We met in the make-up room. It was the first interview in my life. I had thirty minutes before the beginning of the play “How I ate the dog”[1]. I worried: whether it was possible to talk about everything for such short time? We were not acquainted with Evgeny Grishkovets but I wanted to talk to him about creation, his views in life, about children and the future. Because he is the one of rare people on the stage whom you trust.
- Evgeny, you have to travel a lot. What do you remember about towns you visit? Images, stories, people?
I should admit that I have no time to see the most of towns where I go with my performances. Even from above. I don’t like to fly. Though I have to go by plane more often. I remember towns if some stories happen there. There are some towns where, I know it, I have been for sure but I can remember nothing. It is a dot on the map, that’s all. There are some towns where I don’t want to return. It is not even because the play went off badly. No. I just don’t want to return there where it isn’t pleasant to be. The life has stopped in some towns. There is no feeling of the present day there. Such towns are not only in Russia. Several times I went on tours to Switzerland unless I once understood: “I don’t ski. And there is no reason to go there.”
It is very important for me that the play sounds pointedly, of the present.
And what Evgeny Grishkovets’ personal censor is? By what criteria do you determine the quality of your texts and plays?
It’s a very difficult question. I have no set of patterns with help of which I can estimate the level of the done things. But, on the other hand, I just do things that I want and I like. Certainly, I understand distinctly that I get money for it and that’s why I distinguish what I can show and what I can’t. I can tell an anecdote in the company and I can’t do this on the stage.
I try to make a play which has much life and in which I am interested myself for a long time. Emotional experience but not facts must be inside the play. Emotional experience of a person is universal and does not change even if the life facts of 20-30 years’ prescription lost their significance. The external substance of life changes and emotions don’t. Such words must be found that it wouldn’t become out of date for me, at least, for several years. By the way, when I created my play “How I ate a dog”, I didn’t reckon that it would live for so long and would be staged so many times. I have been playing it for eight years already. If it stops coinciding with me in terms of age, life understanding I won’t be able to put it on the stage even if the audience likes it. I will never do something that is not relevant for me. The play lives as many years as it is staged.
- Now world has sunk into pragmatics. Is cultural entrepreneurship a business or destination for you?
World hasn’t sunk into pragmatics, European and American world has always been like this. These are we who went into it out of another world in which money was absent. I look at the painting of Russian artists of the 1980s and it seems to me to be of much higher quality and better than the present ones though they painted factories, milkmaids, etc. Those artists had no market comprehension of their works’ value and they didn’t even have ideas that they could sell those pictures. Yes, museums bought them for some fixed money sometimes. Or they received orders from those who didn’t understand art. The real art mustn’t deal with business.
But when you have written work it's quite another matter. As a normal artist, author you must be interested that more people see and hear it. And it’s already management. I am fully engaged in it but not in the process of work at the text. First I write the text and only then I think on the stage of what dimension I will play and what fee must be charged. I played “Dreadnoughts” first in very small space. It had been undergoing modification and improving for two years before I could put it on the professional stage. I had already been very famous at that time.
If I write a book I simply write it. And only after that I get up it so that it has a cover fitting the content; so that it doesn’t look like a detective story or a love novel. At that I understand if I make the appropriate cover and take care of the book’s selling in supermarkets, more people will buy it. But I’m interested in another thing. I want the book to reach the reader. I want him to come to buy it because of his own wish. I don’t want somebody to palm it off to him. But it is necessary to be fully occupied with it. Most creative people consider themselves superior to it, and then their books often don’t reach the reader, they don’t meet. And we must aspire to meet half-way the reader, spectator. That’s why I, for instance, played my parformances at 9 p.m. in Moscow. Any working person can’t come in time for the theater by 7 in the evening. And I don’t want to play for idlers and pensioners. I want to play for those who are interested in it, for people who work as much as I do. Management is plain: we must meet half-way. And it doesn’t mean that I’ll earn more money. People can find my plays in Corbina Telecom and in video. Now I am writing a new book and I put my texts in I-net as I write them though the book will be published only in September. My publishers are not pleased with it. But I do it because I want to get reaction, to know whether it is necessary for somebody else. In my opinion it’s OK for the author.
- I’ve read that in Mass Media you read only cultural articles. On what principle do you pick out information from what is going on? How do you decide what to read, to watch and to listen to? What does it mean for you to spend good time?
- In the press I’m interested in cinema and theatre but I read not every newspaper. I never go to the cinema if I don’t have a hope. There is no sense to go to watch for example “Sword-bearer” and then spit out speaking about wasted time and money. One shouldn’t go if there is no hope to meet something real. I decide what to read and to watch according to friends’ advice. To have a good time doesn’t mean only reading a book or watching a film it can be friendly chat or simply a good dream. It should be pleasant and interesting.
- How do you define success state? What do you think about widespread rates and competitions: are they incentive to success or rather people manipulation?
- Both. There are different kinds of competitions – professional ones and for housewives so to say. But even in case when the competition is very considerable I won’t consider it too serious. The violinist that got first prize in Vienna but it can happen so that the same program will be rejected in Munich. There is only one success criterion – people need you or not. But not a fictitious necessity as for example to pay money and MusTV will show your video all the day round. And nobody listens to it. When people need you and buy tickets to your concert – that is the only way to learn if you are successful or not. Or when the book is sold and republished without any advertising company, it is read – that is success. And it doesn’t matter great success or small one. A very good, professional and competent sanitary technician can be successful and his day is scheduled and people are waiting for him with hope.
- What do you think what is more initial for a modern man education or competence to become a professional?
- It’s impossible to be competent without education, where would competence come from?
And at the same time there are a lot of informed people, knowing but the amount of information doesn’t convert into education. Education is a structured system not only knowledge but also learning that is an ability to learn. One can easily distinguish an uneducated person.
- There are a lot of people with education but they are not so educated.
- Yes, there are, and that is the problem of that person, he was given education but didn’t take it.
- What mistakes you’d like to warn your children of and what would you like to hand down to them from your experience?
- Of all mistakes. At the same time I know I wasn’t a genius and didn’t have conceptual mechanism but still I can’t warn them of anything they will repeat them anyway and do even more. It’s impossible, otherwise life would stop.
I could tell them I’m forty years old now remember it and try to behave otherwise. Impossible. The only thing everyone should wish is that his children are happy, wherever possible. We should give our children as much happiness and joy as possible, then it disappears, after that they became independent, and then nobody will worry about them and nobody will take responsibility for them.
- I’ve read you’re Miyazaki cartoons fan and you think it’s wrong that there are no cartoon lessons in Russian schools. Do you consider it necessary to teach animated cartoons?
- World’s animated cartoons and films. They should watch films, discuss them, write compositions, analyze. The same thing with literature, nowadays cinema is even more significant part than literature. But we should understand films and teach children to get pleasure from good films, good literature that is teacher’s aim.
- To my mind while reading a book or watching a film you sympathize and experience whereas cartoons are just illustrations, pictures and children don’t feel them, they don’t transfer edifying stories to life.
- I can only say you’re wrong, absolutely. Miyazaki is not anime, it’s a lofty classics, and it has seven pictures that he made for thirty years it’s a great contribution in culture. It’s useless to debate whether Korney Schakowsky or Lewis Carroll is good or bad. And anime that is produced after that is the same only on the surface. Just as to take both Tolstoy and Marinina are books but it’s the same to speak about anime and Miyazaki.
- Who is the hero of the present to your mind?
- The one who consider himself a hero.
- Do you consider yourself a hero?
- My character - yes, not me.
[1] In Russian “to eat a dog” means “to know something inside out” (translator’s note)
