Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by
to
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Acknowledgements
exception. As such, I feel deeply indebted to everyone who has supported me in this
enterprise and I use this opportunity to express my gratitude. This project has been an
Anatoly Smeliansky and Julia Smeliansky for their wisdom, encouragement and trust,
and Ryan McKittrick, for seeing the potential in this project (and in me) and his guidance
This project would not have been possible without the help of David Chambers.
Thank you for giving me wings, sharing not only your resources and insight but also your
deep love for Krymov. It was in our conversations that I found what I needed to
materialize this project. Thank you for being a mentor, an inspiration and a friend.
I also wish to thank all the people—now also dear friends— who have brought me
closer to Krymov: Inna Krymov, who welcomed me as a friend; Tatyana Khaikin, who
always has the right words, and Andrew Freeburg, who goes beyond imaginable to create
bridges. This paper was born out of those wondrous days at Yale as much as it was from
the child-like wonder I felt the first time I saw a Krymov production in Moscow. There
are many more people I feel grateful to: Liz Diamond, Liza Keshisheva, Katya Filippova,
Arthur Holmberg, Luke Harlan, Maria Smolnikova, Kevin Hourigan, and Sara Holdren.
This is the second thesis of mine Tanner Strickland patiently reads. Thank you,
Tanner, for your sharp brain, kind criticism and constant support and friendship.
And, of course, Dmitry Krymov, thank you. For all the magic you bring.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 3
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... 2
Table of Contents............................................................................................................. 3
Introduction: Once Upon a Time In Russia ..................................................................... 4
Genealogy ........................................................................................................................ 7
The Birth of Designer’s Theatre .................................................................................... 25
Designer’s Theatre Reimagined .................................................................................... 48
Design As Action ............................................................................................ 50
Poetic Montage .............................................................................................. 62
Russian Soul for a Universal Language ........................................................ 67
Behind Designer’s Theatre: The Process....................................................................... 74
Conclusion: The Constant Act of Creation.................................................................... 83
Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 85
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 4
June 22nd, 1997 marked the centenary of a very special meeting between
Bazar for eighteen hours and laid the founding principles for the Moscow Art Theatre. It
was there that Stanislavsky directed the premieres of Anton Chekhov’s plays, and began
the experiments that would lead to the establishment of his acting system. It was the
beginning of a new time, a new kind of theatre. In the century that followed, the auteur-
director became a key piece in the theatre scene in Russia. In the words of the dramaturg
and scholar Anatoly Smeliansky, “the main problems raised in the Russian theatre in the
second half of the century were raised by the directors” (xxi). Figures like Oleg Efremov,
Georgy Tovstonogov, Yury Lyubimov and Anatoly Efros continued the legacy that had
For the centenary, the Moscow Art Theatre, renovated after decades of stagnation,
and world theatre, the great directors of the twentieth century, met for the first time since
the fall of the Soviet Union. It was an occasion to reflect on those very eventful hundred
years, but also, with the twenty-first century at the doorstep, to ideate the future of the
Russian theatre in the same way Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko had. Theatre
in Russia was facing unprecedented uncertainty. This time, the theatre geniuses spoke
about reforming the theatre schools, fostering a new generation of professionals who
could create a theatre based on spectacle, not words (Smeliansky, 213). What they could
not imagine is that five years later someone would come to embody those hopes.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 5
Someone literally born out of their theatrical tradition, but, as it often happens in any epic
In 2002, Dmitry Krymov returned to the theatre 17 years after the death of his
father, the directing titan Anatoly Efros. A well-known set designer, Krymov had turned
to painting and installation art in the 90s (Thomas “The Visual Poetics” 341). Then
unexpectedly, Krymov took on the roles of both scenographer and director in a new
production of Hamlet (Brown 169). It was the beginning of something new. Krymov
rejected the label of director, and even that of designer. “I am an artist; it is a particular
From that role of “artist” arises a new theatre movement. Krymov has challenged
every rule of theatre and theatre training and yet a label has snuck in to describe his
theatre: Театр Художника, “Artist’s Theatre” or, most commonly named “Designer’s
Theatre” (Vitvitskiy; Denisova; Freedman) ⎯ a theatre that finds its roots in the act of
creation, in spontaneity, in surprise. Krymov’s theatre embodies the constant search for
pure theatricality. With his laboratory, a company originally founded with his
Krymov’s plays constitutes a new experiment that defies the expectations of theatre
audiences. Borrowing from painting, music, arts and crafts, popular culture, and diverse
artistic forms, Krymov has created a unique theatrical vocabulary emerging from the
process of creation.
The concept of Designer’s Theatre holds an exciting promise. It would not be the
first time Russia yields a paradigm shift in the art world. Stanislavsky’s teachings
an inspiringly similar way, Krymov’s work transcends his nationality. His plays have
toured around the world, appealing to audiences across borders and cultures. Yet, because
of the limited reach of theatre and Krymov’s disavowal to write down and therefore settle
for the English-speaking world seems futile: since Krymov’s work is engrained on the act
Dmitry Krymov would be akin to pinning up a live butterfly for study. Instead, this thesis
offers an overview of how Kyrmov’s work and the concept of Designer’s Theatre has
evolved, redefining itself and the rules of theatre with each production.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 7
Genealogy
tracing back, generation by generation, your origins. With patronymics, Russians carry
their fathers’ first names, and thus, their lineage. In the theatre, artistic heritage becomes
as important as the genetic one. Artists are indissolubly connected to their masters, and
consequently to their masters’ masters. Portraits of the artistic forefathers of the Moscow
Art Theatre cover its walls. As with a family, extensive family trees link each artist to a
Tolstoy. The importance of genealogy in Russian theatre blends the lines of family and
art. Each theatre is an artistic family, and the value of your training is always in relation
to your heritage.
In the case of Dmitry Krymov, the lines of biological family and artistic family
are uniquely interwoven. His patronymic, Anatolyevich, points to an icon in the theatre:
his father, the director Anatoly Efros. Noticeably, Krymov does not share his father’s last
name⎯an attempt to keep him from the anti-Semitic attitudes that tormented his father
throughout his life. Instead, the last name Krymov points to another remarkable figure in
the Russian theatre: his mother, the scholar and critic Natalya Krymova. Furthermore,
through his parents’ legacy, the aforementioned masters of their masters, Krymov’s
Danchenko. Departing from a straight line, Krymov did not train to be a director but a
technical set designer at the Moscow Art Theatre School. All of these extraordinary given
Fig. 1 Family photo: Anatoly Efros, Dmitry Krymov and Natalya Krymova. Source:
Efros, Anatoly. The Joy Of Rehearsal: Reflections on Interpretation and Practice.
New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. 202.
Krymov recalls his first memories of theatre: “I remember the feeling of young
people who treated each other with great sense of humor [...]. It was a ball, a young
feeling. I wanted to be with them all the time. I didn’t understand I was the son of the
took place in the theatre, surrounded by actors. When Dmitry Krymov was born, October
10th 1954, his father Anatoly Efros had been invited by Maria Knebel to work at the
Central Children’s Theatre (Thomas “Introduction” 6). These two names––Maria Knebel
Maria Knebel was a pupil of Stanislavsky and an original member of the Second
Studio, which was later transformed into the Second Moscow Art Theatre. It was there
that Stanislavsky continued developing his acting technique, and, most importantly, his
after Lenin’s death, the artistic freedom of the early twentieth century came to an end. As
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 9
consequence, Maria Knebel moved to the original Moscow Art Theatre. But she was
soon dismissed in 1949 because of “artistic disagreements” and the post-war anti-
Semitism. Most theatres avoided her. Then, in 1950 she was invited to join the Central
Children’s Theatre. In five years, Maria Knebel became the Artistic Director and returned
Stanislavsky’s teachings.
After Stalin’s death in 1953, Maria Knebel travelled to Ryazan to recruit a very
special former student. Anatoly Efros had singled himself out at the Lunarcharsky State
Institute for Theatre Arts (now GITIS), where Knebel was part of the directing faculty.
Before transferring to GITIS, he had created a group he called “The Realists,” defying the
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 10
stiff method Socialist Realism had made out of Stanislavsky’s teachings. Soon, Efros
expressivity, his work with actors and his deep psychological understanding of character
(Thomas “Introduction” 3). However, his refusal to join the Party and the anti-Semitic
Russia entered the beginning of “the Thaw,” a brief period of intellectual opening after
Stalin’s death, Maria Knebel pulled Efros out of the provinces. Back in Moscow, “in a
theatre intended for children, Efros began to destroy the aesthetics of the Soviet stage”
(Smeliansky 61).
Dmitry Krymov was born then, so his childhood took place while his father
worked at The Central Children’s Theatre. One of Efros’ most successful productions in
the ten years he spent in that theatre was My Friend Kolka! by Aleksandr Khmelik in
1959. The play offered a chilling recreation of fascist society through a story of children
in a playground. Anatoly Smeliansky recalls this show, “You felt you were watching a
Fig. 3 My Friend Kolka! Source: Van de Water, Manon. Moscow Theatres for Young
People: A Cultural History of Ideological Coercion and Artistic Innovation, 1917-2000.
