Jurij A. Vasiljev
(English version translated by Marianne Junger)
CURRICULUM VITAE
“Theatre is a
mode of thinking, a principle of being for me …”
Jurij Vasiljev
was born in Leningrad
and studied drama at the Institute for Theatre, Music and Film Arts there. In
1968 he joined the class of the famous Prof. Makarjev. “… He was so weightless;
he was lighter and more agile than all of us taken together: he was always up
in the air, as if he was forever flying. Makarjev was already 75 years old at
that time, but truly only 4 or 5 years old … Whether they were rehearsals or
trainings, they were always big or small fantastic journeys into the world of
drama lyrics, of drama literature, of great theatre …” After his education
Jurij Vasiljev worked as an actor in Pskov, in Archangelsk, and on different
theatre stages in Leningrad. Jurij Vasiljev became also director of his own theatre
in Lenningrad and gained his doctorate on ‘Phonetics, Speaking on Stage, and
Recitation’. Since 1976 he has been a lecturer, later a professor at the
Institute for Theatre, Music and Film Arts (nowadays Theatre Academy St.
Petersburg), while he continued to work as an actor at various theatres for
many years. Nowadays his works as director are shown in St. Petersburg as part of the Alexandrinskij
Theatre’s programme for the theatre season.
At the St. Petersburg Academy he is one of six deans and as
such responsible for the lifelong learning of academics who specialise in
theatre arts, of theatre directors, of actors, and of stage designers.
JurijVasiljev’s additional pedagogical work includes the “Interstudio” and the
“School for Russian Drama” in St.
Petersburg as well as, since 1993, the summer academy
at Haus Urban in Trstenice/Czech Republic. After the economic crisis in Russia
of 1998 Jurij Vasiljev founded a trust to support underprivileged students of
the Theatre Academy St. Petersburg.
THEATRICAL PLAY
“The creative
process requires a process of feeling, of becoming aware.”
(…) from
earliest days, whether at school or elsewhere, Vasiljev felt that he is playing
every day, every hour and that he feels the whole game through playing. Play is
a way, an art of living for him, which expresses itself in all areas of life.
“The most
important aspect for any human being who is involved in theatre is that a complete,
exclusive world exist for him or her, a world with its own laws, a world which
exists only in the imagination, which can only exist there. This imagination
can either be very original or very traditional …” The honest contac with, the
surrender to the play is to Jurij Vasiljev the very aspect, which truly creates
an actual theatrical play. (…)
(Delphine
Akoun:”Insights into the Life of an Extraordinary St.
Petersburger Human Being of the Theatre”)
Theatre is play.
And this very process of lively game, of playfulness is at the core of it all.
Whenever Jurij Vasiljev works on a piece of drama with either actors or
students it all develops almost unnoticeably – just as in a game. Much is
improvised and no result aspired to: one approaches the drama through playing.
Breathing freely and a relaxed open body allow to experience the unity of voice
and movement. Much time is devoted to exercises, which Jurij Vasiljev has
developed, in order to rebuild the afore mentioned sensory ability, which has
been lost in everyday life.
“The
expression ‘Speaking on Stage’ encompasses the art of acting, the sculpting/the
body language, and all means of expressions such as voice and language in a
more literal sense: … work on the voice, breath, diction, phonetics, the
history of both poetry and drama literature, artistic reading, intonation,
physiology, biology, psychology of both language and creative work, the
language of the theatre, and literature studies … When a voice sounds, that is,
when it carries the words into a partner and makes him/her resound like soundbox,
then a contact between two human beings develops. If the voice does not sound,
that is, if it does not reach into the partner, then no true, creative contact
can establish itself”
SPEAKING ON
STAGE
“When the
voice sounds, a contact between two human beings develops.”
(…) This ‘mise
en scene’, which was presented publicly as a work-in-progress by the students
and the lecturers of the Music Academy in Stuttgart, is just one of the
fascinating results of the highly rewarding co-operation between the Institute
for Theatre, Music and Film in Leningrad and the Spoken Word Studio founded at
the Music Academy in Stuttgart by Uta Kutter … The guest performance from
Leningrad with their staging of two fairy tales by Puskin at the Forum 3 proved
that Vasiljev’s enthusiasm inspires the audience to extraordinary applause of
highest appreciation. In a rich texture of playful recitation, folk dance, and
songs the fairy tales came fully alive thanks to the eleven Russian actors. (…)
(Andrea
Kachelriess on Gogol’s “The Dead Souls” and Puskin’s “Fairy Tales”, in
Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Feuilleton, 7.2. 1991)
Jurij Vasiljev
has developed an unorthodox method of learning in the course of his many years
of pedagogical experience, which is based on the idea:
sensory
experience – movement – sound. It is a matter of “feeling within oneself”: thus
sensations bring forth feelings, feelings create movements and out of these the
voice develops. “Without inner sensation there can be no movement, and without
movement there can be no sounding voice.” As a renowned specialist for voice
and language Jurij Vasiljev has written four books about Theatre Pedagogics:
“Development of the Actor’s Voice Range” (1981), “Voice and Language Training”
(1996), “Exercises for Speaking on Stage” (1997), and “Imagination – Movement –
Voice” (2000).
