The war has a woman's face: at the Theater on Bronnaya — a new reading of Vasiliev's story

In the play directed by Anton Okoneshnikov, "And the dawns here are Quiet..." Boris Vasiliev's story turns simultaneously into a documentary investigation, a theatrical drama and reflections on youth destroyed by war. A live camera, chromakey, and video projections help bring the events of May 1942 closer to the modern viewer, but the main weapon of the production is not technology, but five young actresses who remind us that behind every feat there is always a failed life.

Personal file of anti-aircraft gunners

There is a huge hexagon on the stage. It's like a concrete funnel in the middle of a world that has long since exploded. A gray crumb crunches under the actors' feet. Not earth. Not sand. It's a cross between ash, rubble, leaves, and swamp mud. In this faded arena, a story unfolds that is familiar to every Russian person — the story of five anti-aircraft gunner girls and their commander Fedot Vaskov, written by Boris Vasiliev and adapted into a film by Stanislav Rostotsky.

Anton Okoneshnikov, a young director of the Alexandrinsky Theater, recreated her on the Stage of Konstantin Bogomolov's Melnikov. Okoneshnikov made difficult material about the most important topic for the country together with a young team. They kept the core, Vasiliev's great text, but supplemented it with modern technologies.

The play begins at the end. Namely— from the moment when Fedot Vaskov and his son Albert are looking for their mother's grave. This is reported to the audience by a man in uniform with a paper folder in his hands. The director examines Vasiliev's story almost like an investigator examining an old criminal case. Here are the documents. Here are the witnesses. Here are the circumstances of the death.

The feeling of documentality is enhanced by a real-time movie camera. She is constantly next to the artists and displays the image on a large round screen. The viewer simultaneously watches what is happening on the stage and the close-ups of the faces, noticing details that cannot be seen from the audience.

People and destinies

One of the main successes of the play is the acting ensemble. Yana Stavorzhinskaya, Anastasia Terialya, Maria Dudnik, Anya Patokina and Vladimir Petrik are not trying to portray people of the 1940s. They look for feelings in their characters that are understandable to today's viewers: fear of loss, love, loneliness, the desire to be needed and happy.

Here is Junior Sergeant Rita Osyanina, a collected and reliable commander of anti—aircraft gunners. Before the war, she was the happy wife of a border guard, a gentle and affectionate girl, the first in the whole school to get married, which she was very proud of. The war deprived her of the right to a normal life. She wiped the smile off her face. She forced me to put on the mask of a man who lives for revenge.

And here's Galya Chetvertak, the youngest of the squad. Not only in terms of age, but also in terms of perception of the world. She grew up in an orphanage and still lives in the space of her own fantasies. The director emphasizes this feature through fabulous visions that arise next to the heroine. A huge green bearded head moves around the hall, either a forest spirit or a fairy—tale elder. In peacetime, Galya used this image to frighten other children from the orphanage. And until the last moment, until she came face to face with death, she perceived what was happening as a terrible game.

Next to her is Sonya Gurvich. She used to love going to the Moscow Art Theater, singing songs at the family table, and reading poetry. In the fateful days of May 1942 for the anti-aircraft gunners, she reads Alexander Blok. He reads aloud because poetry cannot be felt otherwise.

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There is also the beautiful Zhenya Komelkova. She continues to laugh, joke and flirt where there seems to be no room for it for a long time. Her fiery curls drive men crazy. And it is precisely this youth, beauty, and love of life that are being ground by the millstones of war.

And the last of them is Lisa Brichkina, a forester's daughter. She always helped her sick mother and hardworking father, supported the soldiers at the beginning of the war, knew the forest better than anyone, understood the habits of birds, and knew how to make a campfire without smoke. But she died first, in a swamp, when she was in a hurry to deliver the news about 16 German saboteurs.

Special attention should be paid to Dinis Gromakov in the role of Foreman Vaskov. In the story, Fedot Yevgrafovich is only 32 years old. However, war and responsibility make him much older. Gromakov shows exactly how the hero's attitude towards girls is changing. At first, they're just subordinates to him. Then the fighters. Gradually, he begins to see in them young women who maliciously poke fun at his embarrassment and rustic awkwardness. By the end, the anti-aircraft gunners become Vaskov's closest people. Therefore, his subsequent revenge on the fascists does not look like the fulfillment of military duty, but a personal vendetta.

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Forest, camera, and chromakey

The visual palette of the production consists of two colors: gray — the colors of war, ashes, stone and memory, and green — the colors of life. All the characters that appear in the heroines' memories appear in green. Rita Osyanina's husband, Lisa Brichkina's father, and the fairy-tale characters from Gali Chetvertak's fantasies seem to exist in another dimension, where the war has not yet reached.

And when the girls die one by one, they dress up in green dresses. They become part of other people's memories— the same images and memories that their loved ones used to be for them.

Interestingly, chromakey is also used. Thanks to him, the space is constantly expanding: a forest, a river, a swamp, and front-line roads appear on the screen. The episode at the beginning of the second act is especially significant. If in the first part the camera more often exists next to the Soviet fighters, then after the intermission the viewer suddenly finds himself on the side of the German sabotage group.

The Nazis make a camp in the forest, take out plates, knives and forks, lay out breakfast and eat quietly. The contrast appears instantly: a few scenes earlier, Soviet girls were banging spoons on common dishes, trying to scoop up liquid soup, and now a sleek saboteur is putting out a cigarette in a breakfast plate, which he barely touched.

Anton Okoneshnikov's production does not offer a new reading just to make the story modern. The director carefully works with Vasiliev's text, but chooses an actual theatrical language for it. The result is a performance in which technology does not displace a person, but helps to take a closer look at his fate. Therefore, after the finale, it's not the video projections or the camera that come back to mind, but the five young girls for whom tomorrow never came.