New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Print.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 11
new kind of psychological art that had rediscovered its theatrical roots” (61). Veering
away from detailed Realism, the production was set on a deconstructed school
playground, surrounded by a white canvas with washed-out children drawings. From the
vantage point of time, it is easy to notice parallels between Efros’ production and
Krymov’s theatrical aesthetics: the redefining of space and actor, the white canvas and
drawings, and the idea of children’s play. Krymov’s memories of the time at The Central
That peak was followed by another “temporary but acute peak of happiness in
“Era of Stagnation,” Efros was offered the position of Artistic Director of the Lenin
Komsomol (Lenkom) Theatre, which had been reduced to a neglected theatre with a
disillusioned acting company (Thomas “Introduction” 8). Efros brought the passion and
expression for which he had become famous at The Central Children’s Theatre to this
decayed atmosphere.
with actors was a science in itself, a science based on love for those actors (Thomas
“Introduction” 38). Krymov believes that his father made every actor feel like an artist,
his insider, a collaborator (Mironova). Smelianksy observed, “He created his actors, who
then became mysteriously joined to him” (60). Some of them would follow him
throughout his career, such as Nikolai Volkov, who would eventually perform in Efros’
son’s directorial debut; a son who now remembers, “that was the feeling of a company of
The peak of Lenkom did not last long, unfortunately. Efros’ legendary but
of the artist, and of Bulgakov’s Moliere, an attack on censorship, attracted the attention of
the authorities and were savaged by the critics. He was fired from Lenkom for
company members he had not cast in his productions (Smeliansky 68). In 1967, at 42,
Efros suffered his first heart attack. Krymov would describe this period of his life as a
In hard times, Efros worked even harder. That very same year, he joined the
Malaya Bronnaya Theatre, where he started rehearsals right away for a production of
Three Sisters that dialogued with his situation. According to Anatoly Smeliansky,
“everyone for whom the theatre means something probably has one production which for
them sums up the very sensation of theatre. For me, and I daresay my generation, that
production was Three Sisters” (68). Likewise, young Dmitry, who was thirteen at the
time, understood the personal value of his father’s work. “He did think that these
characters are in exile. He created this cold atmosphere with large tall windows: he was
trying to depict intelligentsia in exile. I remember when Vershinin came on stage and said
that he was from Moscow I started crying” (qtd. in Mironova). Instead of a house, birches
or garden, the action took place in a theatre, decorated in a similar style as the
architecture of MXAT. “You could say the action was unfolding in a theatre and the
demise of this house was also the demise of a true Theatre, above all the [Moscow] Art
Theatre.” In Three Sisters Efros dissolved the historical distance between Chekhov and
the contemporary audience, using his life as an artist to vitalize the text.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 13
Not surprisingly, the production was a scandal. The government, abetted by the
Moscow Art Theatre, closed Three Sisters. Krymov remembers the feeling of
powerlessness, “they shut down everything he was working on. They shut down Three
Sisters; they shut down other shows, just ‘because.’ They wouldn’t let him do anything.
They would shut everything down. [...] I don’t know how it all worked out; it’s some sort
of mystery” (qtd. in Mironova). Efros knew only one, very Chekhovian, way to keep
going: to work. But from then on he hardly ever addressed contemporary reality directly
(Smeliansky 112). With his company of faithful actors who had followed him into his
invited to work in other theatres, including the Moscow Art Theatre and the Taganka
Theatre, and received merited accolades. He was even allowed to work outside of the
The Marriage and The Cherry Orchard, in which he unlocked the humanity of the texts
and navigated the discrepancy between beauty and reality (Smeliansky 118-122). In the
Malaya Bronnaya, Efros created his son’s favorite performance even today: Brother
Alyosha, based on The Brothers Karamazov (“Meeting With Director Dmitry Krymov”).
Despite Efros’ second heart attack in 1975, “it was a long and happy time of
Krymov was 13 when his father started working at Malaya Bronnaya. In the 17
years Efros spent there, Krymov grew up to become a professional set designer. He
started working for his father when he was only sixteen. “When I first worked with my
father, there was no ceremony, we just did the show. Othello. I did not understand the
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 14
terms of the new game. I was sixteen. Sixteen-year-olds—except maybe for geniuses,
who can perceive more than they have lived through—cannot create a good show. They
can create a show at their own level. Like wine labeled “young,” kind of tasty but under a
different category” (qtd. in Denisova). Efros waited for this wine to mature. Krymov
jokes that eventually his father took his 501st version of his design, in a process that
lasted 5 years. In 1976, Krymov graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre School with a
double diploma in Stage Design and Theatre Technology, and Othello premiered.
Othello was the beginning of Krymov’s design career. For twelve years his name
appeared alongside his father’s in the programs. Krymov designed twelve of Efros’
shows, including Williams’s Summer and Smoke, Molière’s Tartuffe, Tolstoy’s The
Living Corpse, and the acclaimed production of Turgenev’s A Month In The Country
(Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 83-84). For A Month In The Country, which
premiered in 1977, Krymov designed a metal gazebo with benches that would rotate like
a carousel. An old carriage, with a puppet as a driver, stood nearby. The production was
an elegy to passing youth, a yearning for what we have lost. At the denouement, the
beautiful stage was noisily dismantled by stagehands. “The magic circle of the estate was
broken. [...] The demise of this cozy world was expressed by destroying the theatrical
illusion” (Smeliansky 123). Working for Efros was a source of pride for young Krymov.
In an interview, Krymov offered an anecdote of when he was struggling with the design
for one of his father’s shows. After a long night of working, he left the model on the
kitchen table. When he woke up, he found a note from his father “Dimka, it seems there
is something in this.” Krymov reflects, “The feeling of happiness from that moment I've
Fig. 4 A Month in the Country. Source: Efros, Anatoly. Месяц в деревне. 1983. Film
Efros’ happy days at Malaya Bronnaya drew to an end. “Then came a terrible
time: the betrayal of the disciples and the destruction of the theatre. And Taganka...and
all that” recalls Krymov (qtd. in Denisova). He was working for his father when things at
system now showed his deadly power” (124). The managing director, who had influential
connections in the government, had begun to resent Efros and incited a campaign against
him in the theatre. Despite his sensitive heart condition, they moved Efros’ office to the
fourth floor, where he could hear the Communist Party headquarters’ anti-Semitic
comments (Thomas “Introduction” 13). But what really affected Efros was the way his
family of actors, poisoned in this environment, turned against him. Around this time,
Smeliansky bumped into Efros on the street by the theatre, and the director’s deep pain
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 16
gushed out, “I don’t believe any theatre people, any longer. The circle has fallen apart,
celebrated theatre director of the time, and a friend of Efros, made an ill-fated comment
when he was abroad. As a result, he was dismissed from his own theatre, the Taganka
Theatre, and stripped of his citizenship. Efros, who had worked at the Taganka and liked
the actors there, was then offered his friend’s position as Artistic Director. It is said he
held passionate discussions with friends and family about this dilemma, but because of
the situation at Malaya Bronnaya, he had no choice but to accept the job in 1984
Smeliansky describes the situation: “Deprived of his own family, he had come to save
someone else’s. The job was booby-trapped and he blew himself up” (125).
The Tanganka Theatre company rebelled. Lyubimov accused his former friend of
betrayal. Efros was considered a traitor, a lackey of the government. Artists left the
theatre, including the cutting-edge designer David Borovsky, who had worked with Efros
and had a significant influence on Krymov’s style. Efros’ car was vandalized, and his
trademark sheepskin coat was cut up with anti-Semitic slurs (Thomas “Introduction” 14).
In these harsh conditions, Efros buried himself in work. “Efros began to work like mad,
harder than he had for years. He opened one new production after another. [But] Efros
(125). His son worked with him in three shows, including the last one, Moliere’s
disillusionment with the world (Smeliansky 125). The set was almost empty with some
rehearsal chairs and a giant mirror positioned upstage where the audience was reflected.
the new leader of the country who would inspire the opening up and eventual demise of
the Soviet Union, talked to Efros. Lyubimov was being allowed to come back. Efros
signed a petition with the actors to support his return. But that left Efros with nowhere to
go. Six months later, in January 1987, Efros died of his third heart attack in his
apartment. Many things followed: the return of Lyubimov, the fall of the Berlin wall, the
end of the USSR, the break-up of the Taganka Theatre, and his son’s renunciation of
theatre.
After a very successful career as a set designer, for his father and many other
directors, Krymov quit in 1990. He does not blame the decision on his father’s traumatic
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 18
last years. “Simply, dad died and I grew bored,” he reflects. He had always wanted to be
an artist, so in the middle of the economic meltdown of the 90’s, Krymov turned to
painting for a living. “I’d always had a sort of ego issue, I guess, about being an artist or
an aspiration to be an artist. An artist in my view was someone who talks directly to the
changed my social circle. I went so far I Fig. 6 Krymov,Dmitry. Rome. According to N. Gogol’s story.
1990. Drawing.
could not go to the theatre, for instance.
It was unpleasant” (qtd. in Denisova). Thus Krymov broke with his past life. “For me, it
was the beginning of a very long and hard career path. It was not my path, that is not the
path of the theatre, but absolutely different. Nobody knew me in the art world; nobody
knew my father or about our performances together” (qtd. in Thomas “My Manner of
Telling the Story” 84). For twelve years, Krymov developed as a successful painter.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 19
Krymov’s unique painting style stood out for some of the features that would
eventually influence his theatrical aesthetics. As with his theatre, Krymov experimented
with technique, blending the traditional boundaries between art forms. In his paintings,
Krymov took life outside of the canvas, sometimes by means of collage and assembly,
dimensional and
color and texture to create delicate choreographies where the interaction between figure
and light becomes especially dynamic and unexpected to create visual poetry.
However, the label “Neo-impressionism” does not fully capture the psychological
depth of Krymov’s artwork. In his imagery and themes, Krymov created oneiric worlds
Krymov’s work. His father, inspired by the Italian Neorealism that reached Russia after
the Thaw, had reflected on his life and the role of the artist with his plays. In a similar
way, Krymov’s paintings grew out of his own life. He painted a series of self-portraits
showing him painting, or resting from painting, which depict the vulnerability of the
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 20
artist. He also opened the window to his personal life through his portraits with his wife,
Inna. These scenes, showing the most intimate, silent moments of life can be compared to
Fig. 8 Krymov, Dmitry. Portrait of Pope John Paul II, 2002. Mixed
media.
Krymov’s painting career was very successful. His paintings and drawings form
part of public and private collections, including Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery and
Pushking Fine Arts Museum, Petersburg’s State Art Museum and State Theatrical
Museum, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and Washington’s World Bank
Collection. His portrait of Pope John Paul II is part of the permanent collection of the
Vatican Gallery. Although Krymov left painting soon after he came back to theatre, his
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 21
time as an artist was not a hermetic period with no connection to his theatrical life; the
“My return to the theatre was completely random. And for a year after it happened
I didn’t even really tell anyone, not my wife, not even myself, that I’d come back to the
theatre” (qtd. in Sellar 21). An actor friend, Valery Garkalin had proposed to Krymov
that he direct a performance. Krymov was interested in working with actors but did not
take it seriously. But maybe sensing something interesting was happening Garkalin
new translation of Hamlet as his directorial debut, focusing his direction on the theme of
fathers and sons. “I invited the actors who had been the very first actors who had acted in
my father’s work. I wanted to feel like a son in that sense too” (qtd. in Sellar 21).
