History of the Tatar Theater Automatic translate

We met with a well-known theater critic, D. Siraziev Theater Laureate, head of the literary and drama department of the Tatar State Academic Theater named after G. Kamal Niyaz Raufovich Iglamov to talk about the history and origin of the Tatar theater.

From early childhood, Niyaz attended the theater, because his father was a theater critic and honored artist of the Republic of Tatarstan. Prior to joining the G. Kamal Tatar State Academic Theater, Niyaz lived a completely different life and was engaged in a different job, and in 2006 he came to the theater. At first he was a freelance literary consultant and was engaged in students, and since January 1, 2008 he has already joined the staff. It turns out that Niyaz has already devoted 10 years to his favorite theater, knows all its history, traditions and can spend it on any nook and cranny of art.

- Niyaz Raufovich, how did the Tatar theater as a whole originate?

- This is a very confusing, interesting and, it seems to me, paradoxical story. Especially if you take the period of formation about which very little information has been preserved. The date of the emergence of the Tatar theater is considered December 22, 1906, on this day two performances in the Tatar language were played and a fee was charged for watching them. They showed performances in the premises of the new club, which was located on Gorky Street (for many years the Institute of Traumatology was located in it, and now the building is under restoration).

The first play in the Tatar language was published in the printing house of Kazan University in 1887, the date of writing is not known, but somewhere at the same time. A small play consisting of six pages of the book text “Unhappy Girl” was written by Gabdrahman Ilyasi, her plot is also very simple: parents do not allow two lovers to be together and they run away from home. 10 years ago, when the 100th anniversary of the Tatar theater was celebrated, we were on a 10-day tour in Moscow and decided to present our theater to colleagues, journalists and critics, for this we decided to play this play in a small ironic manner. It turned out a kind of "hello after a hundred years," everything was done exactly as it was played many years ago in the Tatar theaters: men in female roles, random props.

“Unhappy girl” appeared in 1887, and already in 1888 another writer and Tatar leader Fatih Khalidi wrote a play as opposed to “Unhappy girl”, where he said that one must listen to the covenants of relatives, that parents cannot wish for bad things, that some people run away, but in the end they’re not happy.

- What was the theater 100 years ago like?

- There were such advanced madrassas that students played plays, therefore this explains why all the roles were played by men. Also, merchants staged home performances. Those who played the first performance on December 22, 1906 did not go to work in the theater, it was a one-time project. By the way, a Tatar show was also held in Orenburg a year earlier in November 1905, but when the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was formed in the 1920s, they decided to limit the Tatar to this region, and according to this, the first production is considered the one that took place in 1906 with us.

The first professional troupe appeared in May 1907 and it was called Sayyar, and it was assembled by Ilyas-bey Batyrgareevich Kudashev-Ashkazarsky, who staged the first performance in Orenburg.

- In the USSR, religion was denied and opposed to culture, did this somehow reflect on the Tatar theater?

- The playwrights of the 20s could bring to the stage the wrong Mullah, who abused his position or wanted to take his fifth wife, which is a violation of Sharia law, but the theme of religion and Islam has never been ostracized. It is enough to look at those who stood at the origins of the Tatar theater: Gabdulla Kariev, Karim Tinchurin, Zani Sultanov… All these people studied in madrassas, and this is an educational institution with a large circle of secular disciplines where religion was the main focus. The first Tatar actor and director Gabdulla Kariev, who was called the father of the Tatar theater during his lifetime, was a hafiz (a man who knows the Qur’an by heart) - this says that he had a phenomenal memory and could remember roles from one reading. The boys entered the madrasah at the age of 10-12 years, and by the age of 18 they had already passed the exam for the specified mullah. Therefore, all these people, in principle, could not have a negative attitude towards their religion. But at the same time they ridiculed the vices of some specific personalities.

The turn of the destruction of churches and mosques fell on the reign of Khrushchev, but in general the Tatar theater bypassed this. There were a number of anti-religious works, but they did not carry any cultural burden and quickly faded away.

- How did the Tatar theater house appear - the famous sail building?

- After the Civil War, the first prototype of the theater is created, which became our direct predecessor. It was called the First State Demonstration Theater named after Red October, and a year later it became just an Academic Theater. By the way, in 1926 he received academic status as one of the first in the country.

Starting from the 22nd year, the theater was located in the building where the Karim Tinchurin Drama and Comedy Theater is now located. In general, the Tinchurin Theater initially emerged as a mobile studio at the Kamala Theater and only in the late 30s became an independent structure.

The modern theater, where we are now located and the building of which has long been part of the architectural appearance of Kazan, was built according to the standard project of 8–9 years since 1973. Now the building already requires modernization, because it is designed for a troupe of 40 people, and we already have more than 60. There is catastrophically not enough space not for workshops, nor for services. We have a large administrative staff. We want to keep up to date and there is already a project that has been written into the project of reconstruction of the embankment of Lake Kaban.

- How is the cast replenished?

- In 1922, our theater appeared and in the same year a theater college was opened, which is now called the Kazan Theater School. Until the 60s, this school was not taught in Russian, it was only for Tatar actors. We had a system, each chief director is gaining a course, the best students of this course are being drawn into groups, then all together they watch diploma works and recruit artists.

- What are the actors doing during the intermission?

- We have artists of different ages from 20 to 79 years old and each has its own interests. In general, there is a good tradition of playing chess, we have a large chess board for this in the artists’ recreation area. Actresses like to sit on sofas and talk. Someone is teaching the role, while someone is going to drink tea in the office buffet.

- What are the traditions of the actors?

- All the traditions and signs of the actors are universal, the role has fallen - sit on it and in that spirit. But, the whole theater has one big and good tradition. Each opening and closing of the season, we make something like a community work day with a visit to the graves of our colleagues and the ancestors. Moreover, not only the artists, but literally all the theater staff, go to the clean-up.

Theater is such a thing, it sucks in and you start spending all your free time here. There are conflicts, but not quarrelsome, but creative. Rather like a dispute.

N. Polunin