nikolaevich, the orderly, the adjutant, Styopka, the cab driver, and the maid Glasha. They appear only in the second picture in Katya's dream scene.

Teffi also uses in her play the techniques of “dressing up” (travesty) and metamorphosis to create a comic effect. When in the second picture men and women change social roles, Teffi, in order to show that men have become more like women, Teffi “dresses up” them. The father in the first and third scenes is “in an ordinary dress”; in the second - “in a long colored checkered frock coat, a wide turn-down collar and a fluffy scarf tied with a bow under the chin.” The mother in the first picture is “in a house dress”, in the second – “in a narrow skirt, frock coat, vest, starched underwear.” Katya is dressed approximately like her mother in the second picture. In the first picture Vanya is “in a jacket”. Kolya “in a bicycle suit.” In the second picture, both are “in long colored frock coats, one in pink, the other in blue, with large colored scarves and soft lace collars.” Andrei Nikolaevich is dressed in the same way: “a hat with a veil, a muff in his hands.” Aunt Masha is wearing “a knee-length uniform, high boots, thick epaulettes, medals, but a lady’s hairstyle.” The professor is wearing “a tailcoat, a narrow skirt, starched underwear, pince-nez.” She herself is “thin, bald, with her hair braided at the back in a rat tail with a blue bow.” Her husband Pyotr Nikolaevich wears a “wide frock coat.” In the second picture he wears “a lace scarf, a lorgnette, and a fan at the side of his belt, like a lady’s.” Denshikha - “a fat woman, oily hair, curled at the back of her head, but in a uniform.” The adjutant is also dressed “in a military uniform, but heavily oiled up. She has a voluminous hairstyle, with an aigrette on the side of her hair (i.e. a tuft of feathers sticking up).” Styopka wears “black trousers, a pink jacket, an apron with lace, a cap on her head, and a bow on her neck.” The cab driver appears “in a military uniform, with a cab driver’s hat on top, in an overcoat and with a whip.” Thus, women are dressed in men's clothing, retaining only part of the feminine attributes, which gives them a grotesque aggressiveness. Men in transformed (elongated, like dresses, and colored) frock coats take on an unnatural, comically feminine appearance.

However, changes occurred not only in clothing: the social functions of men and women also changed. We see that Katya, who dreamed of equal rights and working in the department, went to rallies, sits at the table and sorts out papers. In turn, Kolya, who was previously lying in a rocking chair, embroiders shoes. In the dining room, father washes cups. Vanya becomes a mirror image of his sister, now he goes to rallies and advocates for the equality of men. He comes in animated and says (as his sister recently did): “How interesting it was today! I’m straight from parliament... Deputy Ovchina spoke about the men’s issue. She spoke wonderfully! Men, he says, are the same people. Referred to history. In the old days, men were allowed even to very responsible positions...”

The secondary characters also change. In the first picture, the father reports that “Uncle Petya has been promoted to general.” In the second picture, the doorbell rings, the mother comes in and reports that Aunt Masha has been promoted to general. Then everything develops according to the laws of travesty. A woman enters in a short skirt, boots, uniform and cap. It was Aunt Masha’s servant who came to tell them that the general’s wife was going to come and visit them now. Her mother gives her some vodka, as would be the case if a male orderly came.

After a while, Aunt Masha enters. She is wearing a skirt and uniform, a hat, and thick epaulets. She takes out her cigarette case and asks Styopka (the servant) for a match and soda, since the general’s wife is having a headache “after yesterday.” The father comes in, Aunt Masha kisses his hand and says: “Are you still busy with the housework? What can you do? This is the lot of men. Nature itself created him as a family man. This is already your instinct - to be fruitful and multiply and nurse, hehe... And we, poor women, bear for this all the hardships of life, service, caring for the family. You flutter like butterflies, like he-he... papillons, and we sometimes until dawn...”

Travesty also affects characters and types of behavior. Teffi portrays the boys in the second picture “on the verge of hysteria”: “Kolya (whines). Rip again. I missed the cross again!” Vanya talks hopefully about the wonderful abilities of the male brain: “Deputy Ovchina spoke about the male issue. The male brain, despite its heaviness and excessive number of convolutions, is still capable of perceiving something.” The father becomes a reverent family man, a loving father and hostess. “Father is fussing, running to open mother’s door.” The general’s Aunt Masha turns out to be a “femme fatale” who does not let a single man pass without giving him an ambiguous look, loves to drink and tells obscene jokes. Mother reproaches Styopka for communicating too much with women:

Mother: I can’t hear you, sir. There's always some firewoman sitting in your kitchen, that's why you can't hear it.

Styopka. This is not from me, sir, but from Fedor. The mother becomes a formidable commander, who at the same time is sympathetic to the need to drink (Mother (to the denshikha): Here's some vodka for you, sister). The adjutant is characterized as a reveler:

Aunt Masha: And our Marya Nikolaevna, brother, was completely dizzy. All day long they have smoke like a rocker. And rides, and walks, and dinners, and all this with different fallen men. Styopka is portrayed as a romantic person with a “subtle spiritual structure.” When talking with the adjutant, he is overwhelmed with emotions: Adjutant (pats him on the cheek): And what, the lady is probably courting you?

Styopka: Not even at all. Men's gossip.

Adjutant Well, okay, okay! Interpret! Look, coquette, no way, you’re letting your beard grow... Well, kiss me, little face! Come on, hurry up, I need to go! Look, you imp!

Styopka (breaking free). Let me in! It's a shame for you. I'm an honest man, and you just want to play and quit.

Adjutant. What a fool! I love you, even though you are a pretty ugly face. Styopka. I don’t believe you... All of you are like that (crying), and then you leave me with the child... You violate my immaculate beauty. (Roars.)

Let us now consider the verbal techniques that the author uses. One of the verbal techniques is a play on words. Teffi “forms” new professions of the feminine gender, which every time brings a smile when compared with reality. Professors, generals, attendants, cab drivers, doctors, firemen, adjutants, chairwomen, mayors and deputies appear. And also new male professions: maid, seamstress. Unusual to the ears of contemporaries, the names of these professions caused laughter. The author ironizes the change of positions, upending behavioral stereotypes and traditional gestures: men are busy gossiping and gossiping, women kiss men’s hands and allow frivolity.

Aunt Masha: And they say my adjutant is keeping an eye on you?

Styopka: (covers his face with an apron) And why, lady, do you believe men’s gossip! I respect myself.

The main character’s “upside down” reasoning about marriage sounds very funny. “I’ll finish my courses, become a doctor, and then I’ll marry him myself. Just so that he doesn’t dare do anything. So only for housework. Don’t worry, I can feed you.” The “women's issue” itself turns into a “male issue”. And the standard situation, when girls “plug their ears,” is reversed: “Father: Katya, leave the room. You say such things in front of boys.” To the delight of some radically minded readers, instead of stereotypical judgments about “female logic” the following are heard:

Father (timidly): Maybe we can postpone lunch until tomorrow? It's a little late today...

Mother: That's man's logic! I invited guests for today, and he will serve lunch tomorrow.

A number of “shifters” in the play concern the fate of children, military service, dowry and marriage:

Katya: Should I become an officer?

Mother: Well, now you have good protection. Your aunt will nominate you. Yes, you won’t disappear from me anyway. But the boys bother me. They'll stay stuck as old bachelors. Nowadays they don't take much without a dowry...

Kate. Well, Kolya is nice.

Kolya (sticks his head out the door). Still not pretty! Wait, I’ll pick up some fat councilor or mayor.

At dinner they drink not to women, but “to the health of wonderful men,” and also discuss “male equality,” condemning it and considering it stupid: Mother: Now go with all these innovations. Men will be doctors. Well, judge for yourself, will you call a young man to you when you get sick?

Adjutant: I would never take such a young man who rides horses, and lets his hair grow, and runs courses. This is so immodest, so unmanly. However, Ekaterina Alexandrovna, you seem to like Andrei Nikolaevich?

Katya: Um... yes. And I hope that he can be re-educated. He's still young. Finally, the household, children, all this will affect his nature.

The comedy of remarks is an important means of influence. The author actively uses stage directions, in some of them clarifying details, in others - providing readers, actors and directors with greater opportunity for imagination and improvisation. A “d” falls out of my father’s briefcase along with some papers.

French one-act drama

Paris. L'Avant Scene. 1959–1976

Translation and compilation by S. A. Volodina

© Translation into Russian and compilation by Art Publishing House, 1984.