Krymov had this idea, but he had also doubts. In 2002, Krymov went to visit his
mother⎯who was already ill. Natalya Krymova had already impacted her son’s life when
she helped him to get into the Moscow Art Theatre School so that he would not have to
enter the military, which gave him the training to become a set designer (Mak). But this
time Krymov went to his mother with his idea for Hamlet. “‘Do you think that I should
just set off on this venture on the basis of this idea?’ and she said, ‘Yes, yes you can’”
the time. Her idealistic and critical spirit, and her strong character, made her into one of
the most important theatre critics and historians of the time, independently of her role as
Efros’ wife. She started publishing in Правда when she graduated from GITIS⎯the
same year she married Efros. By the time her son, Dmitry Krymov, was born, she was
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 22
writing essays and reviews for the reputed journal Театр, where she eventually joined the
editorial board. “With a caring and demanding love, she wrote about the more-or-less
talented life of the theatre,” Sidorov notes. Her career took her to work in radio and
television, to publish three volumes of profile pieces and a theatre appreciation textbook,
and to teach at GITIS (Thomas “The Visual Poetics” 345-346). As a writer and teacher,
she believed, “we have to write about our teachers. Write gently” (Sidorov). Faithful, as
her husband, to the original spirit of Stanislavsky, she edited the works of Maria Knebel
and Michael Chekhov⎯in a time where their teachings were banned it is thanks to
Natalya Krymova’s books that they survived. Once Natalya’s beloved husband died, she
preserved his memory and teachings in a similar way, preparing his books for
publication.
Efros and Natalya Krymova met while they were students at GITIS. Natalya was
studying at GITIS to become a theater critic. She was also part of the Realists group, and
as such shared the ideas Efros fought for. Natalya would tell her son their remarkable
story, “A mutual friend introduced them. They met at a concert. My dad asked her: Are
we going to get married right away or wait till we graduate?” (qtd. in Mironova) Efros’
bold tactic worked—after they graduated, their marriage only got delayed by Stalin’s
death⎯although Natalya claimed she fell in love with how Efros played Malvolio
(Krymova.org). From that day on, Natalya and Efros established a system, a custom that
will get them though the rough times to come. They had a code. They would sign their
letters with “/.//.//,” they would knock the pattern on tables, show it as five fingers. It
stood for “Я те-бя люб-лю” (I love you). Natalya once said, “We needed the sign. It was
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 23
saving our lives. “/.//.//”. Say it. Show it. And then continue living” (Krymova.org). The
theatre historian, Evgeny Sidorov, recalls how when the anti-Semitic audiences were
shouting, “Do not touch the Russian classics! Go back to your country!” to Efros,
“Natasha was the conscience of [their] little community, countering the rise of a
With his mother’s support, Dmitry Krymov’s Hamlet opened at the Stanislavsky
Theatre in 2002. Krymov distanced himself from the role of set designer by using an
empty stage with two doors cut out of the back wall. Nikolai Volkov, an actor who
became famous with Efros, was cast as both Claudius and the Ghost. In line with
Krymov’s original idea, critics saw in this casting choice a parallelism between the play
and real life, between Krymov and the “Ghost” of his father. Critic Marina Tokareva
even called her review “Directed by Hamlet.” However, the production was considered a
theatrical failure, maybe because of the idea that originated it (Shulgat 39).
In Kyrmov’s words “the play was canned by the critics. And it was very insulting
“In retrospect there was probably a lot of truth to what the critics said [...] Of
course it’s naïve to think you can direct a play based on Hamlet as your first
directing experience ever and get it right and do it well. But at the same time I
think the critics were just dismissing me out of principle because I had just
stepped up and done this thing without being a director. So their reaction just
made me angry and obstinate and made me want to direct another play” (qtd. in
Sellar 21).
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 24
This was the beginning of Krymov’s directing career. At the time, he refused to
call himself a director. “I do not like it when I am called the director. I didn’t study; I do
not want to appropriate another’s trade. [...] The director was my dad” (qtd. in Brown
169). But Krymov saw in his father’s work something that could not be taught in a
director’s training:
“It's a secret. It's not just artistry; it's a manner of living, a manner of doing
things. Something secret goes into the work. [...] You can't teach something like
that. You have to know literature, to start [...]; you yourself must then love your
mother, and lose her. You need to do all of this to understand what it is you want
Krymov did in fact lose his mother a year after Hamlet premiered. He was well on his
way following his father steps. That had never been Dmitry Kyrmov’s goal: “I accepted
the fact that the secret would be lost. Fortunately, perhaps miraculously, I never went in
search of my father's secret, because secrets in theater change. [...] Maybe I want to
different way. Or maybe I needed to be a set designer first, then a painter, in order to
is formally very different from his father. It was indeed born out of the path he took. “I
never thought that I’d end up directing. But I am very glad to have found something with
my stage designers and my actors that, in spirit, corresponds to [my father’s] work, but in
form is completely different. I really hope that if he could see the work I do now he
would laugh, in a sort of benevolent way, and would say something like, “Look at you
role. According to Dr. Bryan Brown, from the University of Exeter, the challenge was
deeper: “Krymov presents a challenge to perceptions of Russian theatre culture itself. [...]
At its core, this debate is about aesthetics, training and the culture that supports a
particular style of theatre” (169). Indeed in 2002, Krymov not only redefined who could
be a director, but also changed the rules of the game for theatre pedagogy. Krymov had
always wanted to teach so approached Sergei Barkhin, founder and Head of the Stage
Design program at GITIS to become an Assistant Instructor. Barkhin invited him to join.
teacher at GITIS, and therefore I should do so too” (qtd. in Thomas “My Manner of
The echoes of that 1997 centennial party at MXAT, of the call for a new style of
theatre based on a new kind of education resonate in this story. It was actually Yuri
Lyubimov, the artistic director of Taganka Theatre whom Efros so fatally replaced, who
posited that the change in theatre had to be based on a change in the theatre schools.
Unwittingly, Krymov’s blooming directing career and his “Designer Theatre” came
Krymov had been teaching stage design at GITIS for several years when a group
of students came up to him for advice. As part of their curriculum, design students had to
stage little scenes, this time on the theme of Pinocchio. Krymov helped them without the
professor of the course knowing (Sellar 22). Maybe Krymov also was unaware of the
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 26
repercussions of what was just taking place. The little scenes turned into a show,
“There was no stage: The usual studio clutter was pushed aside to make way for a
small playing area. The story was told with objects that transformed themselves
constantly into other objects. From time to time, drawings were made with black
In Giurgea’s description, traces of Krymov’s painting past and some distant reference to
the design of Efros’ My Friend Kolka! seem to arise, but also something new, a new way
of theatricality springing from wordless live creation. Krymov realized it too, “When I
saw this performance a day later, I was absolutely struck with it because that was the
birth of a new language. Because this new theatrical language [...] was literally born in
my workshop over the course of two hours from 11pm to 1 am in a really tired state”
After that, Krymov could not get enough. With his own masterskaya (a graduating
class who studies under a master for their four years of training), he based his teaching on
getting “the pulse of real theatre.” Krymov found that the traditional set design curricula
lacked three essential elements: “how to think as an artist does; how to experience stage
before the public” (Thomas “The Visual Poetics” 342). He wanted his students to know
how to make their design ideas come alive, and he believed that the way to do so was to
learn through experience. “Real theatre occurs during rehearsals, and designers never
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 27
spend any time at rehearsals. When the model is ready their job is finished” (qtd. in
Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 85). Krymov started doing études, structured
improvisational exercises, with them, just as actors normally do. Études constitute the
building blocks of Active Analysis, the directorial approach Stanislavsky developed in his
last years, and thanks to artists like Maria Knebel and Anatoly Efros and the scholar work
Continuing the work he had done with Buratino, he offered the students to put
arms would become a mouth (see figure 9) (Foux) or, from two performers embracing a
new character would appear (Freedman “Dmitry Krymov”). The integration of design
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 28
and action in a live performance, theatrical painting and surprise, all now characteristic of
Buratino and Untold Fairy Tales, presented as year-end projects at GITIS, were
the seed that would eventually bloom into a theatre company with designers as
performers and co-creators of the work. It was the beginning of Designer’s Theatre.
“Everybody wanted to be in this together, that was the real starting point. Then
everything else came — we started to come up with concrete ideas. [...] I added a
couple of my own, not knowing exactly how this would end up. I mean, we had
performance; maybe go to Europe and drive a little bus around, just perform in
But when the avant-garde director Anatoly Vasiliev saw the performances, he came up to
Dramatic for this new theatre collective composed of set designers Art. The performances
“This was something that was very unusual on [Vasiliev’s] part; he never invited
anyone to come work at his theatre. Not even his students. [...] His theater was
like an insular monastery. [...] We were essentially invited into the inner
sanctuary. And in our naïveté we accepted this gift, we said thank you and we
Dmitry Krymov’s Theatre Laboratory was thus born: a company intrinsically tied with
the professional and artistic growth of Krymov’s design students and Krymov himself.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 29
country where education is prescribed by the state (Thomas “The Visual Poetics” 341).
Barkhin, famous for his postmodernist designs in the 70’s and 80’s, who had initially
supported Krymov’s productions, began to oppose them on the basis that the students
were not learning the required basics (Thomas “The Visual Poetics” 343). The faculty’s
main concern, which Giurgea initially shared and vocalized, was that Krymov, “driven by
personal demons” or in his ambition to become a director like his father, was exploiting
his students to a certain degree (Giurgea 148). Krymov responded that he was teaching
theatre, where their work would be scrutinized by paying audiences. Despite the
Krymov’s work with his first designer class of 12 students can be considered the
first period of Krymov Laboratory, the one that coined the term Designer’s Theatre, as
Viktor Beryozkin called it (Freedman “Dmitry Krymov”). The Laboratory consisted only
of designer-performers who would create the piece collectively with Krymov. He, as their
mentor, nurtured their individuality and creativity, but his vision was not the only source
(Brown 171). The company shared authorship and Krymov, as a stage director, would
structure the performance and create the rhythm and the tempo (Thomas “My Manner of
Telling the Story” 86). Krymov reflects on this process, “we would select a theme
together and it was very important to have it together. And then we would come with the
play around it” (qtd. in Brown 172). In this way, the company created three more pieces:
Three Sisters (2004), based on King Lear; Sir Vantes: Donkey Hot (2005), loosely based
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 30
on Cervantes’ character; and Demon: A View From Above (2006), inspired by the
Lermontov’s poem.
