BORIS UHANANOV:

LaboraTORIA came about as a special initiative that implies searching the depths of the modern theater. This search is connected with what I call a New Mysterial, New Universal territory. This search and this experience have been developing in three directions that are called a psychological theater, a theater of play and а mysterial theater. While the psychological theater is connected with a Russian theatrical tradition and has accumulated significant methodological, educational and practical threads, that are expressed in a number of great performances and schools, the theater of play and, moreover, the mysterial theater – are completely new phenomena for the Russian theatrical culture. These phenomena became very topical in Russia in eighties and nineties.

The theater of play and the mysterial theater became a territory where a method (educational as well as a practical, performance-oriented one) has emerged, that is now put in the foundation of the LaboraTORIA’s practice. LaboraTORIA is conceived as an indivisible continuity of the rehearsal and the analytical studio. We look though theater and with the help of theater we read canon Jewish texts and listen to them. And then the canon text of Torah leads to the further development of the theater art.

As scholars told, action, speech and thought are the three shells of the human soul. While working with every fragment of the Jewish canon text, theater steps on the territory of action, and this is where theater reveals its capacities and becomes a speech. And this speech is not just a speech that is aware of the meanings of words and letters and that is able to discem different narrative regimes. This is also a special kind of speech that reveals meaning, not known before, through the open public act of thinking and thus acquires an ability to choose one or the other playing approach to the text.

The analytical studio comes about on the territory of free conversation and absorbs, as it was natural for the communication in the ancient communities, or as it is natural for the Beit-Midrash, different feelings, aspirations and concepts of the participating team. And all these become a stage experience. The stage then becomes a space where the conversation takes place. Stage, rehearsal class – all these exist inside a conversation, that immediately becomes a speech, puts itself forward as an action and calls forth a meaning.

Theater has always feared deep interpretations and now it is in a great need of the ancient Beit-Midrash tradition injection. This injection will help it to cleanse from the psychotic, from the affectations that conceal the capacities of the play from the playing actor.

In the continuity of the analytical studio and rehearsal grows a collection of the “first experiences” that are often the very first for some participants. These are the experiences of the play action inside a canon text. Of course, this territory is an innermost space that cannot go through a system of comment and analysis, common in theater. This is impossible because here an authentic meeting with the higher essence of life receives its source and responsibility.

For two years that we define as a preliminary stage of LaboraTORIA’s development we have succeeded in capturing the special intersection and mutual absorption of life and play. And we think that this is where a productive opportunity, a vivid potential is hidden, that can give growth to a very fresh action and artistic substance. We even think that here new coordinates can be created for the relationship of the people who are connected with each other through the text.

We call our experience a “Diaspora Symphony” because a young person who grew up in the diaspora and then suddenly self-opens on the territory of such type reveals not only the features of the own consciousness that is here and now aspiring to the text, but also the energetic sources of his life, his real life in the diaspora.

These sources tincture a text, a persons’ behavior onstage and all communication during the conversations. This is how a substance of the free, constantly changing and evolutionizing action comes about. This action lives as a special music in front of the participants and spectators and reassembles itself each time.

LaboraTORIA is investigating the opportunities that are hidden in action and communication, organized in this manner. And, as we understood, this experience contains not only the creative, but also the communicational potential. The meaning actualizes in the play, from where it comes back to human communications and creates the type of informal connections that is very demanded today in the Jewish culture. It gives the realms and substances that are usually taken aside by the person who steps on the territory of the canon text an opportunity to dilate in the connections between the playing people. That is especially important for the young emerging consciousness.

A human has tabooed himself and his vivid interest has been trapped in this system of taboos.  This has gradually led to the emasculation and stiffening of his connections with the text. Here everything is different. The overcoming of the inner taboos is a principal matter here. An encounter with the commandment or with the sacrament of the deeper meaning has to be carried out by the human as an entity. And there, on the territory of this encounter, cloaked by the text’s wisdom, a human can send each particle of his living consciousness to action, speech and thought. And then a real artistic substance emerges, a special sort of play, which reflects, as a mirror, the natural landscape of life. This landscape is then not subservient to the formal rules and concepts.

I want to stress once again: here, into the true play of reflections and a living stream of action a canon text should be immersed and only this can make it real for the diaspora.

