Young Vic Directors Visit the Maly, by Maria Aberg

Maria Aberg is a Swedish director who has worked regularly in the UK, Sweden and Germany. In the UK she has directed for the Royal Court, RSC, Soho theatre and Southwark Playhouse. She is a member of the Genesis Directors Project at the Young Vic in London.

I was delighted and honoured when I was asked to join a group of Young Vic directors for a two-week workshop/masterclass in St Petersburg – I had always wanted to learn more about Russian theatre in general, and about the legendary Maly in particular. I had heard and read a lot about Lev Dodin and his method of working, and I was extremely curious to see how it actually worked in practice. Before going, I was sent a long reading list, and rather a daunting schedule which included things like practical singing and voice lessons. Armed with what little material has been written about the Maly in English, I packed my bags with lots of warm clothes and hoped for an intensely creative and challenging two weeks.

I went to Russia with high expectations, and came back two weeks later with a head filled with new thoughts and a notebook stuffed with quotes, ideas and concepts. The entire experience – the rigorous voice and singing lessons we undertook, the many fantastic, profoundly moving performances we saw, the actors who very kindly shared their thoughts on working in the Maly system, and above all the deeply inspiring masterclasses with Lev Dodin himself – surpassed my already high expectations a hundred times over.

The creative energy generated in a theatre like the Maly would be enough to sustain a minor country, and to have experienced that kind of energy first-hand was absolutely invaluable to me as a director, not to mention deeply infectious! And totally inspiring!

Many moments of the trip have stuck in my mind. I have rarely been as nervous as I was before our small group were to perform in front of Lev Dodin the Bach Fugue we had been practicing for two weeks. Particularly memorable was also the chance to see some very early stages of rehearsals for a new production of Lord of the Flies, and get an insight into the creation of a piece of work rich enough to sustain the company creatively for performances over ten or 15 years. There were other moments, too: the lavish, emotional farewell party in a local Georgian restaurant; the late night debates with fellow directors on text and method; the visits to the overwhelmingly brilliant Hermitage and Russian museums with their seemingly inexhaustible wealth of art and inspiration. It was evident that a huge amount of effort had gone into planning the details of this trip, and we were received and looked after with great care and respect by all Maly staff.

However, among all the fantastic things we experienced, two elements stood out.

Firstly, the performances in the intimate, packed Maly theatre – from the legendary Brothers and Sisters, which has played for over 20 years all around the world with the same actors adopting the same parts they did when it first opened, creating an inner world that is so richly textured you cannot protect yourself from the intense emotional impact it has on you as an audience member – to the very fresh production of Eugene O’Neill’s seminal American play Long Day’s Journey Into Night, starring many of the same actors that only the night before played Russian peasants with such conviction you could almost smell the mud on their boots, and who are now unrecognisable in new roles and a new world.

Secondly, the intense, five-hour long master classes in Lev Dodin’s plush, comfortable office – my notes from these sessions read like ‘An artist’s guide to theatre directing’. Lev would start off each session by asking us if we had any questions – which of course we always did – and he would dutifully write them down, and then go on to talk about something completely unrelated, and often highly esoteric, until just at the point when we started to become restless he would surprise us by linking his story, theory or argument back to the very questions we had asked three hours earlier. His respect for theatre and for the actor, his unshakable belief in theatre as a force of change, and his intense and unfailing humanism as an artist, were all deeply moving and inspirational.

Before going, I was uncertain how many elements of the Maly practice would really be transferable to a British theatre-making context, sprung as they are from a radically different theatrical culture. But looking through my notes after returning, I realised that, in some way, everything I learned and experienced in St Petersburg, will have some effect, be it in a practical or a philosophical sense, on the way I make theatre in the future.

I am truly grateful for having had the opportunity to visit the Maly, to be allowed to stay there for long enough to get a genuine insight into their work, and to be infected by the huge love of theatre that thrives there.