School of Dramatic Art repertory. The repertory system in Russia can keep shows
running for years⎯ normally several performances a month for newer shows and
sometimes only once a year for legendary productions. A notable example is that of the
Moscow Art Theatre production of The Blue Bird, which premiered in 1908 during
Stanislavsky’s times, and is still in repertory at the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre1. For this
reason, new audience members are able to witness Donkey Hot, still played by designer-
performers, despite the fact that most of them left the company to pursue careers in set
design. The show, under an hour, is not a retelling of the Spanish classic. Krymov Lab
used another two other sources: Gogol’s Diary of A Madman, and The Act of the medical
examination of the prisoner Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev Harms (Foux). The performance
1
In 1987, Artistic Director of the Moscow Art Theatre, Oleg Efremov, in an
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 31
In the empty set of the School of Dramatic Art’s upper floor, the audience is
vividly transported to Spain by designers taking sand out of their costumes (see figure
10). La Mancha is painted with rough gouache strokes on cardboard, and the famous
windmills appear as rotating abaci stuck into the landscape. Quixote is a giant amidst
midgets⎯performers acting on their knees⎯who ostracize him. With a clever design, the
character of Quixote is played by an actor on the shoulders on another actor. The design
is consequently fully integrated in the action⎯ it precedes and influences the action
of the conventions, yet the actors Fig. 11 Donkey Hot. smocking Source:
http://ptj.spb.ru/archive/42/premieres-42/don-kixot-forever/
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 32
commit fully to the rules. It is hard not to hold your breath in wonder when Quixote’s
bottom actor’s arms light a cigarette or place glasses on the face of the top actor (figure
11). These scenes inadvertently create a relationship between characters and audience,
subtly building up into a story outside of the linearity rules. When, at the end, Quixote’s
body is transformed into a puppet, taken apart, sent across the world and buried several
times, the audience is moved, but at no time was there an awareness of explicit narrative.
While Krymov and his laboratory were developing their next show, Demon: View
From Above, the situation at the School of Dramatic Art changed. Anatoly Vasiliev, the
founder of the theatre, had originally conceived it as a laboratory setting for theatrical
experiments. The school was an ideal incubator for new ideas. But because of Vasiliev’s
audiences were not always welcome. The Moscow authorities, which subsidize the arts,
began a campaign to retake the original building on Povarskaya 20. A messy affair
started in which the School of Dramatic Art ended up being relocated to its second⎯and
current⎯location in Sretenka street (built in 2001). Vasiliev went into voluntary exile in
France. “It was a very dramatic time,” Krymov remembers (qtd. Sellar 22).
Although Vasiliev had approved the production and drafts of Demon (Sellar 22),
the situation triggered Krymov to pause this production and create his first independent
project since the creation of the Laboratory: The Auction. This was also his first venture
into Chekhov. Efros’ productions of Chekhov had been highly polemical but
revolutionary. In the words of Anatoly Smeliansky “[Efros] threw open Chekhov’s text to
the twentieth century” (70). In a new controversial time in the twenty-first century, his
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 33
model with the name “Povarskaya 20” on the roof. They discuss how they are about to
lose their home and, inspired by mementos, reminisce about their time there. In a striking
image, the Prozorov sisters, represented by mannequins, are wrapped in plastic bags and
buried along with the model. For the first time, Krymov left no doubt about his opinion
on a current topic. At the same time, though, this play evokes deeply human themes, such
as home and loss, that keep it relevant and still in the repertory.
Demon: A View From Above is the last show Krymov created with his first
class⎯and the culmination of the primordial Designer’s Theatre. In the words of theatre
historian Maria Punina: “[in Demon] Krymov has collected all the best discoveries and
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 34
ideas contained in Untold Fairy Tales, Donkey Hot, and Auction, and taken them to a new
level” (qtd. in Thomas “Demon” 417). Inspired by the unusual Globus space in the new
building for the School of Dramatic Art, an octagonal tower, the performance explored
the idea of looking at life from above. Mikhail Lermontov’s poem Demon, one of the
masterpieces of European Romantic literature, served as the source text for that purpose.
In the poem, Krymov was moved by the objective yet nostalgic distanced view of others’
lives. His students, on the other hand, were inspired by the idea of flying up to hope and
dreams (Thomas “Demon” 418). “Thus was our show born from the dream of flight.
Lermontov’s poem is an excuse to look at our life from above,” Krymov explains in the
program (krymov.org). Demon explores these ideas in relation to the theme of artist
versus society. The performance spans world art and culture, and thus, art comes to life
The show unexpectedly begins when a mass of black rags thumps on to the stage.
The performers poke at it in order to make sure it is not dangerous, and then proceed to
spread the black mass out to reveal a huge black demon. Through a system of ropes and
pulleys, the Demon is lifted to the dome of the tower, where it will look at the
performance from above. The demon will not play any other role; it is not a Chekhov gun
ready to be fired but just an objective witness that shares the experience with the
spectators. As the performers gaze up to the Demon, the floor under their feet starts to
descend to the basement. From then on, the performance will take place in the basement,
and the audience will peer over the galleries’ railings (Thomas “Demon” 418-419). The
show takes advantage of the architecture of the space, and through live transformation of
the initial conditions, shifts the audience’s attention to the vertical. In two simple moves,
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 35
Krymov manages to present the rules of the game (surprise and transformation) and the
Fig. 13 Demon—A View From Above. Prologue: the actors gather around what will become the demon. Source:
krymov.org
In the basement, the floor where the performers stand turns out to be a book of
large pieces of paper. Painted on that paper, each image turns into dramatic action as it
transforms into new metaphors to tell a story: the history of art and, by extension,
humanity. The first scene springs from the idea of a transformational historical overview.
It consists of a projected film where, through childlike drawings that transform from one
to another, the audience is taken into an epic of creation and destruction around the
world. A snake morphs into train tracks, then rivers, valleys, landscapes, oceans, which
then show warlike ships and battles intermingling with images from everyday life⎯”a
kind of summary visual encyclopedia of the human condition, without fear or favour but
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 36
colored mainly by sadness” (Thomas “Demon” 420). The film gives way to the live
artistic creation, as the performers enter with brushes and paint a scene of Adam and Eve,
amidst which a chord/snake drops. When the original sin is committed, a performer
just an expression of
aesthetic pleasure or
cunning; it is charged
front of your eyes, and then it’s gone. Each night the show is different, because each
image will be painted in a slightly different way. The process of creation thus lies at the
core of the dramatic action. Scenes follow as the paper gets torn away to leave space for
new images. Sometimes performers are part of the canvas—their faces inserted in the
paper, and their story painted around them. Other times, the scenes grow out of paint or
objects that transform into each other. The audience journeys from the Bible, through
Van Gogh, Russian writers, the space revolution and Laika, Jazz and Georgian songs, to
the story of Tamara (from Lermontov’s poem) that culminates in a wedding. In the last
scene, right after the celebration, a cord is brought into the space again, which transforms
into a facial silhouette of the Demon himself. When Tamara touches it, she gets wrapped
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 37
Fig. 15 Demon⎯A View From Above. Scene 8, part 2. Tamara, in her coming-of-age story,
learns how to ride a bicycle under the gaze of her parents. Painting, performers and costumes
create a theatrical collage where two-dimensional images and three-dimensional images interact.
Source: http://www.theartnewspaper.ru/posts/79/
in the paper. This moment, according to Professor James Thomas, from Wayne State
University, “[is] the most concrete illustration of [the performance’s] main idea—the
eternal striving of the artist for freedom against all odds” (“Demon” 427). In the epilogue,
the performers, lying down side by side on a circle, are lifted again to the original
position, and gaze up at heaven and wave the scraps of paper in their hands to the demon
There are two moments of Demon—A View From Above that stand out in reviews
(Freedman “Dmitry Krymov’s Designer’s Theater”; Thomas “Demon”). The first one,
this scene, LPs and yellow rubber gloves are tossed around the floor. Using masking tape,
the performers connect these random elements, recreating Van Gogh’s famous
sunflowers (see fig. 16). When a performer signs ‘Van Gogh,’ the others put on carnival
masks that make them look like crows and attack the painting, looking for the seeds of
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 38
meaning.
through the paper door—Tolstoy himself. He wets his shoes in ink and begins walking,
leaving footprints, towards the train station while an actual recording of Tolstoy is heard
saying “one can’t live like this” over and over. He lies by the train tracks, and the
performers put the masters’ house on top of his head—a poetic recreation of Tolstoy’s
number, they become a black mass that somehow respects those footprints. Tolstoy
protrudes as body surrounded by flat paintings, larger even than the station⎯a visual
metaphor for the artist in contrast to society. With the simple tools of scale and
dimensionality, Krymov creates an impactful image that bridges reality and his poetic
world.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 39
The early conception of Designer’s Theatre was based on the designers as co-
creators and performers of the work. Together with his first class, Krymov developed a
new kind of theatricality based on live artistic creation on stage, childlike play and
spontaneity. In Krymov’s theatre the art-making process became magically exposed for
the audience to see. Krymov remembers those first years with his first class as “the
happiest time [...] a beautiful childhood” (qtd. in Brown 172). But things changed after
“I didn’t actually change anything. It was the people that changed. My first
beloved class, with whom I put together those three pieces, had graduated and was gone,”
Krymov reflects. His students went on to have their own careers as designers or left
theatre entirely. Only two stayed, as designers, on Krymov’s Lab: Vera Martynova and
Maria Tregunova. At the same time, Krymov’s controversial teaching methods prompted
one radical change in GITIS. Krymov was transferred into the directing program to
become head of the new “Experimental Theatre Project” where stage-design, acting and
directing students were allowed to participate (Thomas “The Visual Poetics” 344).
Krymov knew what had worked before with his students might no longer work. He said
to his class, “I do not know how to teach you. Let’s learn how together” (qtd. in Thomas
“My Manner of Telling the Story” 85). Krymov Lab started to have actors perform in its
Krymov has reflected extensively on how his work with actors compared to his
work with his design students. He rapidly sensed that working with actors required
different strategies; mainly, he could not show an actor what to do in the same way he
could with a designer. “He has to do it for himself. An actor is a mysterious kind of
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 40
organism,” Kyrmov reflects (qtd. in Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 86).
Designer-performers were never acting in the strict definition of the word, “their truth is
in the act of creation. [...] The result is not acting, but a display of our creations” (qtd. in
Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 86). In that sense, Krymov recognizes that
designers need a visual justification, whereas actors find inner justifications on their own.