DIRECTOR’S
IMPULSES
“… It is also
a mystery how theatre comes into being and how the individual role is born”
Professor Jurij
A. Vasiljev’s work with actors builds on the great tradition of Stanislavskij,
Meyerhold, and Michail Cechov, yet at the same time it has an unmistakable
imprint: Jurij Andrejevic has been working only according to his own “school”
for years. All etudes for role studies are his own, in cooperation with the
actor in question. Starting point for Jurij’s approach to his work is always
the individual, and it is only out of this interplay between actor and director
that an idea takes form, and the concept for a ‘mise en scene’ develops. Jurij
Vasiljev says about it: “In the theatre it is best when everything happens
unnoticed, all quietly, when one does not know how it happens, but it does
happen. Just as there is a mystery at the centre of becoming, of giving birth
to life, it is equally a mystery how theatre is being created, and how the
individual role is born. If much noise and much fuss is made over it, much
haste and unnecessary nervousness can be sensed on stage, then it becomes
difficult to experience the depth of a drama piece, to realise at all, what
different aspects have developed in a play.”
(…) What
happened on stage in Wald during one and a half hour without a pause to breathe
was a theatre experience of exquisite excellence, offered from the old
tradition, where song and dance, miming and language were elements of equal
importance which formed a fantastic, sensual whole. With the Russian Fairy Tale
Poem “Tsar Saltan” after Alexander Puskin the young St. Petersburger actors did
not only bring Eastern theatre tradition to Wald but also a part of the Russian
soul. (…)
(Bernadette
Reichlin-Fluri, 1993)
INTERNATIONAL DIRECTING/
STAGING (OUTSIDE RUSSIA) see ==> here
“The
diversity of human beings demands that I start anew every single time; each
time it is like the very first time …”
WORKSHOP PEDAGOGICS
“I cannot say in what ways exactly Finnish, German,
Russian, or American drama students are different from one another. They are
all young and emotional, they all want to get to know and to experience as many
new, other, different things as possible …”
Workshop offers see ==> here
Professor
Vasiljev is an internationally well sought after course leader and has worked
at many different institutes and theatre academies in Zurich, Hamburg, Leipzig,
New York, Helsinki, Stuttgart, Shanghaj, Sofia, Prague; he also directs
seminars and workshops in Germany, Russia, the Czech Republic and Switzerland
every year. For each of these courses he offers not only body and voice
training but also an intensive acting course. The aim is always an honest
finding of the role within each individual and not a preset role pattern. Since
emotion, movement and voice cannot be separated from one another according to
Jurij Vasiljev, each of his exercises always trains all three aspects
simultaneously, whilst focussing on one in particular. All courses are given in
Russian and are interpreted simultaneously by Tomas Ondrusek in the case of
German. The courses are aimed at drama students, pedagogs, therapeuts, and all loves
of voice, language, and theatre.
(…) Since May
Jurij Vasiljev, renowned lecturer at the Institute for Theatre, Music, and Film
Arts in Leningrad and Dean of the Academy in Leningrad, has been working with
22 students, who were happy to give up their semester holidays in order to
rehearse.
(…) Yet then
he teases the young people, who work enthusiastically, relentlessly, demands
undivided attention and concentration and knows how – after several hours of hard
work – to create the necessary tension for it.
(…) The
facial expressions and gestures have developed out of an improvisation, during
work on a text and the inner interpretation of its content. (…)
(Julia Schroeder
about Demetrius or the Blood Wedding in Moscow
by F. Schiller, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 31.8.1991)
„Everyone nowadays
still knows what Perestrojka meant, this warm wave of life and of new relations
between Russia and the
world, the world and Russia
... This wave naturally also reached the world of theatre and carried it along
… All at once totally new things became possible … and that is how how I first came
to Germany in 1989, to Hamburg, to the Academy for Music and Performing Arts,
then to the Academy in Stuttgart, and later to Haus Urban in Trstenice by
Litomysl in the Czech Republic, an unorthodox international lab for artists.
