I am living example of life collisions - Olga Khenkina 

ArmInfo.  On September 11, the Yerevan premiere of Olga Khenkina's one-woman show "Anna and Lev" will take place at the Mher Mkrtchyan Artistic Theater.  This is a poignant story about the dialogue between the great poetess Anna Akhmatova and her son Lev Gumilyov that never took place - about the pain of misunderstanding, the desire to be heard by loved ones,  regardless of the circumstances. The play is permeated with love,  pain and hope, which turns into a confession and inevitably resonates  in the hearts of the audience.

The roles of both Akhmatova and Gumilyov are played by the actress of  the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, the star of the TV series "Kept  Women" and other projects - Svetlana Ustinova.

The premiere of the play took place in the USA, then it was presented  to the public in Germany, France, Switzerland, Latvia, Estonia,  Monaco. And tomorrow, the Yerevan audience will see it for the first  time. It is noteworthy that is Khenkina's debut  directorial work. Before this performance, she was known to the  general public as a producer, screenwriter and casting director,  having worked for many years at the Moscow Art Theater named after  A.P. Chekhov.

In an interview with an ArmInfo correspondent, Olga Henikina spoke  about how this performance was born, how difficult it was to decide  to start directing, about her future plans and about the influence of  Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov (1935-2018) - a great actor, director,  teacher, theater figure, one of the founders of the Sovremennik  Theater, artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater named after A.  Chekhov, with whom she closely collaborated for many years.

- Olga, I know that is your first directorial work.  How long did it take you to become a stage director? How often did  you think about moving from producing to directing?

- I never thought about it. As they say, it was a coincidence.  Svetlana Ustinova and I worked together at the Moscow Art Theatre,  and later, after Sveta had shot her full-length film , the idea arose to write a script about the life of Anna  Akhmatova.

We started working, reread and reviewed a lot of materials,  interviews, letters and memoirs, and somehow it suddenly became clear  that it should be a play. And when the text was finished, I didn't  want to give it to anyone. That's how I became a director.

- Why was the theme of mother and son chosen? Was it some kind of  personal story or was the choice of such a theme due to the  complexity of the relationship that I wanted to work with?

You won't believe it, but the theme revealed itself. Reading the  entire published archive of Akhmatova and her biographers, reviewing  dozens of interviews with Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov, we, without  saying a word, realized that the drama of the relationship between  mother and son came to the forefront and it was important to talk  about it with the audience.

- I would like to know if the play is based on the original text of  letters between Anna Akhmatova and her son, or the author's  adaptation? Of course, all the quotes are unchanged. As for the  direct speech of the characters, it is, of course, adapted.

And what was most important for you, as a director, in this  production? What is the main message or question?

Rather questions in the plural. A great artist, whose works inspire  generations, can combine creativity and motherhood, the adoration of  fans and their own empathy? Do they share the suffering of their  loved ones or live in their own illusory world?

All these questions have been asked for centuries, and we have been  looking for answers to them for centuries.

Is there anything that became a discovery for you about Akhmatova and  Gumilev while working on the play? Yes, we discovered many new  details of their lives, sometimes completely unexpected, causing a  desire to adjust new optics. And sometimes a desire to quickly forget  these details and remain in ignorance:

Is there something in this work that the Yerevan viewer, in your  opinion, should not miss?

I am absolutely sure that the Yerevan audience is one of the most  tender and at the same time passionate audiences, feeling the nature  of the theater down to the smallest nuances. So there is no need to  prompt him, he will understand everything himself.

And what does this work mean to you personally?

Like all debutants, I love this performance very much, it is my  firstborn.

I am also interested in your work with Svetlana Ustinova. How easy  or, on the contrary, difficult was the joint creative process? Was  the decision to have a one-woman show made initially, or did such an  outcome arise in the process of work? Svetlana is an amazing actress,  bold and daring, you can offer her any, the most unexpected scene  solution and she will fulfill it. When we finished the play and read  it to Sveta's family, it immediately became clear that both roles  should be played by one actress. The experience of our tour showed  that the decision was correct.

Please tell us in which cities this performance has already been  seen, and in your opinion, is it intended for a specific audience, or  can this topic affect everyone? The performance has been to America,  Germany, France, Switzerland and Monaco. Of course, our audience is a  Russian-speaking audience from thirty to one hundred years old, but  we ourselves were shocked by how young people and teenagers received  our performance. As one great theater figure said: "If it's not about  me, then why watch it?" The greatest reward is when the audience  comes up to us and says: "This is about me."

In that case, I can't help but ask you about your future plans - will  we hear more about Olga Khenkina's directing work or was the play  , so to speak, an experiment for you?

Yes, I got up my nerve and decided to continue my directing  experiments. Now I'm working on a play about two brilliant women -  Coco Chanel and Ida Rubinstein, a fashion designer and a dancer. A  completely different genre and a different scope, but the theme of  strong creative women remains. And finally, I would like to touch on  your path with Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov. I know that you worked  together for many years at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre. Can we say  that your transition to directing was largely due to his influence?  And is there anything that you consciously adopted from Oleg  Pavlovich in your directing work?

Oleg Pavlovich, unlike me, never directed in a professional theatre,  only with his students. He was sure that everyone should do their own  thing. An actor should act, a painter should design and dress, a  composer should write music, and a director should come up with a  play. In his lifetime, I would not only not have decided to do  directing, but I would not have even dared to think about it. But  time goes by, the situation changes, someone suggests trying, and a  crazy idea suddenly becomes reality. So I am a living example of the  improbability of life's collisions.

Thank you for the interesting conversation and further success!