The work with designers was a pure collaborative experience, where all of them were co-
authors, while the work with actors is not. Yet in the process of working with actors,
“For me, it is like working with smoke. It is like an adrenalin rush for me to shape
this smoke and see the result. If you create something with designers, for
example, if you understand that this movement has to be only two minutes, then it
actors, however, each day could be different” (qtd. in Thomas “My Manner of
Krymov found in this “shaping of smoke” a vehicle for his own ideas. Actors could
express them in a way he could not do as a teacher and co-creator. Before, he wanted the
shows to come from his students’ feelings and thoughts but with actors he could come in
the room with his own ideas. In 2011 he confessed, “At this point in time, I am looking
forward to working more with experienced actors than with student designers” (qtd. in
These discoveries slowly set off a new chapter in Krymov’s artistic story. He
created a new show with his new class, Katerina’s Dreams, based on the tragic heroine in
Ostrovsky’s play The Storm. A series of touching “images in motion,” the show
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 41
(Freedman “Dreamy Show”). The class’ second show, the “object-based opera” Aeneas
& Dido (2011) was developed as part of the Watermill Center in New York. Krymov
gave the artistic lead to his former student Vera Martynova. By that time, his interest was
already deep into his independent projects, into his work with actors. The way of working
working with me. They understand my style and the style of our collective work,
and I can move ahead more quickly. I am concerned with my own feelings and
thoughts, my understanding of style and performance. [...] I create the main piece,
and they join me. The actors create everything [i.e. the given circumstances] more
or less for themselves, a process they enjoy. Usually they do not get involved in
anything except the acting sections of the final work.” (qtd. in Thomas “My
Designers were still part of the company, but only as designers. With his third class,
which he took up on in 2011, it was clear that his professional and pedagogical paths
were becoming differentiated. Krymov did not want his teaching to become a recruiting
method for his company, but instead a platform to create director-scenographer pairs that
could communicate and collaborate creatively (Brown 179). His experimental class at
GITIS revolves about collaboration with emotion at its core: “Maybe the designer doesn't
know how to talk to actors, and the director doesn't understand movement, the history of
art, or the use of space. They complement each other; it is their job to achieve the
emotional experience that they conspire to create” (qtd. in Freedman “Dmitry Krymov”).
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 42
The actors that joined the company were of an unusual kind. Most of them trained
by master teacher Valery Garkalin (the actor who had played Hamlet for Krymov). They
have a strong imaginative capacity and a predisposition towards “play” (Brown 176). For
Krymov, these traits are essential: “So for instance, when I say, you sit here and you sit
there, and then there is a fox that runs between you, the people I want are those who will
be interested in that right away. I will not explain, ‘why?’ ‘how’. . . So all of our actors in
some way are still kind of teenagers.” (qtd. in Brown 176). This naiveté and interest
allows the actors to navigate a design-ridden show and bring humanity and lightness to
the work. In the new company, new aesthetic dynamics were born: designers create the
impactful images that sprout in Kyrmov’s work, and the actors accent the emotional
Krymov’s first show after Demon, which incorporated actors and the designers
that had stayed in the company from his first class, was The Cow, based on a short story
by Andrei Platonov. While Krymov had expressed his distrust of words,⎯ he once said,
"I don't believe in spoken words in the theatre. Words jump out of your mouth way too
easily. But the image, the scene – that is something you have to create" (O’Mahony)⎯
The Cow started to combine visual and verbal essays about childhood and becoming a
person in Russia. It premiered only a year after Demon, this transitional period did not
pass unattended. John Freedman wrote in his review of the show that “one senses that the
subtle, though noticeable, changes in style come as much from a maturation process that
Krymov and his core group of actors and designers are experiencing together”
(Childhood Tragedy). A year later, the results of this maturing process would shock the
world.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 43
While Opus No 7 is divided in two parts, with two different stories and visuals, the show
revolves around a theme that echoes through Krymov’s oeuvre: the outcast. This idea is
approached through topics closely tied to Krymov’s identity, following the self-reflecting
use of art his father mastered. In an unprecedented large space, and featuring the design
of his students and the new actors in the company, Krymov Lab’s trajectory crystallized
in this show ⎯ Krymov’s personal story, Russia’s tragic history and the Lab’s origins
and future.
Vera Martynova and Maria Tregunova, the two students from the first class who
had stayed in the lab, were in charge of the set for this big-scale play. Each of them
designed one of the two parts in which the performance is divided. Martynova used the
length of the space for the first part “Genealogy,” seating the audience in wooden
benches facing a white wall⎯although no white wall remains white for long in a Krymov
show. During intermission, the space is reconfigured to host Tregunova’s design for the
second part “Shostakovich.” The audience is seated in a long jeu de paume configuration,
with a grandiose red velvet curtain upstage. Opus No 7 showcased the talent of Krymov
design students, the seed of his company. However, the designers did not perform this
time. The piece featured seven actors in the company, who embodied a flexible choral
ensemble similar to that of the designers in the earlier pieces, and specific characters,
such as Shostakovich.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 44
The first part, “Genealogy” reflects on Krymov’s own roots, his Jewish heritage.
Anti-Semitism had a significant impact in Efros’ life, which prompted him to change his
touches and added props, becomes silhouettes: ghetto Jews. It’s another instance of
Using a knife, the actors carve out the silhouettes. There are whispers, rustling; blinding
light comes from the cracks opened by the actors in the wall. All of a sudden, the sound
of a furnace blasts; breaking through the wall and out from the silhouettes, pieces of
paper fly out right into the audience. Giurgea compares these bits of paper to ashes (146),
Krymov reflects: “Many people don't like this confrontation. Many people, when they get
blasted by the wind and paper, react as if to say: ‘This is disgusting, get it off me.’ Maybe
it's better to make your points simply, but for me it's better to get a little more
stage. The actors place them by the wall, and soon little pairs of glasses begin to form the
ghostly portraits of those children, almost a photo of a dead class or a group of orphans.
With music composed by Alexandr Bakshi, “Genealogy” resonates like a requiem for
silent victims.
Shostakovich. Once more, this topic ties into Krymov’s heritage. Shostakovich was one
of his father’s favorite composers, and Krymov remembers meeting the musician at the
premiere of his opera The Nose: “I remember every minute: how he bowed, how [Irina
he seemed uncomfortable.”
Shostakovich’s complicated
Then suddenly, the mother shifts: She shoots at these portraits and tries to murder
Shostakovich as well. Failing to kill him, she disappears behind the red curtain, and soon
a long hand brings a medal, that is coldly pinned through Shostakovich’s chest. From
then on, Shostakovich becomes a puppet. He is placed at a grand piano, and remains
unmoved when the piano bursts into flames. In the end, an actual pitiful-looking puppet
replaces Shostakovich, his will broken, as metal pianos dance around him. Mother Russia
then comes back onstage, cuddles him, and then collapses on the floor. The complicated
story of the Russian compositor during Soviet times thus finds a poetic way into
contemporary society.
Eight years after its premiere, Opus No 7 is still one of the most demanded
Krymov shows. It has received several awards (including two Golden Masks and a
Crystal Turandot) and it put Krymov’s work at the center of international attention. The
show toured in Germany, Poland, France, Finland, Estonia, Great Britain, the United
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 47
States, Georgia, and Brazil. Krymov’s new theatre, with its roots deep in the Russian soul
and folklore, was gaining traction and stretched its branches to break through cultural
With Opus No 7 a period of success and expansion for Krymov began. Moving away
from Designer’s Theatre’s initial setting, the director focused on his independent work.
Tararabumblia (2010), a Chekhov parade; Katya, Sonya, Polya, Galya, Vera, Olya,
Tanya... (2011), based on Ivan Bunin’s short stories; In Paris (2011), featuring Mikhail
Baryshnikov; Oil on Canvas, Mixed Media (2011), an opera combining different art
forms such as jazz and circus; and, Gorki-10 (2012), a parody of Soviet drama. In 2012,
Krymov brought forward his third take on Shakespeare, As You Like it, from
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which had its world premiere at the World
2013, Krymov took on Chekhov for the third time with Honore de Balzac. Notes about
Berdichev, which he described as Three Sisters turned inside out. The last of the shows
that will be analyzed in this section is the perplexing O-y Late Love (2015), where
Fig 11 Dmitry Krymov with the puppets of As You Like It. Source: krymov.org
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 49
What had characterized the Lab in its origins and made it genre-breaking does not
fully apply to the new productions: designers do not co-create and perform anymore.
Does this mean Designer’s Theatre was over? As Krymov’s performances keep shocking
world audiences, the label Designer’s Theatre keep showing up. “This term was invented
by the theatre historian Viktor Beryozkin,” explains Krymov “I later understood what
Beryozkin had in mind. In his point of view, it’s an author’s art. The artist is the person
thinking the images” (qtd. in Vitvitskiy). It thus becomes apparent what lays at the
foundation of the notion of Designer’s Theatre⎯the artist behind the conception: Dmitry
Theatre, Kantor’s Theatre of Death, Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed or Wilson’s Theatre
of Images, Krymov’s Designer’s Theatre outlines a new theatre philosophy, and a new
“In some small but I suspect significant way, Dmitry Krymov has created a kind
of theatre that hasn’t existed before. At least not quite like this. He applies the
same laws and employs the same devices that everyone always has, yet he
rearranges the equation, making the product of the sum the process of the
performers making it. In doing so, he achieves something that resembles only
have found something unexpected in old laws and devices, and by the idea of the process
as the sum of all elements. For this reason, instead of a chronological description of
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 50
Krymov’s work, this paper will now move towards an aesthetic analysis of the
theatre fundamentals.
Design As Action
“Each [Krymov production] has to bring to the fore the totality of human
experience. We are all Don Quixote, all King Lear, all Shostakovich. We are not outside
the work, we are inside it, we are the work making itself right now, in front of our eyes.”
In this line, Giurgea (148) taps one of the core aesthetic values of Krymov’s work:
creation as the leading energy of the action onstage, “the work making itself right now, in
front of our eyes”. Design is not merely a setting, but actually the driving force of the
drama. This feature breaks away from the classical role of design, what Aristotle called
(Aristotle 29-32).
Throughout time, the balance between the constitutive elements of tragedy has
shifted. Aristotle heralded Plot over the other constituents; yet, during the crisis of Drama
described by Szondi’s Theory of Modern Drama, other features came to the forefront. For
instance, according to Szondi, character became the central locus of unity in the works of
Chekhov and Strindberg. While, since the development of Modern Drama, Aristotle’s
aesthetic elements have been challenged in numerous ways, Spectacle (in other words,
Design) has rarely been the leading dramatic force. Professor Thomas notices that if a
production leans too much on Design over any of the other elements, it is normally
considered ostentatious or poor in artistic value (“Visual Poetics” 348). Not with
Krymov, however.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 51
Krymov is not the first artist to bring out Spectacle over other production values.