From the compiler

In modern French drama, the one-act play occupies a unique place. Performed by several actors (usually one to four), it takes place in a single, often conventional, set and lasts from five to thirty minutes. The popular French playwright Rene de Obaldia described the essence of this genre as follows: “A maximum of three characters, not a scenery, but a skeleton, the duration is the blink of an eye.”

A one-act play has its own audience and its own stage. As in other countries, French one-act plays are performed by amateur troupes at “cultural centers”, also shown on television, and performed on the radio. Sometimes professional theaters stage performances composed of one-act plays, as was done, for example, by the Madeleine Renault Company - Jean-Louis Barrault. At the grand opening of their “small stage” at the Petit Odeon theater, they showed two plays by Nathalie Sarraute - “Silence” and “Lies”, which had not left the theater poster for a long time, and in the 1971/72 season plays by Jeannine Worms were staged there "Tea Party" and "This Minute".

It is traditional for French theater to perform a one-act play at the beginning of the performance, before the main play. In French theatrical terminology, there is a special designation for such a production “before the curtain.” In such cases, a one-act play plays the role of a prologue, outlining the theme of the entire performance, an overture, which to some extent prepares the viewer for the perception of the main play, tuning it to a certain tonality. Most often this is typical when staging works of French classics. Sometimes, on the contrary, the director chooses a play “before the curtain” according to a different principle - he contrasts two different psychological plans for. so that the ideological orientation of the main play is more clearly perceived. Thus, the one-act play “Funeral” by Henri Mons, directed by A. Barsac at the Atelier Theater, preceded Jean Anouilh’s “Thieves’ Ball”; the modern psychological drama was preceded by a sharp satire written more than a hundred years ago. And before Anouilh’s play “Sleight of Hand” there was his own one-act play “Orchestra”. In this particular case, the world of insignificant and pitiful people was replaced by the display of such a personality as Napoleon; the playwright’s philosophical concept emerged more clearly against the background of the external contrast of events, between which, despite the contrast of eras and scales, a certain psychological analogy was discovered.

Modern French playwrights often write their own plays “before the curtain” for their performances, as can be seen in the example of C. Anouilh. Even more indicative is the work of Rene de Obaldia, who involves his heroes in the world of unreal situations. According to him, he often wrote one-act plays extemporaneously; under the title “Seven Idle Impromptu” they were published as a separate book.

This edition contains only one play from a large number of plays “before the curtain”: despite their undoubted stage merits and the fact that many of them belong to the pen of major playwrights, they, playing a supporting role in the play, do not always have dramatic completeness and stand alone they lose out in some way from the general director's intention.

Plays “before the curtain”, in contrast to one-act plays intended for independent performance, have one more feature. Most French theaters do not have a permanent company (even if there is some active acting); actors are invited under a contract for one season, during which the same performance is performed every day. Performers involved in the main play can also participate in a one-act play, so the management, less constrained by financial considerations, does not impose strict requirements on the number of actors for the play “before the curtain”. Their number can even reach ten or twelve, which makes them sharply different from the plays performed on the stage of the so-called cafe theaters.

Originating in Paris, in the Latin Quarter, during the post-war period, which in French literary and theatrical circles is called the “era of Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” cafe-theaters were a novelty that aroused the interest of the public. They very quickly took a certain place in the theatrical life of the French capital, and already in 1972, the famous theater critic Andre Camp asked the question: “Shouldn’t newspapers create a special section for cafe-theaters on pages dedicated to the theater?”

The very first of the cafe-theaters - “La Vieille Grie” (“The Old Grille”) - still exists and operates in the same semi-basement near the Paris Mosque, and the other two, about which so much was written and talked about at the beginning, - “La Grand Severin and Le Bilbocquet were forced to close. Cafe-theaters consider their beginning to be March 2, 1966, when the first performance of the Bernard da Costa enterprise was staged at the Cafe Royale. French criticism of those times, calling the café-theater “a marriage of convenience between buffoons and innkeepers,” added: “but sometimes it happens, they think - out of calculation, but it turns out - out of love...” Then, for the first time, on a small temporary stage between the cafe tables, the organizers of the performance shared their tasks with the public. They intended to introduce the public either to a new author, or to a new theme, or to a new form of drama, and also to bring the actors closer to the public, who found themselves in the space where the theatrical action took place, was drawn into the development of the action, and sometimes took part in it.

One of the most important participants in such a performance is the presenter. This is an actor or an author, often both in one person. Sometimes the performances even took the form of a “one-man show”; the French call it the English term “one-man show”, such as the performances of Bernard Allais in Migaudière or Alex Metahier in Grammont. Major actors largely ensured the success of the entire spectacular event; the public went to see them. Their monologues, which certainly included brilliant improvisation and resourceful responses to the audience's reaction, were the basis for topical sketches, sometimes composed by the performers themselves. Such presenters, for example, were the poet and playwright Claude Fortunot, Fernand Rusino and Raymond Devos for two years at the Carmagnola cafe, whose sketches were published in separate collections.

Let us note here that such famous French actors as Bourville (“Ten Monologues”), Jean Richard (“Monologues and Anecdotes”), Robert Lamoureux (“Monologues and Poems” in five editions) composed monologues and sketches for their own concert performances ).

But who else wrote for cafe theaters? Which authors paid tribute to the one-act play? Variety. Cafe-theaters, of which there are currently more than fifteen in Paris alone (six of them in the Latin Quarter, two in Montparnasse, five on the boulevards), which are not associated with large production costs, can much more easily carry out an experiment in public with a play by a novice author. But often even venerable writers, if they have a plot for one act, do not strive to “stretch” it, but write a short play knowing that it will have its own audience and its own halls. Prose writer, playwright and poet Jean Tardieu wrote in the preface to his collection of one-act plays called “Chamber Theater”: “... sometimes I open the door of my creative attic - my “chamber theater”. I can hear lines from comedies and incoherent passages from dramas. I hear laughter, screams, whispers, and under a ray of light, funny and touching, friendly and kind, frightening and evil creatures come to life. It seems that they came from some more significant world to beckon, intrigue and worry me, bringing only a faint echo of events anticipated by the imagination. I write down these fragments of phrases, I hospitably welcome these fleeting characters, offering them a minimum of food and shelter, I do not delve into their past and do not predict the future, and I do not strive for these wind-driven seeds to take stronger roots in my garden.

The names of Diderot and Lorca, Tennessee Williams and Guy Foissy, Strindberg and Chekhov appear side by side on the cafe-theater posters. Recognized actors such as Rene Faure, Julien Berto, Louis Arbeau sier, Gaby Silvia, Annie Noel and others do not consider it beneath their dignity to perform in cafe theaters.

Perhaps the great merit of cafe-theaters is that they are a “takeoff platform” for aspiring youth. For example, the famous Parisian café-theater “Fanal” showed twenty-six plays by young authors in just four years of its existence, more than a hundred aspiring actors took part in them, and they were staged by twenty young directors.

Not all cafe-theaters are equal in importance, and their programs are compiled differently. Sometimes this can be called an “evening of poetry,” sometimes a solo concert of an actor, where monologues are interspersed with songs with a guitar, sometimes mimes perform, but most often one-act plays are staged, the vast majority of them by contemporary authors.

They cover all genres: from vaudeville to psychological drama, from farce to tragedy. One-act plays are included in collected works of writers, published in special collections, and published as separate brochures.

The dynamism of modern life also determines the theater’s desire for brevity. In this regard, the 1982 theater festival in Sofia summed up an indicative result. Most plays did not exceed one act in length. In France, specially established prizes are awarded to the best one-act plays; the most popular of them make up the repertoire of the theatrical enterprise “Gala of a One-Act Play”, led by director and playwright Andre Gilles.

What attracts the French audience to these plays and why...

Comedy in one act

CHARACTERS:

Old husband

Old wife.

Lieutenant Migunov.

Marya Vasilievna, his wife.

Children of Lieutenant Migunov.

On stage - Male. He stands by an open suitcase, holding a bundle of letters in his hand. He is shocked to the last degree.