Here Russian, German, Czech, Swiss, French … students, actors, painters,
muscians, architects meet and work toegether on a common project …”
(Prof. Vasiljev
in an interview for the Russian Broadcast Company)
CONTACT FOR
PROJECTS see ==> here
For enquires
in English
Marianne Junger
Neufeldstr. 119
CH-3012 Berne/ Switzerland
phone o/h 0041 31 351 07 72
e-mail address on request
BOOKS:
Extract from this book “Imagination-Movement-Voice, Variations for a
Training” in English see ==> here
"E
(Stimme) = m (Bewegung)
. v (Atem)" (2002)
Extract from the book “Imagination-Movement-Voice, Variations for a Training” by Prof. Jurij A. Vasiljev,
Urban, 2000, ISBN 3-00-006439-7; pp. 192-4
>> A Few Considerations at the End of the Lesson <<
In everyday life human beings tend to disguise their true feelings and
to hide them in conversation with partners. The actor’s or actress’
professional work has other intentions: he or she shall express every
single subtle nuance of a feeling, of a thought, each and every wish,
everything she or he wants, every echo in her or his soul which
resonates with the partner’s behaviour and with the conflicts of a
situtaion in the course of the dramatic development – in such a way
that both the partner on stage and the people in the audience can
understand as well as sense all particuliarties and nuances and
everything unexpected in his or her emotional experience as well as in
his or her actions by going through it all with him or her and by
re-enacting it all. Yet, often feelings are being hidden and suppressed
in life (and sometimes also on stage!). Many people avoid embarrassing
someone else by dealing with their emotions or even by surrendering to
them; they don’t want to lift the curtain, which covers their true and
often clear feelings and emotions. Work on stage means that human
beings choose a different path: it is not about disguising but all
about using and expressing her or his inner experiences and perceptions
as well as the experiences , excitements, and behavioural motives of
the enacted role. It is crucial for an actress or and actor to get used
to revealing her or his feelings and emotions in a completely natural
way. Otherwise, all the actors and actresses on stage are either locked
in utterly neutral postures or they demonstrate all those well-known
clichés in a despaired, daring or proactive manner, which
express a limited scope of feelings in a conventional way, while
merely pretending the mental and emotional processes – which are supposed to happen in that context.
This is the actor’s and actress’ approach to able linguistic and
physical expressiveness. It allows to open up a broad range of a
person’s very individual particularities and is thus rather meaningful
to any human being. In our training it is yet another useful aspect of
the system I offer to you. Just as a free human being embraces the
remote temporal and spatial distance with his or her emotions, each
human being has the possibility to tear down the barriers which prevent
him or her from creating in an individual, unfettered, inspired way.
Feelings, sensations and perceptions, stimuli and reactions “vibrate”
within us at any given moment. Each of us reacts to appearances, which
are particularily appealing to him or her, with agitation. Often our
soul responds to something inspiring and attractive. Often we think to
ourselves, but without saying it aloud: “I like her, I would like to
see her and to meet her ...” Thus , everyone of us now absolutely needs
the attitude: “Since I react to everything with a feeling; I absolutely
don’t want to keep it all to myself, instead I also want to express it.
Hence I express it.”
Then we have to tell ourselves: “She sings well. – I won’t hide that I
like her singing – I want to express that I find it pleasing.” In this
way we have to disclose and express our reactions all the time. This is
the prerequisite for playing on stage. This is the self-revelation both
of the theatre and the art of public speaking, of any kind of scenic
creation. Yet another example: you shake hands with someone – and
there’s an immediate reaction to it. Or: “I look at my partner, into
his or her eyes, and his or her eyes look at me (inside me) – and I
express at once what sensation is being created within me: I like it or
I don’t like it.”
This principle must guide every exercise, each rehearsal. We have to
find and feel the most important way for us – how to express all my
feelings. Someone takes a slice of bread away from you. Have you
reacted at once? What do you do about it? You’re not just standing
around, are you? – What does your body do? With what words do you react
to what has happened? Yes, you have to react at once! Someone slaps
your hand – react at once, respond! If someone shouts at you, then
react, respond! If someone caresses you – then, too: react, respond!
And under no circumstances react and respond the way we were taught as
children: stay calm, don’t show your feelings. The actor or actress has
to express him- or herself and his or her feelings all the time!
Disclose, express! Bring forth, from the inside out – visibly, audibly!
– Yet, before we come to the disclosure, the expression, we have to
sense something that we both can and want to express and we have to
reasssure ourselves that our body, our voice are the strongest,
clearest expressions of feelings, emotions, thoughts. We have focussed
our attention onto this aspect of clearest creation in several
exercises for the past lesson. The teaching that follows now is
dedicated entirely to the vocal-linguistic and physical expressiveness.