Premiere of the play "The Back of an Elephant" at the "School of Modern Play"

“The back of an elephant” is an ironic look at modern life with recognizable realities, an attempt to caricature the “heroes of our time”: bureaucrats, bribe-takers and corrupt officials.

The main character of the play is an unlucky middle-aged actor who plays not Hamlet, not Boris Godunov, not Uncle Vanya… but the back of an elephant in a provincial Youth Theater. His wife is about to emigrate to Israel. And although this idea does not inspire him, he is ready to leave his homeland in search of some new chance. One day, “polite people” come to him and make a tempting offer: in the interests of state security, the artist begins to work “undercover”, portraying a fugitive, corrupt governor.

The plot, for all its phantasmagoricity, is, nevertheless, no more absurd than the news reported on the central TV channels. Witty dialogues reveal the characters of the masked characters with speaking surnames: Proshmanzon, Kharyugin, Chmorilov, Ready… The production has everything: Monday, which begins the life of the protagonist, and Chekhov’s motive of the slipped away “sky in diamonds”.

This is not the first time that the School of Contemporary Play turns to the genre of political satire. The ShSP believes that the theater should not be afraid to speak out on topical topics, and the viewer should learn about the topics he reads about in newspapers and the Internet, watches TV programs and discusses with friends.

Of course, the urgency is momentary. Today we are entertained by one, and tomorrow by other political situations. But we know for sure: no matter what concrete realities life presents to us, its general line, alas, is unlikely to change in the near future. And we will have to respond to the imperishable theme of "power and people" using a wide variety of formats: from amateur street pickets to professional theatrical farces. This is what we bring to your attention.

When they read Andrei Raikin’s play "The Back of an Elephant" at the ShSP, they decided: there will be a performance. The performer of the main role was identified instantly - People’s Artist of the Russian Federation Yuri Chernov, a bright comedy actor with a circus-pop past. The director of the play, Greta Shushcevicute, proposed an unexpected solution for such a complex play. She realizes the form of buffoonery through bright musical elements (the artists sing live in the performance, and also play musical instruments) and through a grotesque visual solution - “talking”, bright, clown costumes and exaggerated scenery.

Greta Shushchevicute, director of the play: “I confess, at first I was very scared of this play. It’s not good for me, a Lithuanian woman, to stage a play about how bad the Russian government is. But then I saw a different theme in it: an unfortunate actor whose life was not successful from all sides. He plays in the play "the back of an elephant", his wife wants to immigrate, and in addition he is forced to become a double of the governor. With this work, I want to make the viewer ask questions about power, the temptation of money, deceit. There are a lot of these questions and all of them are not asked directly, but through a funny story that happened to the main character, played by the wonderful Yuri Chernov. "

Andrey Raikin, author: “I did not invent the theme of the play, but took two stories that took place in real life, at different times and with different people, and decided to fill it in“ one bottle ”. The first story is about an artist who, in Soviet times, played one of the parts of a foam rubber elephant in the Moscow Puppet Theater. He decided to leave for Israel and instantly became an outcast of society, experiencing all the ups and downs associated with this. The second story happened to the district prefect, who disappeared from the city along with the money, and a few years later reappeared in London. These true, at the same time sad and funny stories formed the basis of the play. And the result was a performance that, in my opinion, reveals two planes - the theme of the artist, a little man far from politics and trying to piece together his own life, and the theme of power, money, today’s reality,about which, in fact, we know little, since we see only the tip of this iceberg all the time. "

Author Andrei Raikin
Director - Greta Shushchevichute
Artist - Varvara Timofeeva
Lighting Designer - Pavel Babin
Ballet master - Svetlana Kuzyanina
Musical Director - Vera Nikolaeva
Pomrezh - Elvira Tedeeva
Cast: Yuri Chernov, Vladimir Shulga, Olga Gusiletova, Oleg Tsarevta, Dzhul’ga, Maria Raevskaya, Maxim Evseev, Nikolay Golubev