This process of communication, analysis and game will of course lead to different outcomes in the future. Some participants will step on the path of directing, some will realize themselves as performers, some will experience a strengthening of their innermost, independent relationships with the canon text. This is natural for the modern youngster because he is searching for specialization, differentiation, based on his fate and profession, and the civilization gives him very diverse opportunities for acquiring these. But here, on the territory of the LaboraTORIA, he meets another approach, that is prior to differentiation. We stick to this approach because we have an understanding of the coarse necessities that lead to specialization. This lack of differentiation is a core of the universal method, that retains universality in a person, leads to revelation of the capacities that are contained in the universality and that are open whenever theater turns to Torah.

The LaboraTORIA program is a sequence that is becoming clear to us with its development. In the first period we speak to each other and read the text of Torah. The conversation is very free and can go beyond the text, touching philosophy, theater and cinematography. In this conversation the attention gradually emerges and this attention, organized in a special way and armed with the theater instruments, leads to the desire to create, compose, play, analyze and, moreover, realize. And this desire is satisfied. And when a piece of work comes about, it always finds other pieces around and is always ready for a very diverse kinds of encounters with the works of others. Thus the artwork grows on an open territory where anybody can speak about it from the very different perspectives, without damaging it. This readiness for an open, unprotected territory is an integral part of the method.

It is very hard to create such a readiness, because life around us fills a person with different types of corking and prohibitions that stand on the way of the true meaning of the real theater consciousness. The suppressions and spiritual bandages leave no place for the innermost relationships. Getting rid of those is a very hard process and it is hard to verbalize it on the territory of speculations, but theater does not give us an opportunity to get confused. There is no place for mystification, mimicry and trickery on the play’s territory. And the smallest things can be discerned in their evolution. This naked territory intensifies the sincere conversation that is the condition for the joint cognition. 

Is mysterial theater a new phenomenon only for the Russian theater or for the whole world?

UHANANOV: Directing as a profession has emerged in the end of the 19^th century. It is, actually, the youngest art, if we consider directing a form of art. It is touched by practice of very diverse artists and very diverse theories. We can draw a line between the greatest figures of the European theater: Stanislavskiy, Craig, Arto, Grotovskiy. I put them now in one line because they are not just people, who worked in theater, but “mystagoges”. “Mystagoge” is a leader of the mysterial performance, while a “myst” is its participant. Each of these directors has suggested not just a new method of theater education and creativity but has, in his own individual manner, organized theater as a sacred place. These experiences in the European culture can be defined as experiences of the mysterial theater and can be visualized as a tree with a lot of branches growing from the main stem.

Grotovskiy’s experience became especially significant because of his acute analytical attention to different traditions, actual mysterial traditions of the world people’s and the techniques that he has brilliantly fetched from them. Grotovskiy’s experience has always been characterized by a hope for turning to the ancient tradition. The act of transitioning this tradition to modernity was committed by him with the help of intense training.

So, by the end of the 20^th century this hope for the past has revealed its fictitious nature. I allow myself to speak so harshly because the experiences of the today’s European theater make the canon rituals to appear onstage as the sacralized attractions. A sacred gesture is sometimes more expressive in theater that in a sacred act itself, but is deprived of the main essence – a connection with God. This happens because this connection was created at a different time and by the other formation of a human being. Probably, this form of the sacred theater will exist forever, but we choose another way. We believe that borrowing forms from the sacred theater that will constitute an attraction in the theater of our time is not suitable. And even if we would like to so, we will not be able to celebrate our comeback with the help of such strategies.

Therefore our study is connected with the territory of the New Mysterial art that can be defined so if we use the concepts of “myth” and “mystery”, which are the maximally broad concepts and do not refer to any specific religious tradition.  Therefore, it is an experience of creating a myth that has never existed before. It means being a myth’s participants and its creator in the same time.

 This is the experience I picked up in the middle of eighties. Back then I could not even imagine that it will lead me to Torah. At that moment I used this method in a project called “Orchard” (“Sad”).  With a group of young professionals and artists in the end of 80s I took one of the central texts of the 20^th century – the Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard”. At than moment our country was keen on a strategy of text’s desacralization, because the people wanted to get rid of the false sacrality. Therefore, the word, the communist lexicon, that has usurped all human aspirations, was being uncrowned. I would even put it more keenly – the word has died on the cultural territory, because it has appeared to be a form, filled with lies.