Husband. No, this can't be! That's bullshit! I'm sleeping. (Closes his eyes with his hand.) Wake up! Sergei Nikolaevich, wake up! (Opens his eyes.) Woke up. (Reads the letter.) “My dear, my dear Anya... (moans) where can I find the words to tell you what joy your last, your wonderful, your tender, your affectionate letter brought me..." What is this?!! What it is?! I!!! When I was twenty-two years old, I didn’t write her such tender, calf-like letters!.. (Reads.) “...If you knew how much your letters mean to me - especially here, among these silent snowdrifts, in a dugout... To know that someone is thinking about you, that there is a close soul in the world...” No, this is really nonsense, this is horror, this is some kind of darkening! (Feverishly flips through other letters.) “Darling...”, “Darling...”, “Wonderful...”, “My dear girl...” My God! Girl!!! When was this written? Maybe this was written fifty years ago? No, not fifty. “February 1942. Active Army." (Leaned on the table, closed his eyes.) No, I can’t take it anymore, my legs are swollen from horror... To live to see gray hair, to walk a long life path with a person hand in hand and suddenly... to find out... (He grabbed his head and walked around the room , stopped.) No, tell me, what is this?! What should I do?! After all, I... I even forgot... honestly, I forgot what is supposed to be done in such cases.

Phone call.

Husband (picks up the phone). Yes! Who? And, Evgeny Isaakovich, hello, dear! No, no, tell me I won't. No, dear Evgeniy Isaakovich, I can’t, today under no circumstances can I. I have... What? I have... No, not the flu. As you said? Gastropneumolaryngitis? No no. I have... I already forgot what it's called. I have a family drama. No, what theater?! What production? I really have drama... tragedy! What? Thermometer? (Touches forehead.) Yes, it seems there is. You think? Yes, I think I'll go to bed. What? (In a fallen voice, gloomily.) She is not at home. I say: she is not at home! A! (Through gritted teeth.) He sews warm clothes in the jacket for the fighters. What? Does he care? Um... yes... he cares. What? I obey. I'll pass it on. Thank you. And you too. Goodbye... (Shouts.) Evgeny Isaakovich, forgive me, dear, I have one, so to speak, purely personal, purely personal question for you. Please tell me, do you happen to remember what they are doing... Hello! You listen? I say, do you happen to remember what you do, what you do when... um... how should I say... when your wife cheats? How? What are you saying? Thermometer? No, I'm completely serious... What? Are they shooting? Hm. No, that doesn't work. It doesn't fit, I say. Divorce? Nope. This is, perhaps, as they say, a fixed idea. I say: we need to think about it. Why do I need to know this? Yes, you see... I have here... I'm here... I'm solving a very interesting crossword puzzle... Yes, yes, exactly - in Ogonyok. Exceptionally interesting. And there is just a question on this, so to speak, topic.

There's a bell in the hallway.

One minute.

The call is repeated.

What? Sorry, Evgeny Isaakovich... There's a call here. Yes, I am now.

Leaves, returns. Following him, the Wife appears in the room - an elderly, unremarkable woman. She is very tired, she has a string bag in her hand. With the words “Hello, darling,” she wants to kiss her husband on the temple, but he disdainfully and even disgustingly pushes her away and goes to the phone.

Husband. Hello! (Gloomily.) Yes, sorry, Evgeny Isaakovich. Yes Yes. Here came one (looks for a word)…personality.

The wife stopped and looked at him in surprise.

Yes, so where did we stop? I say we need to think about what to do with these invoices. I say - with overhead for nails and roofing felt. And for roofing iron. What? Yes, yes, I understand that you don't understand. They must be sent immediately, otherwise the bank will not open a current account until the end of the month. What? Crossword? Hm... Well, of course, you also need to write out an invoice for the crossword puzzle... What? Thermometer? Hm. And on the thermometer... And on thermometers too... Evgeniy Isaakovich, what did I want to say? Have you seen Pyotr Ivanovich? No? And Matvey Semenovich? Wait, dear, I wanted something else... Hello! Hello!.. (Reluctantly and hesitantly hangs up.)

Wife (at the open suitcase, calmly). What does it mean?

Husband (shocked). Hm. Yes. So I wanted to ask: what does this mean? A?

Wife. You were rummaging through...

Husband (brave). Yes, I was rummaging. I was looking for a manufactured goods card.

Wife (closing the suitcase). Found?

Husband. Hm... N-yes... This... You understand - it’s not there anywhere. And I looked in my purse, and in my chest of drawers... And at our kiosk today they were selling such wonderful jumpers...

Wife. Well? Wool?

Husband. No, perhaps they are vigones... But they are so dense.

Wife. Have you had lunch?

Husband. Had lunch. You know, the potato cutlets for main course today were quite tasty.

Wife. We should probably take it.

Husband. What to take?

Wife. Jumper. Not for myself, but...

Husband (alert). A?

Wife. We'll send you to the front.

Husband (sardonic). Yeah!! (He walked around the room, approached Zhenya, looked at her intently.) Who?

Wife. What - to whom?

Husband. Jumper, which is on my manufactured goods card? Lieutenant Migunov?

Husband (walks around the room again and stops in front of the Wife again). Anna! I know everything.

Wife. What?

The husband points to the suitcase.

Wife. Ah, here it is - have you read my letters?!

Husband. All my life, I’ve been reading your letters like a fool for thirty years.

Wife. Well, of course. These were letters from aunts, from godfather, and these...

Husband. Oh yes, madam, I have not yet had the pleasure of reading the letters of your lovers.

Wife. Goat! What's wrong with you? What kind of theater is this?

Husband (shouting). What kind of Goat am I to you!!

Wife. Well, of course, Kozlik.

Husband. There was Kozlik, and now...

Wife. And now?

Husband. Kozlov Sergey Nikolaevich!

Wife (sits down). Well, so, Kozlov Sergey Nikolaevich. Let's not shout. I don’t have enough... with these letters...

Husband. Say - “and without that”! I demand that you answer me: are these letters addressed to you?

Wife. To me.

Husband. And you are not ashamed?

Wife. A little bit.

Husband. Anna, what's wrong with you?! Have you always been like this?

Wife. Yes, I guess I’ve always been like this...

Husband (sits helplessly on a chair). My God... Thirty years... Day after day... Hand in hand... (jumps up and runs around the room.) No, it’s necessary! A?! What a disgrace! What a shame! This kind of, God forgive me, mymra, which you can’t even look at... and at you, too - it’s a joke! What a time!

The wife, resting her head on the back of the chair, quietly cries.

Husband. Yeah! Still conscientious, then?

Wife. I do not know what to do. I'm confused. Help me.

Husband. Ugh. Listen, it’s just like Anna Karenina. As if she was not fifty-something, but twenty-two years old.

Husband. What "yes"?

Wife. Twenty two.

Husband (backs away in fear). What are you doing? Yes, you seem...

Wife. No, I'm just tired. I'm terribly tired, Kozlik. We worked all day - sewing mittens... cutting flannel into foot wraps...

Husband. Migunov? Hehe. Lieutenant?

Wife. Maybe Migunov too. (Cries.) Poor boy! My dear, my good, my glorious...

Husband (steps around nervously). Listen... No, this... This eventually turns... This - I don’t know what!.. This is nonsense! I still have to listen to her... all sorts of love serenades!..

Wife. Forgive me, Kozlik. I'm tired. My head is spinning.

Husband. She has a head! What do I have - a watermelon or some kind of lampshade? (Stopping.) Who is this Migunov?

Wife. Don't know.

The husband looks at her, then goes to the door and begins to get dressed.

Wife (rising). What are you doing? Where are you going?

Husband. Ha! Where! Ha ha!

Wife. No, Seryozha, really!

Husband (putting on his coat). In fact - two weeks! Leave me alone! Enough. What is the name of this... this institution? Marriage registry? Yeah. Marriage registry…

Wife (trying to hug him). Goat, honey, what's wrong with you? I assure you that I do not know Lieutenant Migunov.

Husband. Yes? (Points to the suitcase.) What is this?

Wife. I want to say that we don’t know him personally.

Husband (sarcastically). "Personally"!

Wife. I never even saw him.

Husband (sarcastically). "In the eyes"!

Wife. We only wrote letters to each other.

Husband. Only letters? And he didn’t even see you?

Wife. Of course.

Husband. Yeah. Why, it’s interesting to know, did he write you these tender, calf-like letters... if he didn’t see you?

Wife. Well, that’s why I wrote... that’s probably why I wrote, because I didn’t see it.

Husband (walks around the room, sits on a chair, squeezes his head with his hands). No I can not. This is not just nonsense, this is some kind of drunken, fantastic, nightmarish nonsense!..