In Russia, David Borovsky is the father of “Active Design,” a theatrical concept by which
Design was as important as the actors as a vehicle for ideas in the production. Borovsky’s
sets would change according to the stage action, dynamically redefining the space like
another performer. Although Borovsky was mainly associated with Yuri Lyubimov and
the Taganka Theatre, he collaborated with Anatoly Efros in several occasions. Borovsky
teaching:
[...] He had this holy form of art, this kind of art as life, something that you can't
ever really achieve, but something you always aspire to. I don't know where he
his true disciples (Giurgea 47). Undeniably, Borovsky’s Active Design lives on in
Krymov’s work. Yet, Krymov escalates the importance of Design in his production in
two ways: subordinating all the other aesthetic elements to Design and fully disclosing its
emotional impact through montage but not necessarily through narrative, Plot seems
unimportant. In most cases in order to create dramatic tension, the accumulation of visual
metaphors supplants the Aristotelian structure of ‘rise and fall’. Such is the case of
Demon, for instance, in which the story being told through a series of vignettes is what
the Demon witnessed during his flight. “Demon — A View from Above is not the plot of
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 52
[the Lermontov poem] The Demon. It's imagination; it's fantasy on the subject matter.
The result is a kind of new content: the performance. The content of the performance
Most of Krymov’s shows come from a literary source—in some cases plays—
which tend to have an emphasis on plot and narrative as a driving force. Gorki-10 is
based on texts by the Soviet playwrights Nikolai Pogodin, Viktor Rozov, (both
playwrights Anatoly Efros staged), Vsevolod Vishnevsky and Boris Vasilyev, and as
such the show could be expected to adhere to the rules of plot. Krymov shatters those
expectations. In the words of John Freedman, “By the time Act 1 concludes, all action
has degenerated to nonsense. The same scene is repeatedly re-enacted, each instance
growing increasingly bizarre” (“A Lesson, Attack on Soviet Drama in 'Gorki-10'”). The
deconstruction of plot in Gorki-10 continues throughout the play, veering into absurdity.
Design acknowledges this subordination of Plot by having one play turn into another one
Demon. Krymov himself has described that in this way performers become “not actors or
characters but ‘somebodies’ who are doing something,” that is, building blocks in his
design (Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 86). In many cases, the theatrical
player that most closely adheres to the traditional idea of Character is the puppet. For
instance, in As You Like It, Pyramus and Thisbe, from Shakesperare’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and therefore appertaining to the traditional legacy of Character, are
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 53
portrayed by giant
puppets the
performers assemble
curious instance of
puppet-characters
appears in Opus No
that stand outside the ensemble collective: Shostakovich and Mother Russia. A giant
puppet portrays Mother Russia, and, by the end of the show, a puppet replaces
Shostakovich. The traditional role of Character is therefore displaced from the actor to
the puppet.
Some of Krymov’s most recent shows which feature more conventional characters
also frame them in a way that redefines their aesthetic quality. In Katya, Sonya, Polya,
Galya, Vera, Olya, Tanya..., a compilation of Ivan Bunin’s short stories, each of the
women featured in the title is the protagonist of a story. Although these characters are
First of all, the women are placed opposed to an ensemble of homogeneous men who
observe them. Under this indistinct male gaze, the female characters lose their human
qualities; they become objects of worship in a literal sense. During the performance, they
are cut in half, disassembled or stuffed in boxes. Krymov acknowledges this singular
objectification of the female in his program note: “vivacious young ladies, standing
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 54
Fig. 14 Katya, Sonya, Polya, Galya, Vera, Olya, Tanya..., Source: krymov.org
motionless like crippled puppets in cardboard boxes” (krymov.org). The final image can
doll walks around the stage where the life-less remains of the women are fixed in their
spots.
show features puppets assembled and operated by an ensemble⎯this time the puppets are
soldiers that get dressed in uniforms and go to war. However, in a very innovative way,
in this show the dismantling of Character does not come from in the ensemble or in the
transforms into Lenin. Character Fig. 13 Lenin in Act 1 of Gorki-10. Source: os.colta.ru
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 55
progressively gets blurred, and at the end of the act, the actress Maria Smolnikova takes
over what is left of that Lenin character to deal him one final blow. Freedman describes
this last scene,“[Smolnikova]’s high-pitched voice, her scattershot diction and her
flailing, herky-jerky gestures surely are enough to finally put Lenin to rest.” If this
“cartoonization” of character was not obvious then, the play makes a strong point at the
end of the second act when famous full-person scale cartoons, Mickey Mouse and Bart
Simpson included, show up and are shot to death with a toy cannon. The traditional idea
of Character is dead. Krymov transforms actors into puppets and Character into Design.
In a personal interview, Krymov described what makes puppets so special for his
storytelling:
“When you have a puppet onstage, the actor becomes the storyteller, which is
something that I really like. The actor doesn’t have to act. The actor acts through
the puppet. So it’s like billiards: you’re not just shooting straight. You are
ricocheting from the board to get into the hole. [...] So you’re splitting the
personality for the actor. On one hand, you’re taking away the responsibility
because it’s not “you” anymore. On the other hand, you have a lot of
opportunities to create a more vivid portrayal and address a very specific culture.”
poetic manner that will allow him to address larger issues in a universal way. More will
The next Aristotelian element, Music, plays a prominent role in Krymov’s shows.
his shows. His particular use of ensemble is reminiscent of the Chorus in Greek tragedy:
a homogenous collective that can help the audience relate to the action onstage. In many
instances of Kyrmov’s work, this chorus-like ensemble expresses itself through music as
it was done in Classical times. For instance, in Opus No 7’s Genealogy, the ensemble
sings to the music of Aleksandr Bakshi in an eerie but moving way. Krymov, probably
influenced by his father’s passion for Jazz and Shostakovich, selects music in a beautiful,
expressive way. Yet, although Krymov is very aware of musicality and rhythm, music
does not lie at the core of his creative process. In fact, it is one of the last things to be
added (personal interview), and therefore subservient to the rest of the creation.
characterized by distrust of the spoken, and the servitude of the text to the visual.
Krymov, a man of few words himself, has expressed this suspicion of words on stage on
numerous occasions. There is an explanation, “why aren't words enough? Why must
things be expressed in other ways, too? Because they need to be fixed in a given form. It's
one thing to talk about a bouillon cube, but it's another thing to hold in your hands a
bouillon cube from which you can break off a chunk and actually make a pot of soup.”
student’s discovery that a story could be transmitted without words: “When [the students]
began not to use words in their études, I immediately recognized the borderline between
something new and genuine and something worn-out and false. It was clear that it was
possible to say something about love, friendship, men, women – without words” (qtd. in
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 57
Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 85). For this reason, Krymov’s first shows
Most Krymov shows come from literature, but even when dealing with classical
authors such as Shakespeare or Chekhov, Krymov veered away from the words on the
page. His images do not illustrate the source material, but take it as inspiration to tell a
story with a new vocabulary based on Design. Krymov explains, "we had not been
trained how to speak or move on stage. But we came up with theatrical magic tricks. It
turned out that it was possible to tell a story without a text using these tricks"
(O’Mahoney). Such is the case of Demon, inspired by Lermotov’s poem but diving into
the exploration of other people’s lives, or Donkey Hot, which is definitely not a literal
As the Lab evolves, more and more text has been added on the stage supported by
a strong image. Death of a Giraffe marks a shifting point towards the use of words.
“We are changing all the time. And if at the beginning, we were the “theatre of
artists,” then now we are already no longer just drawing – a pretty picture won’t
cut it anymore. And moreover, you can’t trust visual art alone in the theatre,
where words are also important; not to mention music, and movement, and, most
of all, actors – it’s their personalities which create the atmosphere of the show,
and you can’t change that out for anything, not for any “novelty” whatsoever.”
(krymov.org).
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 58
Krymov defies his own established rules. This note seems to turn his previous arguments
around by implying a distrust of the visual and a rapprochement towards actors (and
seemingly ‘making peace’ with the other Aristotelian elements). For the first time, a
Krymov show was not inspired by a literary source, but created by the actors. The
present a series of monologues of different characters (maybe one of the few instances of
close-to-traditional Character) around the death of a giraffe. This format differed from
Krymov’s previous treatment of text, yet it still challenges the classical ideas of Speech.
theatre if they were not pure works of fiction out of the actors’ minds.
Slowly spoken words have started playing a larger role in Krymov’s work.
“Words can only give you the starting point of the subject you’re interested in. It doesn’t
mean you shouldn’t use words. You can use them differently. You shouldn’t be the slave
of the words. That’s the most important thing,” Krymov acknowledged recently (personal
interview). Although he argues that words spoken onstage are “an illusion of
communication,” he admits that they are also a powerful source of imagery (Sellar 20).
This growing relationship with words blossomed with one of Krymov’s most recent
designer for the Lab, explained in an interview, "We used design as an important tool.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 59
[...] It was treated as a transmitter of meaning in its own right. It set the rules and often
even played an independent dramatic role" (qtd. in O’Mahoney). This is the first way in
which Designer’s Theatre constructs a whole genre on top of Borovsky’s idea of Active
Design. But Krymov goes a step beyond in his use of Design as a dramatic tool by
displaying the role of creation and destruction in his shows as the main source of action.
Other artists, such as Robert Wilson or Tadeusz Kantor have created a theatre
based on design or images. It is also interesting to notice that both Wilson and Kantor,
like Krymov, delved into visual arts and design as well as the theatre. However,
performance.
beginning and end state of the stage in Death Fig. 15 Stage at the beginning and end of Death of a
Giraffe. Source: personal archive
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 60
of a Giraffe. The process of creation and destruction is the energy that feeds the
production and the destruction visible at the end is nothing but a witness of what
happened during the performance. The portrayal of the creative process constitutes the
fuel for Krymov’s performances and the core of Designer’s Theatre. Freedman explained
this pillar in his article “Dmitry Krymov Designer’s Theatre,” describing Demon:
“Each moment of The Demon: The View from Above is an instant of becoming.
although [...] the mark they leave seems tantalizingly close to being permanent.
fixed in a finalized form, rather it is conceived to bloom and to perish before our
eyes” (18).
images pristinely exemplifies how Krymov puts creation and destruction onstage.
One of the most compelling examples of how Krymov stages the creation and
destruction process can be found in Death of a Giraffe. As mentioned before, the first
part of the show differs from the rest of the performance. During the first fifteen minutes,
a wordless tea party takes place. The actors build a very wobbly table with four legs and
then use very delicate china to serve tea. Little by little, they start adding colorful blocks
to the skinny legs of the highly unstable table. The actors focus on their task; they check
with each other before lifting the table to make room for the new block. The tension is
shocking, because the act of creation is real: in any moment, the table could collapse and
shatter the china. There are no guarantees of success, and the act becomes so tension-
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 61
following Krymov’s
principles of
actual circus
Fig. 16 Tea party at the beginning of Death of a Giraffe. Source: krymov.org
performance. Actors
perform silly circus tricks around the giraffe, relaxing the atmosphere in the room after
that tense moment of the creation of the giraffe. And then, one of these tricks involving a
trampoline becomes obviously yet somehow unexpectedly deadly. When the performer
lands from the jump, the fragile giraffe-table with china loudly collapses.
