To Russia with Lev
Several of our youngest and most promising directors have just gone to St Petersburg to sit at the feet of Lev Dodin, director of the Maly Theatre, and mingle with his actors, see productions and observe rehearsals.
Lucky them. The scheme has been put together by the Young Vic’s Genesis project for young directors, and coordinated by Anna Karabinska-Ganev, a London-based Bulgarian producer and translator who works closely with Dodin and his company.
David Lan, director of the Young Vic, is flying out to join them for a few days. He’s entirely supportive of the inititative, as indeed are Declan Donnellan and Katie Mitchell. The only question is: how many more directors do we need?
The problem with the British theatre is that directors only learn their trade on an ad hoc basis. There are too few dedicated reps where day in, day out, work on plays and even community projects, builds up muscle and method. And there’s very little discussion here about theory or indeed overall purpose, and still too little education in the allied trades of visual arts and music.
Visiting the Maly will no doubt be a culture shock for the British contingent, for Dodin famously lives, breathes and eats his theatre, ruling the roost with a rod of iron and a fierce dedication that would make even a mildly obsessive theatre nut wince with pain or embarrassment in this country.
Dodin’s career is based on his reputation as a teacher. Indeed, he formed the Maly company in 1983 out of the core of his pupils at the St Petersburg Theatre Academy. Indisputably one of the world’s leading directors, he is also one of the world’s great teachers, and the nearest we have to anyone like him is Peter Brook or William Gaskill.
So, who’s out there with Lev? Natalie Abrahami of the Gate, Joe Hill-Gibbins of the Young Vic and Royal Court, Maria Aberg of the RSC and Tricycle, Will Oldroyd of the Union in Southwark, George Perrin of nabokov, composer and sound designer Dan Jones, and two lucky freelancers Yael Shavit and Sarah Tipple.
At the Young Vic’s open day earlier this year I asked David Lan why his theatre was concentrating on the encouragement of new directors when we seem to have so many already.
He explained that there are sessions in his theatre to educate young directors in very basic skills, like scene changes, lighting plots, how to manage a soliloquy with the actor, and so on.
He then said something really interesting. We are here, he said, to help directors discover who they are.
That is the crux of it. Without knowing what it is you want to communicate, or how, you are lost. It’s not simply having a view of the world, though that of course helps. It is a matter of working out the level of your commitment to art, actors, the community at large and your place within that scheme that matters most. And then still looking.
Look at Dodin: a man secure in his calling but endlessly seeking new answers, new solutions, new challenges. There is no final plateau of arriving at the status of being a good, or a great, director. The point is always to be on the way there, and our young representatives in St Petersburg are making a very good start.