Wife. No, Kozlik, this is not nonsense. It all happened very simply. Do you remember how we collected parcels for the soldiers last fall?

Husband. Well, I remember. So what?

Wife. Well, as you know, I sent it too. So my package got to this lieutenant Migunov.

Wife. He sent me an answer. Thanked. He asked me to write about myself: who I am, what I am... I didn’t know anything about him then, and I still don’t know anything about him now. I only know that this man is at the front, that he is protecting you, and me, and our land. And so, when he sent me a letter and asked me to write to him... I wrote that I was twenty-two years old, that I was a girl.

Husband (gets up, laughs nervously, walks around the room). Fine. Very good. Fabulous. But... But why - twenty-two years?

Wife. Well... it just seemed to me... I thought... that a person would be more pleased if a young woman writes to him, and not one... as you very successfully defined: mymra...

Husband (embarrassed). Oh well. OK. What's there? (Laughs joyfully.) But you know - you’re great! A? After all, it’s true: a young man feels better when a young woman writes to him.

Wife. And probably not only for young people.

Husband (walks around the room, laughs). Well done! By God, well done! (Stopped.) Listen, why are you... this... on the sly? A? Why are you... this... incognito from me?

Wife. Why? (After thinking.) Because I took it seriously.

Husband. Well, am I really such a... um... savras?

Wife. And then, you know, I really felt like a young girl when I wrote these letters. And, perhaps, to tell the truth, I was even a little bit in love. And I imagined Migunov as you know? Say? No, I won’t say... In general, it was you, the way you were in nine hundred and fourteen. Do you remember? A young warrant officer with such a mustache... When I wrote to this lieutenant Migunov, it seemed to me that I was writing to you...

Husband. Hm... You know, I somehow feel... by God, I feel like I'm starting to... love this Migunov. Overall, a nice guy, I think. A? Where is he? On what front?

Wife (gloomily). How? Haven't you read?

Wife. You read the letters.

Wife. He is seriously injured. He has been in the hospital here for two months now.

Husband. Here? We have?

Wife. Well, yes. Oh, you should know, Kozlik, how I suffered.

Husband. Have you been to him?

Wife. What? God bless you, how can I...

Husband. Yes, sure. If he imagines that you... This, of course... somehow... I see.

Wife. And what he called me! How he asked me to come! I think he sent me at least twenty letters from there, from the hospital. And I - I didn’t even have the courage to answer his last letters.

Husband. Yes, you have a position, I must say...

Phone call. The wife goes to the phone.

Husband. Wait a minute. It's probably Briskin. We were separated. (Picks up the phone.) Yes? Evgeny Isaakovich? Hello! What? Not certainly in that way? What? Whom? Anna Ivanovna? Who? A? Yes, yes, please. (Hands the phone to Zhenya.) You.

Wife. It is he!

Husband (passes the phone to her). Lieutenant Migunov.

Wife (hoarsely). Hello! (Clears throat.) Yes, it's me. (Gradually gets into the role, becomes somewhat flirtatious.) What? Are you happy to hear my voice? Little voice? (Pause.) Are you kidding? Indeed? I'm very, very happy too. (Confused.) What? I can not hear. Hello!.. Come see me?

Looks at her husband. He quickly walks around the room in excitement.

Today? Are you leaving for the front? I really don't know. For half an hour? Not alone? The whole company? No, you know, my dear... you know, my dear...

Her husband tells her something in a loud, ominous whisper.

I... I don't feel well... I... (To my husband.) What? I have... gastropneumolaryngitis. (Laughs in response to Migunov’s remark.) No, no... You know, Migunov, I’m scared... I really want to see you. (Looks at the Husband.) But... Are you listening? What? Hello! Hello! Hello! (Hangs up.)

Wife. And he doesn't want to listen. He says: I’m leaving for the front and I can’t, for the life of me, I can’t help but see you, my good fairy.

Husband. So he said: good fairy?

Wife. My good fairy.

Husband (snorts). Number!

Wife. He...here, nearby, spoke from a machine gun. He'll come now.

Husband. Yes, sir. And not one more, it seems?

Wife. Yes... He says: excuse me, but we will come to you with a whole company.

Husband. Nope. There will be a funny number now.

Wife. Oh, Kozlik, my dear, what a terrible, what a stupid situation I have found myself in!..

Husband. Yes. But, to tell the truth, he also... got it.

Wife. No. I can't. I'll leave.

Husband. Yes? What? And I? And here I am with him - what, should I arrange a duel?

The bell rings in the hallway.

Wife (horrified). It's them. (Throws himself on the Husband’s neck.) My God, Goat, what should I... what should we do?!

Husband. "Us"! Hm... You know what? Fixed idea!

Phone call.

Husband (taking hold of the phone, but not removing it). Do you know that? We will say that you are not you.

Wife. How - am I not me?

Husband. That is, that she is not you... (Picks up the phone.) Hello! (To his wife.) That is, that you are not her... (Into the phone.) Yes? (To his wife.) In a word, Anechka is our daughter.

The bell rings in the hallway.

Husband (into the phone). Evgeny Isaakovich? Yes, yes, we were separated.

Wife. But, Kozlik, where is she?

Husband. So where? Well, she left... Sorry, Evgeniy Isaakovich. (To his wife.) What?

Wife (wringing her hands). Where?

Husband (into the phone). Just a minute... (To his wife.) Well, where? Well, you never know, in the end...

The bell rings in the hallway. The wife leaves. On the way, I looked in the mirror. I straightened my hair.

Husband (into the phone). What? Sorry, Evgeny Isaakovich. It's very noisy here today. What? I can not hear! How is the question phrased? What question? Oh, in the crossword... In the crossword it is worded like this...

Evgeny Isaakovich, dear, maybe... Hello! Maybe you will be so kind... maybe you will call - well, in about five or ten minutes. No, no, it’s just that we have here today...

While he is saying his last words, the Wife appears in the room, followed by a forty-five-year-old bearded man in the uniform of an artillery officer, an elderly woman and two children - a boy and a girl. The bearded man has another child in his arms - an infant.

Lieutenant Migunov. Is she not there?

Wife. She's gone.

The husband looked around, wanted to hang up, but couldn’t: the loop wouldn’t fit on the hook.

Husband. Nope.

Lieutenant Migunov. Will you be her mother?

Wife. Yes. But this...

Lieutenant Migunov. And this is dad.

Wife. Get acquainted.

Lieutenant Migunov. Very nice. I have the honor. Lieutenant Migunov.

Husband (to himself). Number!

Lieutenant Migunov. What?

Husband. Kozlov. Accountant.

Lieutenant Migunov (introducing his wife). My wife is Marya Vasilievna, the mother of my children.

Marya Vasilievna. Hello.

Wife. Sit down please. Sit down.

Lieutenant Migunov (introducing). My children, as well as my wife's. However, I must admit, not all, but only, so to speak, the left flank. The rest are at the front.

Marya Vasilievna. Come here - the left flank. (Takes the baby.)

Lieutenant Migunov. Forgive me for showing up to you with my entire unit. (To my husband.) Light up.

Husband. Thank you. (Shakes his head, saying “non-smoker.”)

Wife. What nice kids.

Husband. Yes, yes, exceptional.

Wife (to a boy). What is your name?

Marya Vasilievna. His name is Oleg.

Wife (to a boy). Oleg?

Boy. Yeah.

Wife. And you?

Marya Vasilievna. Her name is Galya.

Wife. Galya?

Girl. Yes.

Husband (to a boy). Please tell me, Oleg, how old are you?

Lieutenant Migunov (to his son). Well, did you put water in your mouth?

Marya Vasilievna. The tenth went to him.

Husband. Tenth? Is it true?

Boy. Yeah.

Marya Vasilievna. And this nine is not there yet.

Wife. It's not nine?!!

Girl. Yes.

Lieutenant Migunov. But where is Anya... that is, excuse me, Anna Ivanovna?

Husband (exchanging glances with his Wife). Anechka... Anechka... She, you know, was called in urgently...

Lieutenant Migunov. I just spoke to her five minutes ago over the machine.

Husband. Yes. You know, these are the times now - here today, there tomorrow.

Marya Vasilievna (Zhenya). Where is she going so urgently?

Wife. Her... (Looks at the Husband.)

Husband. (He showed her with his hand.) He’s chopping wood.

Marya Vasilievna. Oh, for logging?

Husband. Whoa.

Lieutenant Migunov (thoughtfully). Firewood is a good thing.

