Mhatchiki. Mikhail Bulgakov and Grigory Konsky

Bulgakov-actor - little-known pages from the writer’s life; exhibition halls turned into dressing rooms and theatrical backstage; personal belongings, unpublished letters and memoirs, voiced by the artist of the Theater "Peter Fomenko Workshop" Kirill Pirogov.

In the new space of the Museum of M. A. Bulgakov, in the memorial apartment on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya, 35a, on August 30, the exhibition “Riders. Mikhail Bulgakov and Grigory Konsky. The story of friendship between the famous playwright and the aspiring actor of the Moscow Art Theater.

"Mhatchiki" - a word that is often found in Bulgakov’s letters to friends and in the diary of his third wife, Elena Sergeevna, was the informal name for the artists of the Moscow Art Theater. Beginning in 1925, many “mhatchiks” entered the writer’s inner circle, and the theater itself became an integral part of his life: by order of the Moscow Art Theater, Bulgakov took on the reworking of the novel The White Guard into a play that would be called The Days of the Turbins. A successful performance in 1929 will be removed from the repertoire, but three years later, after Stalin’s visit to the Moscow Art Theater, they will be restored. In 1930, Mikhail Bulgakov finally became a "full-time horseman" and received the position of an assistant director in the theater.

Few people know that Bulgakov not only wrote plays and directed performances for the Moscow Art Theater, but also appeared on stage more than 30 times as the President of the Court in the play The Pickwick Club. Bulgakov shared a common dressing room with Grigory Konsky, a graduate of Zavadsky’s theater studio yesterday. It begins a strong friendship between two unlike each other creative people with a 20-year age difference.

Exhibition “Mhatchiks. Mikhail Bulgakov and Grigory Konsky” will open a dressing room where Bulgakov and Konsky were preparing for the play “The Pickwick Club” with their personal belongings, unique photographs, drawings of those years and the broadcast of the audio version of the play “The Pickwick Club” from the old radio.

Bulgakov’s make-up powder box, his glasses, a handkerchief, a small mirror, a bottle of perfume and a theatrical number - all these rare museum exhibits will be complemented by things from a private collection of Grigory Konsky: his cigarette, letters of thanks and a caricature of artist Boris Livanov on a young actor. Artifacts will take visitors into the atmosphere of the 30s of the last century. According to the idea of the authors of the project - curators Vladimir Brovkin, Alexander Roginsky and architect Anna Rumyantseva - the viewer will get the feeling that the artists have just left the dressing room and went on stage.

The "Behind the Scenes" part will feature the main performances by Bulgakov and Konsky on the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre. The legendary Moscow Art Theater "Dead Souls" were staged according to a staging created by Bulgakov. The actor Konsky began in the play with a small role as a governor’s servant - and "grew up" to the governor. In the film adaptation of the same name, filmed by Leonid Trauberg in 1960, fragments of which will be shown at the exhibition, Konsky plays the prosecutor Antipater Zakharovich.

Bulgakov’s long-suffering play "Alexander Pushkin" turned into a play "The Last Days" only three years after the death of the writer. Grigory Konsky played the roles of the Dollmaker and Saltykov in it.

The culmination of "Behind the scenes" will be the failed performance "Batum" and Bulgakov’s play of the same name about the young Stalin. According to many of the writer’s contemporaries, this work cost him first his health, and six months later, his life. The exhibition will present for the first time Mikhail Bulgakov’s letter to Grigory Konsky dated July 31, 1939, shedding light on new details in the work on the play, telling about the torments of the playwright. The letter was sent to a Moscow Art Theater friend two weeks before Bulgakov’s infamous business trip to Georgia, which ended before it even began in Serpukhov, with a telegram from the director of the Moscow Art Theater: “The need for the trip has disappeared, return to Moscow.”

The final section of the exhibition at the M.A. Bulgakov Museum on Pirogovka is dedicated to the 1960s and the return of Bulgakov’s works to the reader. Grigory Konsky for the first time opens the book "The Master and Margarita", excerpts from which he heard from the author himself, he continues to be friends with the writer’s widow Elena Bulgakova and looks at the fate of his friend, the horseman, already through the prism of his past years, his creative successes and losses. Memories of the acquaintance of Bulgakov and Konsky are read by the actor and director of the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theater Kirill Pirogov.

The exhibition will feature exhibits from the funds of the M. A. Bulgakov Museum, rare items from the Moscow Art Theater Museum that do not often leave its walls, original documents from the Pushkin House in St. Petersburg and from private collections of Konsky’s grand-nephew Vladimir Brovkin and actor Stanislav Sadalsky, student of Grigory Konsky.

Every 100th visitor of the exhibition “Mhatchiks. Mikhail Bulgakov and Grigory Konsky” at the M. A. Bulgakov Museum at Bolshaya Pirogovskaya, 35a will receive a gift from the EKSMO publishing house - a set of books with Russian classics. The books will also be presented to the winners of the online competition for the best photo from the exhibition with the hashtags #BulgakovNaPirogovka and #brightstarnitsa. The results of the competition will be summed up on the last day of the exhibition - November 13, 2022.