At that moment we tried to get away from these natural tendencies that we felt were dangerous and to act oppositely – to sacralize a text of the “Cherry Orchard”. We treated Chekhov as the great Mahatma who has written an enigmatic mysterial text.  And we decided to reveal a myth of the indestructible orchard, of human happiness that can not be destroyed, from there, from the depth of the text. We have been reading this text as the canon text, where every word, even every letter, is filled with a deep significance, where under the shallow narrative of the parlor drama, written in the beginning of the 20^th century, the striking locality is concealed.

The orchard creatures inhabited this locality, and they could live there in life as well as in death. There was no time, no space, etc. The experience of revealing this myth and creating specific performances has developed into an “Orchard” mystery that existed for 10 years. This path led us to the performance, driven into the evolution. This is a performance that has an accurate date of the beginning but has no end. The theatrical culture is used to building a form that has a time set for its birth, exploitation and death. We were interested in a different theatrical experience. An experience, where the artwork is created and cultivated by us in such a manner, that it can never die.

What ate the specific methods, how the techniques of the actor’s play are defined? Text analysis, working with space, what constitutes the production of such performance?

UHANANOV: Three circles have emerged. The professional circle, where live rehearsal took place that would reveal a play from the text. The experience of myth creation appeared as a real play, which required a special way of understanding the nature of the actor’s existence on this territory.

The life-creational circle. This is where what we call an inductive game came about. This is the territory where an author, who worked with a myth, developed it in a series of individual acts, performances, and installations. This process took place inside the broad scope of personal artistic image creation, the practice that actually constitutes modern art.

And, finally, the life-functional circle. This circle comprised of a practical activity that supported the project. And only when it was also filled with mythworking, became it useful for the creative work.

All this, together with the specific features and methodology, has been being developed for more than 10 years by a company of very productive people and was expressed in a great number of plays, acts and actions that were noticed in Russia and Europe. This program was also an educational project and it reared more than 70 people – three generations of professionals.

We called our group “MIR” – the Workshop of Individual Directing. There were three “MIRs” and 8 generations of the “Orchard”, each of them – a large performance. The 8^th has been presented on the World Theater Olympics in Moscow. On this territory we have developed a concept of creative projecting. We have carried out projects called “Palace”, “Crystal” – new universal projects. Anyway, this, work, umbrelling more than 30 titles and affecting my other projects, has revealed an amazing creative opportunity for an artist to exist on the new mysterial territory. On the rise of this process I have met Gregory and he has drawn my attention to Torah.

I am the child of diaspora.  My father - was a well-known political scientist and philosopher. And I have always been avoiding letting any signs of Jewish consciousness in myself. And when I turned to the texts of Torah I was astonished: theories that I have been developing for 15 years, all this huge arsenal has found its place in tradition and I felt as if I were a branch of this tradition that has finally broken into bloom.

So, very naturally, my deep interest, innermost and unique, moved to the place that is named LaboraTORIA. And I carefully bring in here the techniques that I found before. But now I am lucky to turn to the text that is really canon. That means I found methodologies and then I met a text, for which they were tailored. This technology is developing all the time. And it is very important – the techniques are turned to the text and now they grow together with the text.

Can this technology be used anywhere else. How unique is it?

UHANANOV: I feel that today is the time when we have to avoid any kind of format. And my experience shows that the self-developing technology is the approach that does not reinforce one or the another format. It gives development to the methods that can be used by very diverse individualities. What we mean by saying “the new communication space” is that we are willing to share. I want to stress that this is not an exclusive territory that cannot be accepted by some other consciousness.

Everything that is connected to the theatrical upbringing and, broader – general cultural upbringing -  is now very important. I have developed this technology while educating the directors, and this is still a developing concept. And this is why we speak about LaboraTORIA as a place where we are looking for a strategy that is turned to the canon text and that still retains analytical and educational vectors.