Marya Vasilievna. Is yours central?

Wife (thoughtfully). We have? Yes Yes. Excuse me, what did you say? Central?

Marya Vasilievna. Torment, in a word?

Lieutenant Migunov. It's a shame, it's a shame. Or maybe it was for the best that I didn’t catch her. You know, we only know her through letters.

Husband. Yes, yes, of course... We've known for a long time.

Lieutenant Migunov. She didn't even see me. But what letters she wrote! Oh, you should know... What touching, affectionate and at the same time some courageous, encouraging, truly patriotic letters. So she knows - she read it.

Marya Vasilievna (Zhenya). Wonderful girl!

Husband (chuckling). A? What are you going to say?

The wife is embarrassed and silent.

Lieutenant Migunov (thoughtfully). I remember it used to be in the winter - you were sitting in your dugout. I won’t say that it was very boring... No, I wasn’t bored. They entertained themselves, and did not allow the enemy to fall into complete apathy. Well, between us, our artillery is funny. I am an artilleryman.

Husband (looking sideways towards his Wife). Yes, yes, of course, we know.

Lieutenant Migunov. Yes. We weren’t bored, but still in our hearts...

Marya Vasilievna. It’s clear - what’s there...

Lieutenant Migunov. And then this letter arrives. It is the same as everyone else - and the stamps on it are official, and ordinary stamps, and “checked by military censorship”... And how much fire there is in this letter, you would know, how much of this youthful freshness, purity, charm, feminine kindness... Then for five days after that you walk around whistling, your insides are whistling somehow... It’s as if you yourself have become younger. I don't know if I'm expressing myself clearly? Do you understand this?

Wife (from the bottom of my heart). Yes!

Lieutenant Migunov. Maybe Anna Ivanovna would be offended, don’t tell her about it, but sometimes I read her letters out loud. Once, in April, it seems, before the so-called massive artillery barrage, I read one of her letters to my guys at the battery... You know, the impression is better than any rally!..

Husband. Can you hear? Anna Ivanovna! A?

Marya Vasilievna. How? Are you also Anna Ivanovna?

Husband (scared). How? What? No, I said: Marya Ivanovna.

Lieutenant Migunov. In general, it must be said: our girls and women do not know or know little about what writing is at the front. They write little, little, very little.

Marya Vasilievna. Well, Volodyushka, it’s a shame for you to be offended!

Lieutenant Migunov. It's not a matter of offense here. (Turns to Zhenya.) So you say: firewood.

Wife. I? What kind of firewood?

Lieutenant Migunov (he breathed as if in the cold). This is, of course, a good thing. Vodka, let’s say, is also good to keep warm in the cold. A warm thing - a sweater, mittens, a scarf of some kind - is a great thing. Thank you for this. But - a warm word, a warm woman’s word - this... you can’t exchange this for any sheepskin sheepskin coat (smiled) with felt boots to boot.

Marya Vasilievna. Well, Volodya, stop, it’s time for us to get ready. You still...

Lieutenant Migunov (rising). Yes Yes. That's right, wife. You are my corporal.

Husband. Where are you going?!

Lieutenant Migunov. It's time. (Buttons up his overcoat for the children.) Well, pre-conscripts... (Takes the little one in his arms.) The left flank is like the commander’s father!..

Husband (towards Wife). They didn't even drink tea.

Wife. Yes Yes. Tea.

Marya Vasilievna. What do you. What kind of tea is there?

Lieutenant Migunov (takes up his visor). Well, dear owners, forgive me for the unprovoked aggression. Give a deep bow to Anna Ivanovna. Just don’t tell her, please, that I’m so old, that I’m such a waste, as my venerable wife deigns to put it.

Marya Vasilievna. Volodya, aren’t you ashamed!..

Lieutenant Migunov. Nope. (After a short pause.) Still, it’s a pity. Still, I would look at my Anechka. Sorry! Maybe you have her card?

Wife. No!!

Marya Vasilievna. How? Really not a single card? At least some old one.

Husband. What? Card? (Suddenly it dawned on him.) Ho! Well, of course there is. (Runs to the box.)

Wife. Seryozha!

Husband (rummaging in the box). Receipts... rent... electricity... Oh, here it is, damn it!..

Marya Vasilievna. Card? Found it?

Husband. Yes. But this is not the one. This is a manufactured goods store. (Takes it out of the box, blows off the dust and hands it to Lieutenant Migunov.) Here...

Marya Vasilievna (looking at the card over her husband’s shoulder). Oh, what a wonderful girl!

Husband. A? What? Is it true?

Lieutenant Migunov. You know... I almost... almost imagined her like that.

Marya Vasilievna (for children). Really, pretty aunt?

Boy. Yeah.

Girl. Yes.

Marya Vasilievna. But, my God, how much she resembles you!

Husband. Well, for mercy's sake, what's surprising here? Still, in the end, to some extent...

Lieutenant Migunov (reading). "To the sweet goat - Anya." (Turns to Zhenya.) Excuse me, is she married or?..

Wife (confused). She?..

Husband. What are you talking about, Comrade Lieutenant? She... She's still at school.

Marya Vasilievna (surprised). Yes?

Husband. That is, of course, in high school.

Marya Vasilievna. But, excuse me, why is it written here: “Moscow, 1909.”

Husband. Ninth? Hm. I apologize, this is not the ninth, but the thirty-ninth. This is her handwriting - childish.

Lieutenant Migunov (looked up from the card). Dear friends! Don't consider me impudent. But - a great request: give me this card. A? (To his wife.) Aren't you jealous?

Marya Vasilievna (laughs). I won't get jealous.

The Husband exchanged glances with his Wife. She nodded slightly.

Husband. Well, me too. That is, we too... have nothing against it.

Lieutenant Migunov (shakes hands). Thank you.

Marya Vasilievna. Volodya, you will be late...

Lieutenant Migunov. Well... (says goodbye.)

Husband. So, to the front?

Lieutenant Migunov. Yes. At twenty-one thirty.

Husband. Well, beat them there, the occupiers.

Lieutenant Migunov. We beat, beat and... what do they call it in accounting? (He showed with his hand.)

Husband. Compound interest?

Lieutenant Migunov. Whoa. In a word, the balance will be, as they say, positive.

Lieutenant Migunov (turned politely to her). You can rest assured... sorry, I forgot the name... Marya Ivanovna?

The wife nodded.

Lieutenant Migunov. But it also depends on you.

Husband. And from us.

The guests are already at the door.

Marya Vasilievna. Well, stay healthy. I'm sorry to trouble you.

Everyone says “goodbye” and “farewell.”

Lieutenant Migunov. Anechka... Kiss Anechka deeply. Please write.

Husband. Well, here's another thing to ask. I will order it - and it will be.

Lieutenant Migunov (at the door). Wish her happiness, health, vigor, strength and so on, and so on, and so on. And most importantly... the main thing is a good husband...

The Migunovs' husband and family leave. There is only one Wife on stage. Husband returns.

Husband. Have you heard? He says: wish her a good husband! A? How do you like it?

Wife. I like it.

Husband. What do you like?

Wife. I like... When they wish me a good husband.

Husband. Wait... I'm confused. Who are you now? How old are you? What grade are you in?

Wife. I? I’m just an old woman who has a not-so-young husband whom she loves very, very much. (Hugs him.)

Phone call

Husband (together with his wife answers the phone). Hello! Yes? Evgeny Isaakovich? Yes Yes. Free. No, no, completely free. What? Intrigued you. A? How is the question phrased? Which? Oh, in the crossword puzzle.

His wife looks at him in surprise.

Nope. It says, in general, this: “the denouement of a family drama.” What? Dozens of solutions? Well, for example? Yes, yes, I'm listening. Murder? So. Duel... Yes, yes, I'm listening. Divorce. Hm... Suicide. What else? I can not hear! Fight?..

Hm... You see, Evgeniy Isaakovich, thank you, but it seems to me that I have already... solved this crossword puzzle. Yes Yes. And somewhat more, so to speak, painless. In any case, I am very, very grateful to you for your touching participation and good advice... Yes! Evgeniy Isaakovich, tell me, my dear, are you still working? No? Are you leaving? How about others? Haven't you rebalanced yet? You know... Tell me, is it not too late? What? Yeah. You know, I guess... I guess I’ll still come and work for an hour or two. Yes Yes. Is there anything else I wanted? Yes! Evgeny Isaakovich. You won’t see this... what’s his name... well, Moskalev, our supply guy? Some unusual jumpers appeared in his kiosk there just now. If you see him, ask him, my dear, to save a couple for me. What? It is very necessary. I want to send this to a comrade at the front.