The display of the process of creation is so inherently dramatic and engaging for
the audience that it consequently becomes a participant in the drama, as Giurgea heralded
in the quote that opened this section. Krymov’s theatre uses creation as the thread that
connects each aesthetic element, and then shifts the storytelling to reveal the process of
creation and destruction itself. One must follow the other. Creation and Destruction⎯this
idea might be connected with a special Russian sensibility, but it seems that one cannot
exist without the other. And the silent witnesses of both forces lie on the stage at the end
Poetic Montage
A theatre credo linked to design elements is not unheard of⎯although, as was just
described, no one has quite done what Krymov is doing. In the United States, for
instance, the legendary company Bread and Puppet became famous for their
performances involving puppets. Their “cheap art,” made from unfinished materials,
involutes a feeling of being “in the process” of creation, somewhat akin to Krymov’s
aesthetics although not reaching the same scope—their puppets never get built in front of
the audience’s eyes and Design does not drive the dramatic event. Furthermore, Bread
and Puppet Theatre’s performances are highly political and openly so. Krymov, on the
other hand, is not understood as an overtly political director (Thomas “My Manner of
Telling the Story” 83). That does not mean he is out of touch with reality. As he said to
John Freedman in a interview, “You can't live in the age of the iPhone 6 and go bonkers
over mid–twentieth century theater. It's the same with your head: you must go into it
current situations, but what really characterizes his aesthetics is the search for an
“‘You have to watch and feel,’ he says. ‘You shouldn't overthink,’” Krymov
“The most important thing is to find a poetic manner,” Krymov once told his performers
(qtd. in Freedman “Designer’s Theatre” 17). The connections between ideas in Krymov
images to reach an emotional impact by the implicit associations that arise between them.
As an artist, and maybe because of his pictorial past, Krymov turns to images in
order to inspire emotion in his audiences. “The eyes are the quickest route to the soul,”
Krymov states. The way those images give way to emotion is through montage. Professor
Thomas has labeled Krymov’s technique ‘dynamic montage’: “Montages because they
combine visual and aural elements from various sources; dynamic because the designers
construct and deconstruct them literally before our eyes (“The Visual Poetics” 140).
Krymov recognizes that montage is his manner of telling the story: “I want the story to
progress by montage connections rather than by the subject itself. Meyerhold once said
In the previous quote, Meyerhold, the Russian avant-garde director and rebel
attractions,’ was coined by Meyerhold’s pupil, the Russian film director and theorist
period when Russia was undergoing a powerful industrialization. The fascination with the
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 64
machine permeates their artistic ideas, both as subject (Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin),
aesthetics in a “cinefication” of theatre language through the use of lights and staging
championed by Meyerhold (Salter). The fascination with machine and cinema is now
long over, but Krymov incarnates the ideas of montage of attractions in the twenty-first
century.
produce in him certain emotional shocks which, when placed in their proper
sequence within the totality of the production, become the only means that enable
Attraction thus becomes the base unit of theatre, an image with the potential for
narrative, but aiming to elicit an emotional response from the spectator. Therefore, the
montage of attractions liberates theatre from being at the service of representation and
The accumulated scenes from Demon, A View From Above, serve as a beautiful
captures the audience when exposed to these scenes that are not narratively connected.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 65
The subtle association between the two parts of Opus No 7 (Genealogy and
Shostakovich) can be taken together to affect a statement about totalitarian regimes. But
one of the most compelling examples of how montage works in Krymov’s work is in his
Chekhov celebration Tararabumbia—both a carnival and a funeral march for the 150th
Ten minutes into the performance, a tumultuous military parade crosses the belt. It could
be any nameless troupe of soldiers, but right afterwards, elegant women on stilts under
their long dresses appear. Almost instinctively and with some knowledge of Chekhov’s
plays, these two elements merge and the audience member knows where these characters
come from: Three Sisters. However, not only Chekhov characters pass before the
audience’s eyes: there are also Soviet sailors and divers, Bolshoi Theatre soloists, the
USSR women synchronized swimming team and Hamlet’s characters. After an army of
performers storm in. This juxtaposition of spheres can be read as an attempt to illustrate a
contemporary equivalent of the formal breakdown The Seagull dwells on, or just a fast
time travel across 100 years. Association through montage enlarges the show’s scope
Montage inevitably affects the audience and the relationship they have to the
techniques to shock the spectator (Salter 23), implying a change in the relationship with
upon two elements: the aforementioned montage of attractions, and a sense of wonder
The sense of wonder comes from silent, almost magical scenes, such as the child
beginnings such as that of As You Like It, when the mechanicals blast through the
that they are entering a world with Fig. 19 Beginning of As Your Like It. Source: Krymov.org
truthful performance hints at a cohesive set of rules, and the audience is prepared to make
Through a montage-based theatre, Krymov changes the rules of the conversation with the
audiences, awaking and immersing the spectator in a deeply poetic and emotional
experience.
“Is this improvisation?” “It’s modern art” “As You Like It further blurs the line
Seated by the sides of the stage and facing the audience, they satirize generic audience
Under the Soviet regime, the Russian avant-garde followed a different path than the
Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century rejects the
connection and representativeness of their own cultural heritage (55). Krymov aesthetics
are deeply connected to his Russian roots both in form and in content.
Most of Krymov’s performances arise from Russian culture either directly from
Russian source materials or from indirect thematic references. Demon: A View from
Above and The Cow stand out in this sense as shows which offer an example of both
direct and thematic connection to Russian identity. Demon arises from a Russian literary
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 68
source (Lermontov’s poem) and additionally delves into Russian identity. The
Gogol’s burning of his manuscript. It also depicts the experience of growing up in Russia
The Cow similarly explores the question of Russian childhood, using Andrei
Platonov’s short story as source material. The story is quite dark: Vasya, a young man,
reminisces about a turning event in his childhood, the loss of his innocence: he lost his
beloved cow as his father sold it to be butchered; the animal escaped and was killed by a
train. The train that appears onstage carries the baggage any Russian would recognize
a portrait of Konstantin Stanislavsky, among others. All these images become building
blocks of Russian historic identity that pass before the audience’s eyes and end up killing
Krymov does not shy away from the complicated relationship Russians have with
their country. Instead, he puts it onstage, like the figure of Mother Russia in Opus No 7: a
giant puppet that is both nurturing and deadly. Inevitably, the cultural fabric surrounding
Krymov and his Lab exerts a powerful influence on their work. Krymov bares the truth
he sees. Freedman recalls a specific moment in one of Krymov’s classes when he told his
set design students, “"You are Russians, you grew up in Russia, you will work in the
Russian theater. As such, there is one thing you must never forget — there is no such
thing as an idyll in Russia. If there is a bear in the concept of your design, then there is
blood and mayhem, too. This idyllic model is a lie. You cannot lie in the theater"
(“Director Dmitry Krymov”). This heartbreaking vision is behind one of Krymov’s last
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 69
shows, Russian Blues. In Search of Mushrooms (2015)2. Mushroom hunting is one of the
purest Russian traditions, one to which any Russian can relate and which is inherently
positive in nature: the communal search of happiness. But ultimately, this prospect of
happiness burns away like the house that is set on fire by the character “shit” at the end of
Russian Blues might be one of the most Russian and contemporarily relevant
shows Krymov has created. Formally, Krymov is again pushing boundaries: the show
features an unreliable narrator who describes and comments on the scenes through
headphones each member of the audience gets. Content-wise, each scene resonates with a
recent event. “If you see bleakness in Russian Blues, then, naturally, that is what is there.
But there is not one word in it, not one direct gesture or image, that would say anything
about the downed Malaysian airliner or the downed Russian fighter jet, or about
terrorism. There isn't the vaguest hint of that. I present other themes in such a way that
makes you sense what you describe [bleakness],” Krymov explains (qtd. in Freedman
“Dmitry Krymov”). You first see men enter a submarine with a short description of who
they are. Later in the show you hear that description again, when scuba divers release
white silhouettes from the bottom of the ocean. These subtle hints give a powerful
The sometimes-bleak Russian outlook might seem to clash with the playfulness
and lightness that characterized Krymov’s work. Lead actress Maria Smolnikova
2
Krymov Lab’s last three productions to date are Russian Blues. In Search of
Mushrooms, In Their Own Words. A. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin” and Last Date in Venice.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 70
there is no point to the show. In his shows there is no darkness, although there are hints at
the terrors in life. Why would you stage hell? Having seen his shows, people won’t say
‘Oh, how badly we live. Well, let’s change things tomorrow.’ Only with lightness and
kindness we can change this world” (qtd. in Vitvitskiy). In order to do so, poetry is the
key. In Krymov’s own words “You will take the image and find how it talks about you.
I’m interested in a way of expression that will teach you a way to remember” (“A
Conversation with Krymov”). Krymov presents all Russian moments with no overt
judgment in them, but with a distance to the image that allows for the audience to have
Kymov’s poetry on stage, his poetic manner, holds the key to his international
success. In an interview about In Paris, an adaptation of Ivan Bunin’s short story of the
language, even if you do not understand everything to the third and fourth degree, theater
is interesting in itself. It’s a little like poetry” (qtd. in Grynszpan). Krymov’s cultural
specificity and poetic manner paradoxically unlock human universal qualities for
Theatre, it is important to look at O-y. Late Love (2014) which won the 2016 Golden
Mask award for best small-scale production and best actress (Maria Smolnikova). It is a
startling play for many reasons, as it both perfects and defies Krymov’s aesthetic
trajectory to date.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 71
O-y. Late Love’s most salient feature is that for the first time Krymov staged a
play: Alexander Ostrovsky’s Late Love written in 1873. Krymov had never been
interested in staging plays: “some people can stage plays that were written by someone
else, but our work is not like that. I am interested in our way, but that does not exclude
other possibilities.” (qtd. in Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 88). In light of
these statements, the production came as a surprise due to its fidelity to the source
one of the actors on the show, describes the approach: “Dmitry Anatolyevich analyzed
each and every scene, telling something of his biography, sharing his experience. And we
went back to using students (except for Maria Smolnikova, who plays the Lyudmila),
only this time they are acting students from GITIS. The Lab’s past and future seems to
play arising from a Russian source and of Russian themes. Although in this case, the
source material is kept for the most part intact, with a radical interpretation of the end.