We can have a closer look at three types of territory – the healing one, the educational one and the creative one. It is easier for me to do so leaving aside the intimate and still embryonic consciousness that is connected with cognition of the sacred (For this part it is very important for us to work with a rabbi as it happening with Rav Meir Shlezinger in LaboraTORIA).

Concerning these three territories, I will speak specifically. We, for example, do not emphasize the healing territory. It has grown inside psychoanalysis and has given growth to its methods and tradition. And we do not stress the cognition with its library-style education. In our work we emphasize creation. I mean the creation in theater, that contains all arts - music, working with space and speech – euristic speech and so on.

For example, we master different types of speech – the euristic speech, speech in dialog, improvisational speech, speech in he plastic sketch, speech in analysis, speech in storytelling, structural speech, spontaneous speech.

Do all participants agree to master these new technologies on the material of the canon text? 

UHANNAOV: Everybody who works in LaboraTORIA would like to work with other texts as well. The modern Jewish youngster is a creature that is extremely pulled apart by different vectors. And you have to accept him as a whole with all vectors he has. The new universal territory is larger –much larger – it is created on the material of the modern art that is refinely setting itself free while developing. And this territory is ready to accept a modern Jewish youngster.

The wise interest of the modern culture turns it towards the canon text. However, you flounder in the stream, it will take you there. It is amazing, but Torah has everything and that is why Torah has an opportunity to appear in freedom. Only in freedom. If it appears in prohibition in the relationship with a young consciousness, brought up in diaspora, this will inevitably lead to breaking up with it or to serving the pragmatic social demand.

Being very unproductive, this tendency can be easily discerned. And the vivid genetic interest, the genetic consciousness works its way out to the canon Jewish text. The experience of this path can be transmitted trough the living communications that we try to reveal now. I feel that they are here already, and we only have to switch them on. 

The group is being formed. Do you notice any changes in the participants?

UHANANOV: Of course there are people that move between the circles.

 The three circles of the LaboraTORIA differ in the level of participation. In the first circle are people who take part in the seminar, in the interactive conversation and are also engaged in turning text into play, rehears in between our meetings and work on the “text-gesture” - a special assignment, connected with the book of Genesis (We have different assignments in the LaboraTORIA, and this is the rigid one).

The second circle consists of people who constantly come, listen and sometimes participate in the discussions but are not ready to pick up the creative vector and nobody insists on it. They fully participate in the project, but stay on the spectators’ position – I call this an author-consumer. There is also some space for authorship there and it is a special state of mind of a person who can only participate in this way yet.

In the third circle there are people who are only coming to visit. They wander around and can never stop. But at the moment when they are with us, they are also full participants.

Anybody can move from one circle to another. And the meaning of every meeting is freely placed among these three circles. People move from the third circle to the first one. And this process has to be kept in such a triple shape; it should not be limited and we are not planning to fix the positions. We have a group that is constantly transforming around its circles. 

Have you been serious saying that the “psychological theater has always feared deep interpretations»? As far as I know the psychological theater implies the analysis of historical background, the discussion and building of disguises. 

UHANANOV: Of course a disguise is built there; moreover, the deep psychological structure of interpersonal relationships is worked out, as well as the deep action. As Stanislavski has defined, the subject of theater art is the life of a human spirit. But we do not use a word “psychological” in vain. All this is perceived from the perspective of animal soul, filled with affectations.  And, naturally, this kind of soul appears onstage, and the story of its adventures is told by the means of psychological theater. It is impossible to cognize a canon text with the help of such kind of attention to psychoid. This is how the psychological theater has closed a way to encounter with mind, especially the higher mind. By higher mind I, among all, mean the substance where the aspects, senses and cataclysms are placed, that the sacred text speaks about. Of course, we should not completely reject the analysis of psychological relationships.

The danger comes up when the psychological theater is chosen as the only place where theater can exist at all. In the totality of this regime all the rot of soul, all fictions of consciousness, all haze get to the surface. And when all these lead the consciousness, it is totally incapable of detecting the running streams of wisdom and knowledge and of building a relationship with these streams. Among the three shells of the soul that I shortly mentioned in the beginning of the text – speech, thought, action – we have to deal only with the usurped type of action, and the name of it - psychoid affectation.

