September 4: Valentin Pluchek's birthday, the director who brought Mayakovsky back to the country
On September 4, 1909, Valentin Pluchek was born in Moscow. He was a theater director, a student of Vsevolod Meyerhold, and the longtime artistic director of the Satire Theater. He transformed the Satire Theater into the country's premier "Mayakovsky" theater and one of Moscow's most inaccessible theaters, with a record number of banned performances.
I had a long row about tickets,
The airport was put on its butt,
“Who is he?” they said, I whispered to them, and they immediately gave it to me:
"He is the director of 'The Bathhouse' and 'The Bedbug'"
Vladimir Vysotsky
From street children to VKHUTEMAS
His real name was Isaak Ginzburg. He lost his father early in life. His relationship with his stepfather, Yakov Pluchek, a party member, didn't work out. He found himself among street children and eventually ended up in an orphanage.
I could go steal, or I could try to become an artist.
After completing his seven-year education, he entered VKHUTEMAS (Higher Art and Technical Workshops). At 17, captivated by theater, he went to study in the workshop of his idol, Vsevolod Meyerhold. He then adopted a new stage name, Valentin. At 20, he was accepted as an actor into Meyerhold's GosTIM Theater.
Nowhere could I find myself so unmistakably as in his theater
He played in plays by his second idol, Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Studio, war, dismissal
After the closure of the Meyerhold Theater in 1938, he and playwright Alexei Arbuzov founded a theater studio (the "Arbuzovskaya"), renowned for its democratic practices. He staged the popular play "City at Dawn," based on a play written by the studio members themselves.
During the war, he headed the Murmansk Drama Theatre of the Northern Fleet, and after that, he directed the capital’s traveling theatre.
In 1950, at the height of the fight against cosmopolitanism, he was fired from there because of his Jewish origins. That same year, he joined the Satire Theatre. Gradually, he brought Mayakovsky out of obscurity, cementing the Satire Theatre's status as the country's premier "Mayakovsky" theatre.
Mayakovsky was the first to foresee the transformation of the worker into the bourgeois. And the transformation of the revolution into a bourgeois element. This is a brilliant insight.
"Banya" - a rebellion against the nomenklatura
In December 1953, six months after Stalin's death, the play "Bathhouse" premiered at the Satire Theater, with Pluchek serving as one of the directors. It became a landmark event in Moscow's theatrical life: a true rebellion against the Soviet nomenklatura, the "Pobedonosiks."
At the end of the play, Pobedonosikov says, "Let them try, let them sail without a leader and without sails." The word "leader" has never been used before in a satirical comedy.
Theater scholar Yuri Smirnov-Nesvitsky
Record holder for banned performances
The Satire Theatre has always been considered the record holder for banned performances.
In 1957, after taking over the theater, Pluchek staged "Was Ivan Ivanovich Real?" based on Nazim Hikmet's play, a satire on bureaucracy. Two years later, he staged "The Sword of Damocles," about the threat of nuclear war. The excitement surrounding these productions was so intense that mounted police guarded the approaches to the theater.
As they say in such cases, the audience was hanging from the chandeliers. During the performance, there were times when the audience applauded for five minutes straight, and the performance was interrupted.
After five performances, "The Sword of Damocles" was removed from the repertoire by order of the USSR Minister of Culture, Ekaterina Furtseva. But "Satira" and Pluchek persisted—soon the theater became one of the most inaccessible in Moscow. Its performances featured Vysotsky's songs.
We fought for him. Naturally, they didn't tell him anything—that they were banning him, they said—and we defended him.
Terkin, Chatsky the Dissident and "The Suicide"
In 1966, the premiere of the once banned "Tyorkin in the Other World" based on Alexander Tvardovsky was given here, with Papanov in the leading role.
In 1972, Pluchek presented a new reading of The Inspector General.
In 1976 he staged Griboyedov’s “Woe from Wit,” in which Andrei Mironov played the “dissident” Chatsky.
In addition to Mironov, the Pluchek Satire Theatre troupe was joined by Mikhail Derzhavin, Alexander Shirvindt, Tatyana Vasilyeva, and Roman Tkachuk. Mark Zakharov also emerged as a director there.
In 1982, Pluchek staged Nikolai Erdman's play "The Suicide," which had been banned by Stalin. Half a century later, the country's leadership again suspected it of being a threat to the Soviet system and removed it from the repertoire.
Last years
During the difficult perestroika years, Satire lowered ticket prices to retain audiences.
In 2000, Pluchek resigned from his post as artistic director of the theatre due to health reasons and was replaced by Alexander Shirvindt.
He died in 2002 in Moscow, at 92.