Night guests

Comedy in one act from the Great Patriotic War

CHARACTERS:

Mikhail's grandfather.

Marya, his wife.

Dunya Ogareva, Komsomol member,

commander of a partisan detachment.

German officer.

His messenger.

Headman.

Partisans.

Mikhaila's grandfather's hut. To the left is part of a Russian stove. To the right is the entrance door. It's getting dark.

A blizzard is raging outside the window. Grandma Marya is getting ready for dinner at the table. Mikhaila comes in from the street. He is covered from head to toe with snow.

Marya. Well, thank you, Lord, finally!..

Mikhaila. Oh, and it’s blowing today, mother, God forbid! Fu!.. (Shakes himself off.)

Marya. As far as I can see, I can only go for a walk at this particular time. Evona, look what a bullfinch!.. And where is he, the old devil, carrying you?! I was already thinking - pah, pah, pah - maybe they dragged him to the police...

Mikhaila (knocking snow off her boots). Well, yes! Like a fool, I gave in to them. They need this old horseradish. (Throws down the broom and goes to the table.)

Marya. Sit down, eat...

Mikhaila (stands, rubs her hands). You know, I stayed too long at the Maslyukovs’. The men gathered. We talked. This and that. Still, it’s somehow easier to breathe in public. (Sits down, looks around.) Did you hear, mother? Our people, they say, are attacking again.

Marya (scared). Shhh... “Ours”! (Looked around.) Nowadays, you know, heads are taken off for “ours.”

Mikhaila. To hell with him! Let them film it. Not life either. (Takes a spoon and eats.) Nah. There is also a rumor that punitive forces are coming to our village again.

Marya. Oh my God! Who told you this?

Mikhaila. Yes, this volost, the devil, said as if. If, he says, the partisans are not found, not a single person will be left alive.

Marya. Oh, these partisans to me!.. Fuck them! And so there is no life, and they, the bells...

Mikhaila. Well, well, shut up, mother... Okay. If you don't understand, just keep quiet. (Eating.)

Marya. They’re just messing with people... It’s all this Dunka, Ogareva... Isn’t it a stately thing - a girl, a Komsomol member, is fighting the Germans! Because of her, the cursed one, their whole family was shot. How many people died...

Mikhaila. Okay, eat, keep quiet... (Suddenly I remembered something and slapped myself on the forehead.) Eh, you old cudgel!

Marya (scared). What are you doing?

Mikhaila. Yes, I completely forgot... (Rises.) I’m walking now, you know, past the Kochetkovs, and here is this... what’s his name... Volodka, or what? Sonya Minaeva, who was hanged, brother. He thrust something: “For you,” he said, “grandfather, a telegram...”

Marya. What telegram? From whom?

Marya. Oh, come on!.. I guess he was joking with you, old...

Mikhaila. Yes! Good jokes now... (Takes out a note.) Here it is! Evona! Come on, old woman, light a light, let’s read.

Marya, muttering something angrily, fans the fire and lights a small kerosene lamp. The old man takes glasses from behind the shrine, puts them on and ties them with strings.

Marya. Oh my God, my God... Ugh! There is no death for you. We’ve already been living without crucian carp for two years now, and here we are doing all sorts of nonsense...

Mikhaila. Okay, old man, don't grumble. Don't bother, you'll still have Karasin. (He unfolded the note.) Well, let’s read what kind of telegram this is. (Reads from the folds.) “Dya-dya Mi-hai-la, this year I, if possible, will come to spend the night with you...”

Marya. What? Who's going to come? Who is writing this?

Mikhaila. Wait, wait... (Reads.) “If you allow it and if everything is okay with you, please put a light on the window. I’ll come like this around seven o’clock...”

Marya. Who is writing this?

Mikhaila (scratching the back of his head). Hm... "Oga-ryo-wa Dunya."

Marya. What-oh-oh?! Dunka?!! Has she gone crazy? Is he asking to spend the night with us?

Mikhaila. Quiet, old, quiet. It means she has a job if she asks for it. I probably wouldn’t go without something to do.

Marya (fuming). Why is she really shameless!.. She has no shame?! It’s not enough that she gets herself into the noose, and pulls people into it too!..

Mikhaila (scratching the back of her head, looking at the walkers). Nope. At seven o'clock. It's ten to ten. (Takes the light bulb, then, after thinking, puts it back on the table.)

Marya. And so there is no life from these damned Germans. We haven’t lived here for two years now, but we still endure martyrdom. Some people had their entire farm ruined, some people had their girls hanged... There, you hear, they killed them, there they burned them, there they took them to hard labor. Only we, the old people, seem to be left alone. Well, sit quietly and rejoice. I wish I could live to see my death and - amen, glory to you, Lord...

Mikhaila (scratching the back of his head). Eh, grandma! Eh, you fool, woman! Eh, what foolish words you speak, woman. "Don't touch"! What about your heart? - Doesn’t it bother you that filthy Germans are walking on our Russian soil?!

Marya (quietly). You never know... (Takes a light bulb and holds it in his hand.) You have to be patient.

And why did she really come to us all of a sudden? So what - all over the village and she has nowhere to spend the night except us? Her godfather lives here, her aunt lives there... Also, please tell me, the world has come together like a wedge...

Mikhaila. No, don’t say that, she cleverly came up with it. It was she, the girl, who realized it. For others - what? Who has a son in the Red Army, who is himself under suspicion from the Germans. And you and I seem to live like two old mushrooms, living out our lives.

Or maybe it’s true? A? Our hut is tiny, and there is nowhere to hide it. People can even sleep under the floor for the night.

Marya (sarcastically). Yes? How's that?! Under the floor? Is this in winter? Eh, you're a man! You're a fool, man! A girl will come from the forest, probably frozen to death, and you will take her underground! That’s how you guys always treat our female class... No, I’m sorry, it won’t be your way! (Puts a light bulb on the window.) Here! Welcome!

Mikhaila (laughs, hugs his wife). Eh, uterus, uterus... You are good to me, uterus...

There's a knock on the window.

Marya. Evona! Already! She's easy in appearance.

Mikhaila (looking out the window). Who? What? I'm coming, I'm coming, now...

He leaves and returns almost immediately. A German officer, chief lieutenant, stumbles into the hut covered with snow. Behind him - with a machine gun at his stomach - is a German soldier.

An officer. Heil Hitler! Spricht hir Yemand Deutsch? Nine? (To Mikhail.) Du! Sprichst du deutsch?

Mikhaila (waves her hand). No, no, I'm not muttering your way. I apologize, your honor.

Officer (broken Russian). Uh-uh... who is the owner?

Mikhaila. I'm the owner.

An officer. Is this the village of Ifanovka?

Mikhaila. That's right, Ivanovo village.

An officer. Where does the headman live?

Mikhaila. The elder... he, your honor, lives here, near the white church, in a big house.

Officer (orders). Shows me off!

Mikhaila. Conduct? Well, it's possible. Let's see... (Slowly gets dressed.)

An officer. Schneller! Bistro!

The old man, getting dressed, makes some signs to his wife. She was confused and didn’t understand.

Mikhaila (to the officer). Let's go, your honor.

The Germans and Mikhaila leave. The old woman looks after them in fear. You can hear the gate slam.

Marya (facing the viewer). Oh Lord... Lady... Remember King David... Save and preserve, Queen of Heaven! (Being baptized.)

A light knock on the window.

Marya (running to the window). What else? Who?

He runs to the door and runs into Dunya Ogareva. A girl in a white sheepskin coat and a hat with earflaps.

Dunya (out of breath). Hello, grandma!

Marya (waves her hands at her). Oh, girl, you arrived at a bad time!

Dunya. And what?

Marya. But you almost got into the cat’s paws. We had the Germans. Just now.

Dunya (whistles). Phew... Where did the difficult one bring them from?

Marya. A punitive squad, they say. In a word, they have come to catch you.

Dunya. Soooo. Well. Well done boys! Catch it!.. Where is Uncle Mikhail?

Marya. He took him to the elder. An officer...

Dunya (with annoyance). Nope. And I thought - tomorrow. Well, okay - today it’s possible. Let's play some more cat and mouse.

Marya. How is this, dear, necessary to understand?

