The five-hour drama "War and Peace", the representative work of Tuminas, a Lithuanian theater master who was loved by Chinese audiences and who just passed away in March this year, has been finalized for a China tour. The first stop will be Shanghai Dongyi from August 22 to 25. It will be performed for 4 consecutive days starting from today. This was the last work Tuminas performed for the Vakhtangov Theater in Russia before his death.
Tuminas is the director of the Lithuanian Small Theater and the artistic director of the Vakhtangov Theater in Russia for more than 10 years. Vakhtangov is a student of the famous Russian drama master Stanislavsky and is good at breakthroughs and innovations. As a pioneer in the theater world, Vakhtangov's artistic concepts influenced the history of theater in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The last popular drama in China that Tuminas rehearsed for the Vakhtangov Theater was "Eugene Onegin", which made the audience feel the surging vitality and beautiful poetry. The image of a group of actresses swinging on the stage like fairies in the forest is unforgettable. The combination of real emotion and fantasy poetry is Tuminas' main directorial style. In addition, his dramas such as "Faust", "Uncle Vanya", "Masquerade", "Three Sisters", "God, Please Smile on Us", "Oedipus the King" and "The Imperial Envoy" are all fascinating. I am amazed by the style of contemporary Russian and Lithuanian dramas.
"War and Peace" is adapted from Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece of the same name. It is a grand drama rehearsed by Tuminas for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Russia's Vakhtangov Theater. The play has a simple setting, exquisite performances, and waltz music throughout. It tells the story of the rise, fall, success, failure, joys and sorrows of several families such as Rostov, Bolkonsky and Kuragin. Many key scenes such as the appearance of several major families, Natasha's waltz, Pierre and Helen's quarrel, Prince Bolkonsky's monologue, and Prince Andrei's death will all be shown one by one. Tuminas is a director who believes deeply in the light. He once called affectionately: "Facing the light!" "War and Peace" will also tear open the gap of light in a suffering world, showing people's enthusiasm and desire to "live". In these endless partings and deaths, all the laughter rises to the level of tragedy, while all the sadness stops before the building collapses, showing the tenacity of human will.
"War and Peace" downplays the historical background and era carvings, and instead focuses on the "wandering" of personal dreams and the collapse of family destiny, so there is only one tall gray wall in the entire scene. The love and sorrow, expectations and desires of the noble heirs all happened under this gray wall. From Natasha's soliloquy on a spring night in white, looking forward to love, to her interpretation of joyful eternity and the arrival of death in black, the extremely simple tones will fill the entire gray stage universe. The sudden appearance of red handkerchiefs and green scarves will also be the few touches of light. In the play, the physical presentation is more obvious, and his commonly used pianos, cloths, dolls, etc. will also be used. At the same time, Tuminas showed the cruelty of war in an extremely simple but tragic way: all the people who died in the battle were replaced by military coats, which were placed in a haphazard manner on the stage...
Tuminas in Nearly 30 plays have been staged in Europe, and they have won the Russian Federation State Award, the Order of Friendship and other commendations, as well as authoritative industry awards such as the "Golden Mask" and "Crystal Turandot". He and the Vakhtangov Theater are considered "the pinnacle of Russian theater".
With his poetic texts and rich metaphors, he created a way to overcome the fear of death and pursue the eternity of life in the theater. (Xinmin Evening News reporter Zhu Guang)
