September 28, 1915
Georgy Tovstonogov, theater director and teacher, was born.
Under his direction, the Bolshoi Drama Theatre in Leningrad became, perhaps, the most successful theatre in the country, and the troupe became one of the leading in the world.
Without the ability to think intensely on stage, the artist's art cannot be modern (from the book "Mirror of the Stage")
Was born in Tiflis. Father, Alexander TolstonogovHe was a hereditary nobleman. He later changed the letter in his surname at his wife's insistence. His mother, Georgian Tamara Papitashvili, sang at the conservatory.
In 1933, he entered GITIS. In 1937, he was expelled after his father was convicted of being a "Japanese spy" and subjected to the purges. He was later reinstated, possibly after Stalin remarked that "a son is not responsible for his father."
People who speculate on the slogans of the party and government pose as party artists, and their "parables" as ideological art. And we often confuse service with servitude, pathos with flashiness, passion with exaltation, and idea with morality.
In 1956, Tovstonogov was offered to head Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater — At that time, the theater was considered an outsider in Leningrad. The staff was bloated, the repertoire was chaotic, and box office receipts were minimal. At his very first meeting with the troupe, which had "eaten" the previous director, Tovstonogov declared, "I'm inedible!" and fired a third of the cast. He recruited new actors based on their intellectual level and ability to improvise.
The audience must not be given the opportunity to guess, even a split second in advance, what the actor will do next. There must be some mystery in the actor's existence that the audience must solve at a certain point in the performance. If they anticipate the actor, it means the actor is trapped in an archaic performance style.
Getting into Tovstonogov's troupe was more difficult than stepping onto the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre. It was full of stars— Doronina, Freundlich, Basilashvili, Yursky, Lavrov…And not for long— Smoktunovsky, who played Prince Myshkin here. A role that became not just "star" but "brilliant."