Dunya. And so, grandmother, understand that if only the tail remains of a German cat, then we will step on the tail. (Laughs, extends his hand.) Well, grandma, goodbye, I have nothing to do here.

Marya. Back to the forest?

Dunya. The Russian land is big, grandma. There will be a place for us.

Marya. It's cold.

Dunya (significantly). Nothing. Don't be afraid. It won't be cold. (Thinking.) Nah. And I have a request for you, grandmother. (He unbuttons his sheepskin coat and takes out a notebook and pencil from his field bag.) Do you know Volodya Minaev? My friend Sonya, who was hanged, brother? I'll write him a note - will you take it down?

Marya. Come on, write.

Dunya (comes to the table, writes). If you deliver it tonight, you'll be great.

The gate slammed. In the yard, and then in the entryway, there were voices. The old woman shudders in fear.

Marya. Oh, girl, there’s no way someone’s coming!..

Dunya. What? Where? (She put the notebook in her bag.)

Marya. Come on, hide.

Both are rushing around the hut.

Marya. Come on... quickly... quickly... climb onto the stove. (He sits her down and Dunya hides on the stove.)

Mikhaila, the Russian headman, the same German officer and a German soldier appear. The soldier has a suitcase in his hand.

Headman. And this, your honor, is the most, so to speak, suitable veil for you personally. Here, I have the honor to tell you, live the most harmless old people living on their own. The situation there, however, is not great, but, so to speak, it is quite safe. And warm. (Touches the stove with his hand.) The stove was heated. If you don’t disdain, your honor, you can lie down on the stove. (To Mikhaila.) Are there any bedbugs?

Mikhaila. Not yet.

An officer. Fine. I'll be here. (To the soldier.) Dubbist fry. Vekke mih um drai ur.

Soldier (puts down the suitcase). Yavol! Um drive ur. Gut nakht.

He saluted, turned on his heel and left. Mikhaila, noticing a light bulb on the window, shudders. Hastily puts the light bulb on the table.

An officer. What?!

Mikhaila. It will be brighter here, your honor.

Marya (significantly). Late! It's too late.

An officer. What are you saying? Late? Who's late?

Marya. I say it's late. It’s dark, I say, outside...

The officer takes off his overcoat and, unfastening his field bag, goes to the table.

Headman. So, shall I go, Your Honor?

OFFICER (without looking at him). Yes. Go. You'll come in the morning.

Headman (bows). Be dead, I will come... Have a nice sleep, your honor. I recommend the stove. So to speak, it’s warm and not blowing... (To the owners.) Goodbye, old people.

Mikhaila nodded. The headman leaves. The officer lights a cigarette, lays out papers on the table, and looks through them. Behind him are old people. Marya points to the stove. The old man doesn't understand.

OFFICER (turning his head). Who is standing there?

Mikhaila. This is where we stand, Mr. Officer.

An officer. What are you worth? Give me something to eat!

Mikhaila (throws up his hands). But there is something, I apologize, and there’s nothing, your honor. As they say, you can roll a ball.

An officer. Ball? What is a “ball”? Okay, give me the ball.

Mikhaila. Hm... Where should I give you, your honor? (The old woman pushes him in the side.)

An officer. I don't understand. Well, bistro! Give me bread, eggs, milk!

Mikhaila (to his wife). Do you have any milk?

Marya. Come on, sir, what kind of milk is this today? After all, there is no milk without a cow, and your soldiers ate all of our cows.

Officer (swears). And the donner-vetter!..

Mikhaila (to his wife). Well, at least warm up some tea.

Marya. Some tea? It's possible. Please. (Takes a bucket and goes into the hallway.)

Officer (sits at the table, writes). And make me a bed soon. I have to go to bed soon.

Mikhaila. Nope. Where do you order, your honor? On the stove or...

An officer. Ah!.. It doesn’t matter.

Mikhaila. On the stove, I think, it’s still more convenient. It’s warm and no one will disturb you.

Marya (opening the door). Mikhaila!

Officer (scared). Who? What?

Mikhaila. “This is me,” the old woman calls. Well, what do you want? (He goes into the hallway.)

The officer writes. Dunya looks out from the stove. The officer throws down his pencil and gets up. Dunya hastily hides. The officer walks around the room, ruffles his hair, sits down again, jumps up again, goes to the stove, warms his hands. Then he sits down at the table again and writes.

Mikhaila returns. He's excited. He only now found out that Dunya was in his house. He looks at the stove, scratches his head, shakes his head. For one second, Dunya Ogareva’s face appeared again.

Mikhaila (coughing). Hm... Your Honor...

An officer. Yes? What?

Mikhaila. I apologize... Do you need to attend to any special matters?

An officer. What? Which division?

Mikhaila. If anything happens, I’ll show it.

An officer. Go away, don't disturb me. (Rises up, holds paper in hand.) Stop!

Mikhaila. Yes?

OFFICER (Looks at him point blank). Where are the women?

Mikhaila. Wha-oh? Which? What woman?

An officer. Well... your wife! Mistress.

Mikhaila. Aaaaand... Wife? (Calls.) Marya!

Marya comes in with a full bucket.

Marya. Well?

An officer. Where have you been?

Marya. I went for water.

An officer. Is there a sentry in the yard?

Marya (gloomily). How... is it worth it, hero.

An officer. What?

Mikhaila. It’s worth it, he says, your honor.

Marya is fiddling with the samovar.

An officer. Listen to me! Let's have a little conversation. (To Mikhaila.) Tell me, do you know a little why my soldiers and I came to your village?

Mikhaila. Hm... So, there is already a deal, your honor, since they came. Don't go for a walk.

An officer. Yes Yes. No walking. Listen to me! My soldiers and I are going to look for Russian partisans in your village! A? What are you saying?

Mikhaila. How? I don’t understand something, your honor.

An officer. I know that you don't understand. You are a good old people and you have nothing to do with the partisans. I wanted to have your little one calling. Listen, I will read one order that I wrote, your man! (Reads.) “Appeal! The command of the German army knows that a partisan detachment is operating in the area of ​​the village of Ivanovka and that the above... mentioned partisan group is led by a Russian woman, Eudokia Ogaryeva, or, as they call her, Comrade Dunya.” (Pause.) What? Do you know about this Dunya? No?

Mikhaila. Dunya? Hm... I heard something. Only she, in my opinion, your honor, has been dead for a long time.

An officer. Oh no! Still alive... (Sighs.) Very alive. (Looks at the paper.) Further... (Reads.) “The command of the German army announces: everyone who can indicate the location of the Russian partisan Ogarev, as well as who will help her find the German troops, will receive a reward from the German military headquarters: one thousand rubles and a live cow." (To Mikhail.) Eh? This is good?

Mikhaila (scratching the back of his head). Well... Of course... A cow - I'll tell you that! This is a bonus! If only you, your honor, my advice to you, would also have attributed the calf.

An officer. How? Calf? What is a “calf”? Uh-oh, little cow?!!

Mikhaila. Whoa... Then, I think, they’ll bring you not one, but ten of these Duneks right away.

An officer. Yes? Oh, this is an idea... (Writes.) “A live cow and plus a live little calf”... Yes. Further... “Whoever assists the partisans, hides them in his home or contributes to their escape or non-arrival - the German army will mercilessly punish him, himself, as well as his family - father, mother and little children will suffer the death penalty by hanging.” (Finished reading.) Eh?

Mikhaila (gloomily). Nope.

While the officer was reading, Dunya looked out from the stove. A revolver flashed in her hand, but apparently she did not dare to shoot. The officer finished reading, and she hid again.

Marya (puts the samovar on the table). Here, take a sip.

Officer (cheerfully). So. OK then. Now I will sip my tea and then sleep a little.

Mikhaila. So where should you, your honor, sleep? You know, I see that you are a good person, so you lie down on our bed, and the old woman and I lie down on the stove.

An officer. A?

Marya. Right. After all, you know, sir, on our stove... this is the very thing...

An officer. What?

Marya. There are a lot of cockroaches.

An officer. How do you say? Cockroaches? What is a "cockroach"? Ahh, little bug! Eh, nonsense!.. The German soldiers have a lot of their own - a sting, and a louse, and a bug... (Drinks tea. Mikhail.) Bring me... what is it called? Lots and lots of salt!

Mikhaila. What to bring?

Marya. Bring some straw, he says.

Mikhaila. Oh, straw... (Gloomily.) Well, straw - that's possible. (Leaves.)