It is a pity, but the same can be stated about a so-called disguise that the actor has to create. Everything depends on the cause of the demand for art. We can find disguises on pop stage and in the old movies. We can find this art of disguise creation in No theater, but what we see there is not exactly a disguise building, not a system where character is contained in a person as it happens it in the Russian tradition. In No it is a technique of absorbing the non-human entity inside the soul. Working with a disguise is not the prerogative of psychological theater. Any type of theater requires this kind of time and territory. But theater can set its production around disguise building or reject it at all for the sake of reaching very specific artistic purposes. 

Rejecting it will anyway lead to accepting a disguise. If this will be done not by the means of visual work, then it will happen through capturing a unique individuality in action itself. The peripetia that the character encounters and the means of going through those are leading the personality of the performer, author-performer, into the system of ideas and acts that would not be natural for this person in real life. The De Niro personality is distinguishable in any movie, but it is always a different character.

To this sense, the today’s theatrical culture has seriously changed the very understanding of the actor’s profession. Today this profession that is connected with a sensible and earnest play on the territory of various action and situation structures, that lead to creation of a paradoxical or absurd narrative.   

When we speak about the theater of play, we speak about ideas. There the art of modeling is needed and the work is taking place in the conditional space. There you have to discern the limits of the language that you have accepted upon yourself. The playing performer has to employ the ideas he has about the world around him. It is a different technique and it also has to be learned. And speaking about the canon text, we have to possess techniques of working with vertical as well as with horizontal vectors. Moreover, all these are very specific techniques connected with analysis as well as with play. They are also necessary but not sufficient for the new universal territory. The conversation about new mysterial techniques will be also interesting, but it is not intended in this article.

Are there any performances or film based upon Bible that you could evaluate positively? 

UHANANOV: First I would touch something that is not directly connected with Bible. For the 60s and the 70s the Brook’s Mahabharatha or Grotovskiy’s experiences -  are the true examples of religious performances. Or the works by Suzuki or Eugenio Barba. All these are performances and directors who revive the tradition of the sacred theater.  

The last serious work connected with the biblical theme was The Anatoly Vasiliev’s “Jeremiah’s Weeping”. The Jeremiah text was performed with Vladimir Martynov's music. But except for the text that the person chooses, the vector is also important. In the Bible the Old Testament is the canon one and the vector…I have not seen performances where the vector have been connected with Judaism. And we long for such kind of performance. But to make it we have to go beyond the LaboraTORIA’s borders, that is beyond the analytical seminar. We have to formulate it as a full-range project. And I have a team of people who are capable of doing so.

What is the relationship of the LaboraTORIA with the existing tradition of the Jewish theater? To what extent the theater of canon text, if this text is Torah is related to the Jewish tradition? Is the theater itself as a form of art able to be a part of the Jewish religious tradition?

ZELTSER: I would like to remind you the name of the program that is taking place inside a LaboraTORIA. It is called “The Diaspora Symphony”. The way this program is developed answers the common question of why we call it “Symphony”. And now I would like to explain the first part of the name: “Diaspora”. 

When a year ago I approached my colleagues form theatrical and non-theatrical milieu with the ideas of reviving what I then called a Jewish theater, one of the reasons for that was I being unsatisfied with what we had. As a real Jew I tried to define something through negation.

I was unsatisfied with the absence of the Jewish theater and with the Jewish theater that I encountered in the FSU and, actually, not only theater, but many forms of activities that fell under the “Jewish art” category. According to the unrefined point of view I had back then, this art could in 50 percent cases have been classified as “Hava-Nagila” art, imported from Israel, born in Israel. It resonated with Israeli life, reality and problems and also, not less important, went through an export censorship that meant it was acknowledged by someone (it is not now important – by whom) worth to be imported in Russia. It had a very specific way of striking root here.

In other cases, it was an art of “Sholom-Aleichem” type, that accorded with some kind of a stiff concept of what is considered Jewish. And it was always only a concept because (or may be I just were unlucky) I did not encounter a single case of theater performance that would at least to the extent of drama abilities channel the pain, the nerve and other intangible things that are specific for the existence of the modern Jew in Russia, in diaspora. And the problem was not with cosmopolitism or assimilation that ran through the soviet and post-soviet mainstream Jewish consciousness, but more with the new times that we all faced.

