January 13, 1987
A 61-year-old director died in Moscow. Anatoly Efros.
To check whether the actors are playing correctly or not, you need to put a thick glass between them and the audience: if the audience can’t hear, but understand, then they are playing correctly
Real name - Nathan. Born in 1925 Kharkov into the family of an engineer and a translator who worked at a local aircraft factory. During the Great Patriotic War, he was evacuated to Molotov with his parents and their business (Permian). He worked there as a mechanic.
He was fascinated by the theater since childhood. In 1943, he entered the acting studio at the Mossovet Theater, which was also evacuated. In 1944, he entered the directing department of GITIS. He worked for several years in Ryazan drama theater.
In 1954, he joined the Central Children's Theatre as a director. Within a few years, he transformed it into one of the capital's most interesting and popular theaters—under Efros, it ceased to be exclusively a children's theater. His leadership launched the careers of Oleg Efremov, Oleg Tabakov и Lev Durov.
In directing, everything you say means almost nothing. It's just an idea, even if it's true.
In 1963, Efros was asked to revive the Lenkom Theatre, which was going through hard times. And he succeeded again: he staged cutting-edge plays and worked with young people—future stars. Valentin Gaft, Alexander Shirvindt, Olga Yakovleva.
He called himself an artist of the “Moscow Art Theatre roots” and adhered to the system Stanislavsky. From the actors he sought a “curved wire” in the construction of the role (the term belongs to Efros himself) - unpredictability, liveliness, variability and dynamism.
Harmony in art is the greatest concern expressed in a perfectly
He ironically called himself a "capricious child of the Khrushchev thaw"—he always shied away from power and tried to avoid politics. However, in 1967, after his removal from office Khrushchev and unsuccessful productions of classics - Chekhov's "The Seagull" and Bulgakov's "Molière" - was removed from the management of the theatre.
The face of the theatre is not in the uniformity of its style, but in the dissimilarity of one performance from another.
The very first performance at the new venue, "Three Sisters" at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre, was banned. The production of the play was also censored. Radzinsky. Actors began leaving the disgraced Efros's troupe. The theater's new artistic director saved the day. Alexander Dunaev: He allowed him to create his own theater within the theater. Over the course of its 17 years, the Efros Theater staged several landmark productions—the director enjoyed great creative freedom.
Why don't they write anymore about Iago being Iago! And that Othello killed Desdemona just like that? For absolutely nothing? Why does everyone write "a little bit," as if afraid to upset someone? And they don't. Why is a happy ending so necessary? As if this audience is any dumber than the one who lived in Shakespeare's time.
He worked in television and directed several films. His "On Thursday and Never Again" is considered a classic of Soviet intellectual cinema.
One of his most famous television plays is Bulgakov's "Just a Few Words in Honor of Monsieur de Moliere" (1973) with Yuri Lyubimov in the leading role. The story of a playwright hounded by the authorities turned out to be as realistic as possible: Lyubimov, too, was in disgrace with the Soviet regime.
In 1984, Efros was invited to head the Taganka Theatre and replace Lyubimov (who had been declared a "defector" during a European tour and stripped of his citizenship). Lyubimov called Efros a "traitor," and most of the theatre company supported him and boycotted the new director. The actors launched a full-scale harassment campaign against him: they disrupted rehearsals, cut up his sheepskin coat, and punctured his car tires. Several actors— Leonid Filatov, Veniamin Smekhov and others left Taganka, moving to Sovremennik (Filatov made a film about the history of Efros’s confrontation with the troupe, “Sons of Bitches”).
In 1985, after coming to power Gorbachev, Efros signed a collective letter from Taganka actors calling for the return of their former director.
Due to the ongoing conflict, he developed heart failure.
In 1986, he staged his last production—Moliere's "The Misanthrope." He died of a heart attack, a year and a half before Lyubimov returned to the USSR.
Good medicine is to love life