The officer finishes drinking tea, gets up, stretches, takes off his uniform, puts a pistol on the table, then sits down and begins to take off his boots. Marya, with her arms crossed over her chest, stands by the stove, looking at him.

Marya (approaches the officer, looks around). Listen... you... what's your name... your reverence. I'll tell you what. Are you serious about the cow or what?

An officer. What? Cow? Oh yes yes. This is serious. (Hastily pulls on his boot and gets up.) What? Do you know anything?

Marya. And... and the calf, then?

An officer. Yes Yes. And a calf. And one thousand... Even two thousand rubles. Do you know, yes, where Eudokia Ogareva should be?

Marya (after thinking, nodded). I know.

Officer (puts on his uniform). Well!

Mikhaila appears with a huge armful of straw.

Marya (putting a finger to her lips). Shhhh. (Signs to the officer to remain silent.)

Mikhaila, standing up, throws straw on the stove. Marya and the officer are watching him. He crushes the straw, then goes downstairs and sighs heavily.

Mikhaila. Oh-ho-ho!

An officer. Listen... you! Go get some more salt! More salt! This is very little.

Mikhaila. The straw, your honor, is all covered with snow.

An officer. Ahh... (Impatiently.) Well, bistro!

Mikhaila. Okay, I'll bring it... (Sighs.) Oh-ho-ho! (Leaves.)

Officer (to Marya). Well?

Marya. I don’t even know how... Oh my God!..

OFFICER (bangs his fist on the table). Well, talk! Bistro! I will listen to you. Where is she?

Marya. Here she is... close.

An officer. Where?

Marya. Here, in a word... in one house... near the well.

An officer. How?

Marya. I say that here they, the partisans, gather in the same house at night. I heard that Dunya also happens there. Come on, get dressed, I'll show you.

Officer (throws his overcoat over his shoulders). How do you say? At the ring?

Marya. Yes, yes, at the well. Come on, I'll show you. Just don't go alone. Take more of your soldiers with you. Take all that you have...

Officer (thinking). Hm... Zoldat? Oh, nein. No! (Takes off his overcoat.) We will do this to you. Ti bistro quietly goes there alone. Find out everything and come tell me.

Marya (embarrassed). How is this one? Why alone?

OFFICER (impatiently). Yes, yes, I already told you. Walk carefully... like this... without any deliberation. Look here and there... How many people are there... who is there. And come tell me everything.

Marya (thought, getting dressed). Well, okay...

Mikhaila appears with an armful of straw.

Mikhaila (getting stuck in the door). ABOUT! On the! woman! Where are you going?

An officer. Well, well, bistro!

Mikhaila. Where are you going, I say?

Marya (does not look at him). I’m going to the Minaevs... for milk.

An officer. Yes, yes, milk... (to Mikhail.) You! Listen! Bring... this... more salt!

Mikhaila (scratching the back of her head in confusion). More? Hm... Well, you can do more. (He looks fearfully at Marya and goes out.)

Officer (Marie). Well! Run! I'll be waiting.

Marya (throws a scarf over her head). Okay... (Leaves.)

The officer, worried and nervous, walks around the room, whistling, laughing, rubbing his hands. Leaning back against the stove, he stretches and yawns loudly. Marya returns.

An officer. What?!

Marya. He won't let me in.

An officer. Who should not be allowed in?

Marya. Yes, your guard won't let you in. Yells something. The bastard almost killed me with a gun...

An officer. Oh, nonsense! Come on, I'll tell him. (Goes to the exit.)

Marya (sits on a bench, takes off her shoes.) Okay, go, your honor. And me - now. I'll just change my shoes.

An officer. What?

Marya. I'll change my shoes, I say. I'll put on my felt boots. There is a lot of snow in the yard.

An officer. A! Well, bistro! (Leaves.)

Marya (gets up in a loud whisper). Dunya!

Dunya (looking out from the stove). Yes?

Marya (throwing off her zipun). Quickly, get dressed.

Dunya jumped off the stove, took off her white sheepskin coat, and the old woman took off her coat.

Dunya (changing clothes). Oh, dear grandmother... You know, I wanted to kill him... I just felt sorry for you.

Marya. Enough of you... Feel sorry for us.

Dunya. No, just beat it like that. We will hit them wholesale, everyone at once.

Marya. Okay, shut up. Run into the hallway quickly. It's dark there. He would not know.

Dunya (hugs her, kisses her loudly). Well, grandma... my darling... thank you...

Marya (pushes her away). Yah you! Run!.. Quickly! (Throws Lunin’s clothes onto the stove.) Stop! Hook me up! (Climbs onto the stove. Dunya helps her.) Well, run! Goodbye!

Dunya. See you again, grandma... Soon!

Dunya noticed the chief lieutenant’s pistol on the table, took it, then changed her mind, took the clip out of the pistol, and put the pistol back on the table. All this is very fast.

An officer. Well, everything is in order. You can walk, I said.

Mikhail (blocking Dunya from him). Well, go, go, why are you poking around!..

Dunya (deafly). I'm coming. (Smelling Maryin’s coat, she dashed into the hallway.)

The officer approaches the table, notices the gun, and puts it in his pocket. Mikhaila, throwing the straw on the floor, wipes her sweaty forehead, looks around - where is Marya?

An officer. What are you doing? A?

Mikhaila. Tired.

An officer. Tired? (Grinned.) Is the salt heavy?

Mikhaila. Oh, it's heavy! (Looks around.) Before, your honor, she seemed to be lighter, like straw... But now... (To herself.) Where did Marya go?

An officer. Your wife is a smart woman.

Mikhaila. Wife? Smart, your honor. Wisely.

Officer (laughs). She knows how to show her nose. (Shows “nose”.)

Mikhaila. He can, your honor. Oh, he can!

An officer. And you can carry away the salt. I won't sleep.

Mikhaila. No?

An officer. No, no... (Yawns.) Although... Ain broom zu shlyafen...Yes! (Takes off his uniform.) I’ll lie down for a while and rest. (Tries to climb onto the stove.) If I start to hiss and if your wife comes, wake me up immediately! (Can't climb the stove.) Hey! Listen! You! Help me a little.

Mikhaila sits him down. Almost immediately the officer screams and falls head over heels.

An officer. Oh, Thousand Teufel. (Chatters teeth.) Who is there?

Mikhaila (scared). What? There is no one, your honor.

An officer. There's someone alive there! (Pulls out a revolver.) Well, look!

Mikhaila. I'm afraid, Your Honor.

Officer (waves his revolver, shouts). Well!..

Marya (sits on the stove, dangling her bare feet). Eh, okay, why hide there? It's me, Your Reverence! Hello!

OFFICER (horrified). You?!! How did you get there? You went to the well!

Marya. And you believed...

An officer. Oh, donner-vetter! Es ist aine grosse false! (Rushes towards Marya with a pistol. The old woman jumps off the stove.) Who left? Tell me quickly, who left the house?! (Waves a pistol.) Well! Speak! I will shoot!..

Mikhaila (taking a step towards the officer). Quiet, your honor, don't shout, quiet...

Officer (squeals). Ah-ah-ah!.. And Vee too! All as one! Russian pig! Love it! (Shoots.)

Mikhail shielded his wife with his chest.

An officer. On the! (He shoots again, notices that the pistol is not loaded.) Ah, ferfluchte teufel! (Throwing away the pistol, grabbed a stool and swung it.)

Half a minute before, a machine gun rattled on the street and voices were heard. The door swung open. On the threshold is Dunya. There are several partisans behind her.

Dunya (she has a revolver in her hand). Stop! (Shoots.)

The officer dropped the stool, screamed, and grabbed his shot hand.

Dunya. Hande hoch!

The officer raises first his left, then - slowly - his right wounded hand.

Officer (to Mikhaila). Who is this?

Mikhaila. And this, your honor, is Dunya Ogareva, for whom you, bastard, promised a live cow and calf.

Dunya. Well... (Points with his hand, as if to get out.)

Two boys with machine guns at the ready come in - one on the right, the other on the left. The officer walks slowly towards the exit.

Marya (standing, still leaning against the stove). Hey! Stop! (The officer stopped.) Come on, let me look at you one last time. (Shakes his head.) It’s necessary! A? Just think, honest people... I thought I could buy a Russian man with a stolen cow... Oh, and you’re a fool, I’ll tell you, your frying pan... (Waving her hand.) Go!..

A machine gun rattled louder on the street.