In the soviet epoch the Jewish community existed in Russia. But it was as a formal entity with its institutes and even not a community in an underground. It existed in its own misty and blurry integrity. Our life was filled with signs of this virtual community existence: all the aesthetics of the fifth line (a line in the soviet passport, reserved for the ethnic origin), a slight smile when recognizing someone Jewish in the subway, unofficial network of Jewish jobs, Jewish schools and university departments where nothing but the names’ list would reveal the Jewish nature of an institution, looking for the Jewish names in movie credits, thousands of people trying to by tickets to see the “Black Bridle for White Mare” musical by Shellinger, and, replacing the mezuza, the six volumes of Sholom-Aleichem’s writings on the shelve.

This means that we had everything that constituted a community, but in a special, blurry, form. Then, the bubble of the Soviet Union bursted, and this structure of the Jewish community also bursted. It started to evolutionize. And when the nostalgic hunger - a son of the Shellinger’s box office lines - was satisfied, we found ourselves on the empty theater territory. Even the quality drama works (Like Oleg Uriev’s “Miriam” or “A little pogrom in the station buffet”) with all the author’s sincerity and talent appeared to be urgent only for the past and the new Jewish drama did not have time to sense the ongoing changes. It longed for another freedom – freedom of cosmopolitism.

So, I dreamed about the Jewish theater as a normal consumer who loved it. And in this hunger I asked very simple questions that any person will ask after saying: “Jewish theater in Russia”: “What should be the language? What dramatic literature should it use? And should the actors be Jewish? And what is the Jewish drama – should it just be composed by a Jew, or should it be connected with some Jewish theme? And what is a Jewish theme?”

The answer I had then and that I still stick to is that the only thing that unites us, the only unquestionable fundamental, that gives roots to the Jew in modern Russia and that it stands on – is Torah. This does not depend on the religious consciousness, on the fact that he keeps or does not keep traditions, if he at all knows what traditions are. Torah exists not only on the conscious but also on the genetic, collective-subconscious level. And this is what we have to start with. It was a starting point I have reached.  And that was my position when I met Boris.

The problem was a very serious one for me and I had two answers: 1) We needed young people, full of energy and, may be unconsciously, reflecting the burning essences of what are the Jews of today’s and tomorrow’s Russia, 2) We needed a sincere and talented refined professional director who would be interested in such problems.

Then the LaboraTORIA has worked for 2 years. And now I have my answers to all questions, mentioned above. And I also have confidence, strengthened by the experiences of LaboraTORIA, that the theater of Torah is not the theater that uses Torah as some kind of a pre-dramatic material. Or, it is not only such kind of theater, but also a theater that works with the canon text in its entirety. And in this attempt, exactly while encountering the canon text from such an angle, a modern Jewish art can be born, including modern theater.  

I could also say that the LaboraTORIA is attempting to create a new midrash. It, in fact, exists on the territory of spoken Torah. That means that it itself is a small branch growing from a stem of today’s spoken Torah. It does not use a canon text for it’s own purposes. It lives on the territory of the Torah text.

In the history of Jewish theater, I can relate to the creation of “Habima”. Of course, in no case can we draw a straight line between «Habima» and us. I am now looking at our work in the very bгоad time context. And then I see that when “Habima” was created, Jews, as nowadays, just got an opportunity to step on the theater territory and, just as today, there was a demand for the completely new Jewish identity. LaboraTORIA and “Habima” have very similar roots.

By the way, “Habima” was found as the Bible studio of the Moscow Art Theater. Then, as now, the encounter of theater and the canon text took place on the edge of the vanguard search and revelations in theater theory and practice. And, now and then, it is based on the sincere, genuine and burning interest towards the Jewish and canon themes.

We, as the “Habima” people of the 20s, do not know what our LaboraTORIA will transform into tomorrow. But I am clearly confident that this way, the landscape of which we are just getting to know, is potent of giving growth to the truly vivid process. And this might be the most important for the theater art.

And what performances are you planning to work on? 

UHANANOV: There are at least four projects.

Firstly, the TV-series based on midrashim. Very diverse people from different parts of the world will play them in English and Hebrew. Without direct imitation, but with slight elements of it. It is a grand project that we are getting ready to launch. It is actually a line of short stories, built on the texts of specific midrashim, where two languages will be presented.

The second project is a theater performance based on the Torah text about Tamar, but the story of Joseph will be also included. In fact, it will be a theater performance and a film.

Then there is project of performance about Kain.

Also I have a project based on two Jewish plays. They are not Torah but are completely turned towards Torah. These are “Golem” and “Hadibuk” – two performances.

Then we have some other ideas.

Another project is accomplished inside a LaboraTORIA project (but on the independent territory). It is a performance called “A story of the orthostanding human”. It is a part of our space. It is accomplished in “The Laboratory of Angelic Directing”. There we are fetching a myth about the relationship of Man and God from the ancient Greek gymnastics. In the end of September – beginning of October its premiere will take place in Anatoliy Vasiliev’s theater “The School of Dramatic Art”.

But here we present a seminar and rehearsals that have not yet resulted in some kind of performance and there, with the already prepared team of my students, we have created a performance. But this performance and the seminar-rehearsal are one and the same territory.

I also have a project of a performance in the Jerusalem theater. It is based on one apical works of the Christian dramaturgy – the Calderone’s “The Steadfast Prince”. In the play the war is taking place between the Arabs and the Christians. Or, Calderone has called the “fighting sides” Christians and Arabs, while actually they are the believers and atheists. There is only one faith, as we know.

To what extent does your need for the Jewish theater and Jewish art in general correspond with the situation in the modern world where art is much globalized?

ZELTSER: Not long ago I have spoken to my friends and we have come to the conclusion that we live in the world, where there are no margins, especially in the world of art.  Any marginal phenomena are immediately usurped by mainstream and become a part of it. We have long ago got used to the phrase “A world without borders” but this absence of borders makes people to long for new ones. And this leads to the internal actualization of the scopes and frameworks that seemingly became a part of the forgotten past. For example, such form of existence, as a community, again became very appealing today. And I do not see a Jewish theater of the present as an ethnic theater. I see it as a community.

For one year I have been sharing my thoughts and ideas with different directors, because I felt I was a new person in theater incapable of running the project on my own.  The directors I met answered me in two different ways. They either refused to engage in what they thought was “ethnical theater” or they told me something like “Great idea, dude, but how much money you have?” The dialog with Boris was completely different.  As a result, we are working on this project.

The Jewish Cultural Center on Nikitskaya responded to the initiative. In the beginning we gave just one announcement that consisted of 8 words: “Theater LaboraTORIA of Boris Uhananov: Tanach – Text, Direction, Play”. A very diverse group of young people has responded to this. Everybody was led to the LaboraTORIA by his own purpose - somebody was interested in theater, somebody – in the canon text. Some participants were attracted by Uhananov’s name. And now the LaboraTORIA is approximately twenty – twenty-five people in the first circle that Uhananov has told about and something like ten people in the second circle. The third circle is changing all the time.

Very important are the people who constitute the core of LaboraTORIA today. The diversity of interests, personality types is astonishing and it reflects the whole spectrum of the modern urban consciousness in its different expressions. And all this people are amazingly united by the interest towards the canon text. I think it is not just a particular case, but also a trend for the modern young Jewish society.

If your project will continue its development, what kind of effect can it have on the Jewish life?

ZELTSER:  I cannot know that, but I see the following potentials in the LaboraTORIA today. From the theatrical point of view, the new technologies and understanding, accumulated by us till now are sufficient to be expressed in the full-fledged theatrical project. Even in several ones. Speaking of education, LaboraTORIA, according to Boris’ words, as a territory of special aspiration to the canon text is a Beit-Midrash that is the authentically Jewish educational center. It serves the modern people, interested in art. If the attempt to build a large international communicational structure that we will try to undertake starting with the November seminar will be successful, then we hope that this educational potential will be used also in other places.      

The LaboraTORIA also has a culturetrigging potential. Any kind of living and sincere attention to Torah has an effect on the Jewish world’s future. Art has no practical purpose, but no culture has ever been able to survive without the vivid developing art. And if we want the Jewish culture to exist, we have to guarantee that by developing a vivid Jewish art. And this is exactly what we are doing to the best of our capacities.