Despite Krymov’s new approach to text, the visual is still the starting point. Referring to
the show, Krymov points out “for us, the classic text is just the basis for a meaningful
visual image” (qtd. in Vitvitskiy). Words are therefore subservient to the image in O-y.
crumbled into individual letters and assembled again” (qtd. in krymov.org). In fact, there
are moments during the production when the text is mumbled and a transcription is
shown in a projection. Character is also turned upside down: female characters are played
by men and male characters by women. There is no puppetry, but in the absence of
puppets, Krymov explains, he turned the actors into live puppets (personal interview).
Their makeup is exaggerated; their costumes take over their form—a grotesque caricature
unpredictable even for audiences accustomed to the director. New elements are
introduced in this play: electrifying special effects and energized fight choreography, hip-
hop dance breaks, sports and even a torture scene. The well-known characters are shown
with their ruthlessness and faults. And the happy end of the source material takes an
unexpected turn: in the wedding between Nikolai and Lyudmila, the groom, after looking
with melancholy at his elated bride, shoots himself in the chest while she is left feebly
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 73
singing with a broken voice. Krymov may be parodying common tropes in Russian
literature: self-sacrifice, immaterialness, and unprompted warmth. But in face of all the
ugliness, the distortion and the irony, the endless love and undying faithfulness these
In the same way Opus No 7 marked the beginning of a new phase for Krymov’s
Lab, O-y. Late Love seems to point towards a new development of Krymov’s aesthetics,
with new ideas of text and character, and new players for the Lab’s games. Designer’s
Theatre seems not to be a fixed aesthetic idea, as it continues to grow with each show that
Fig 21 Curtain call for O-y. Late Love. with Dmitry Krymov. Source: brunch.lv
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 74
questions about the development process of each piece. In Donkey Hot, a whole scene is
based on the existence of a dress that takes over the full room, separating the actress who
dances flamenco from the mechanical rats that run underneath her skirt. How could this
parallel to rehearsals, and stage action and design are integrated normally at the end of
the process during ‘tech.’ But when witnessing Krymov’s theatre, the perennial question
“what comes first - the chicken or the egg?” can be rephrased as “what comes - first the
Dr. Bryan Brown’s essay In Search of the Idea constitutes a first attempt to
answer this question, elucidating the main principles that govern Krymov’s creative
process. Acknowledging the evolving nature of the Lab and the variability of each
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 75
project, Brown identifies four core elements: idea, interest, play, and genealogy
mechanism (174). The rehearsal process is divided in two parts: first, the ‘table work’ and
then the ‘staging,’ but everything begins with the idea (Vitvitskiy).
Krymov’s concept of idea descends from his father’s lore. “It's what my father
called the ‘massiveness behind the intention.’ It's a thing, a concept that grasps the entire
play with it and won't let it crumble.” (qtd. in Shea). According to Krymov, every aspect
personal question to the source material. In Krymov’s own words “what is the question
you’re trying to ask Hamlet?” (qtd. in Shea). He says sometimes the idea comes from the
form, from “the desire to mix the paint,” or sometimes it is the other way around (“A
that idea: “I need to know the main points. This is like building a bridge—it’s a serious
task. It has to be beautiful, sturdy and meaningful. And it has to connect two things, not
Krymov”). Once he has that protoidea, a direction towards the adventure towards which
he wants to lead the ship, he approaches his actors. Together they further develop the idea
since “beauty and meaning will be better if we work together” (“A Conversation With
Krymov”). The idea is what sparks and anchors the interest, and using both they create
For interest and idea to really work as a spool and thread of the creative process,
Krymov searches for a very particular kind of actor: “I couldn’t work with every actor.
They have to be the people who are really interested [in what is proposed to them]. And
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 76
not [interested purely] out of professional duty.” In interviews, Krymov has talked about
readiness and openness, a total faith with doubt (Shea). But beyond these traits, Krymov
prizes the actors’ individuality as artists. Smolnikova comments, “[Krymov] does not
permit lack of independence in artists. He comes up with something new and always
expects a reaction” (qtd. in Vitvitskiy). And in turn, she as an artist anticipates that
individuality and is not afraid of going counter to Krymov, “you can’t just be obedient
and do as he wants. I would die. I’m not interested in that and Dmitry Anatolyevich isn’t
interested in that. I translate his desires into my art. You bring ideas so that you’re alive
In the words of the actors, an acute sense of mutual trust shines through. For
Krymov, in order to create a performance the company needs to “live together” for at
least a year (Shea). The atmosphere that allows Krymov’s Lab to create is one of family.
“If you’re going to work for a long time with the same people: how do you create
a family? By living together. You know, you’re newlyweds but that doesn’t mean
you’re family, right? It takes a while to create a family. Family is when you go
through all the difficult times and the good times. Then you become a family.”
(personal interview).
The idea of a family brings out Krymov’s childhood memories of his father’s
company. Now, thinking of how “those young happy people started to push [Efros] out,
the betrayal,” Krymov is perplexed “I don’t know how he bore it. I still don’t. I hope I
never do. It’s scary to think about that” (“ A Conversation With Krymov”). Trust is at the
core of the creative process for Krymov: it allows for exploration and play. But it is also
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 77
the core of the performance. As Krymov articulates, “The main thing is our interaction.
From this atmosphere of trust, the shared sense of interest is born (Brown 174).
According to Punina, idea and interest spark this subjective ache in the company, and
thus they begin the exploratory first stage (Brown 173). It is during this time that the first
etudes (Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 87). But nothing is formally
structured: “we do lots of things, but I do not remember the name of these things” (qtd. in
Thomas “My Manner of Telling the Story” 87). During this investigative time, the words
‘child’ and ‘play’ are often heard in the room. Kyrmov’s rehearsal process brings out the
child in his actors. And Krymov is one more child. Evgeniy Startsev describes the
relationship of the celebrated director to the process, “Like a big child, every time
[Krymov] discovers something, he runs to share it with us. No matter his stature, he is
invested in each of us. We do not have the infamous actor-director distance.” (qtd. in
Vitvitskiy).
The first stage of the design process is a generative stage in which actors and
designers work side by side. Brown calls the technique ‘genealogy mechanism:’ each
member of the ensemble brings their own images and “then await[s] the results of [the]
interplay between their various pictures and their dreams” (174). Design is introduced in
this early stage of creation, as it is the foundation for Krymov’ theatrical events. "We
start with some small idea, prop, or action. And in front of your eyes, it gets transformed
into something else entirely," Krymov explained (qtd. in O’Mahoney). During the
exploratory phase, Krymov Laboratory finds the poetic manner of the show. They test
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 78
way that imbues them with meaning. “Each object has a conversation. There is an
exercise I like (that I came up with). I give them an object—anything: a phone, broken
cup—that I think has a conversation or maybe not. They have to take the object and then
choose two others that will make me think about life. A soldier button, with a thread and
a photo tells me something about that person” (“A Conversation With Krymov”). In
exercises like this, the company goes through hundred of iterations in which personal
Then each composition is assessed for its emotional impact in a group discussion
led by Kyrmov (Brown 173). Krymov asks the actors what they thought about each étude
and then describes what he saw. Together, they try to find a way to express how they feel
about the idea visually, symbolically and psychologically (Thomas “My Manner Of
Telling the Story” 87). This process is inspired by Meyerhold’s ideas of the director’s
(Brown 173). Throughout this process, Krymov bears in mind the idea and the structure,
but keeps it flexible. “Everything else can change as you go along. I have some points
marked out for myself, but much is totally dependent on the actors; there are many, many
parts of every performance that I didn't come up with. My greatest joy comes from
watching the show and not remembering what's mine and what's theirs,” he explains (qtd.
in Shea).
Krymov sees this first part of rehearsal as a free-growing stage: “It's like a tree. A
tree can't make a mistake just growing; the leaves come out whichever way they want.
Only once it's grown can you think about how to prune it and the form can emerge from
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 79
there.” However, as they approach the second part of the process, Krymov settles on a
structure and a trajectory. He starts shaping the tree according to that initial idea. In some
cases, such as the second workshop at Yale University for the development of his new
piece The Square Root of Three Sisters, he works off a preliminary script that integrates
material developed in the first stage of rehearsals. What Krymov looks for in this
instances is both the establishment of the given circumstances for the actors and a
distillation of the material so that they are “absolutely sure about what is happening and
why” (“A Conversation With Krymov”). In the words of David Chambers, a friend and
collaborator of Krymov Laboratory, Krymov takes on the roles of shaman and surgeon.
As a shaman he empowers the vision. As a surgeon he carves the theatrical event with
precision3.
Precision for Krymov does not mean meticulous calculated coldness. On the
contrary, Krymov plunges himself in the process of staging the play. The line between
performance and the real world is non-existent. Krymov exists in the action, acting
alongside the actors. As the scenes progress, he throws images and ideas at them. “These
two people are two kamikazes—they know they are going to die,”4 he says to the actors
playing Masha and Vershinin. To the actress playing Arkadina he offers, “You are going
to burn everything like Napoleon. You’re not going to allow it.” As the actors follow his
lead, he keeps coming with more ideas that build upon what they are doing. “You can’t
throw cigarettes at the corpse. It wouldn’t be polite.” He gives the actors more than they
3
David Chambers, in discussion with the author, January 2016.
4
All these quotes and information comes from attending the Krymov’s second
workshop at Yale School of Drama in January 2016.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 80
can rationally comprehend. “It’s nuts. It’s terrifying,” director alumna Sara Holdren
considers the good performers those who actually do not copy what he is saying (personal
interview). It is not an act of deceit, but an acknowledgment of the actors’ artistry. During
rehearsals at Yale he softly told one of the performers, “Right now you didn’t do it right.
I’ll tell you why: you remembered what you had to do and did it. You didn’t add anything
motivation: he offers the energy, the intention, the rhythm and the direction in the service
of his vision. Working with Yagil Eliraz, third year directing MFA candidate at the Yale
School of Drama, who played during the workshop a character blend of Kulygin from
Three Sisters and Trigorin from The Seagull, their joint forces transformed the
character’s obsession with writing into a scary feature. The script had a reference to
writing because of being a citizen of the motherland, but in the improvisatory frenzy of
rehearsal, Trigorin became a spy agent who was also recording what the audience was
doing. The need to write gained another more dangerous undertone, all coming from
combined creative forces. Krymov wants the actors to live the scene and surprise
Krymov explains, “It has to be truthful and spontaneous: that’s the secret. It’s
very hard to do in theatre because we are five steps ahead. Ninety percent of actors listen
to their director and then I know what is going to happen – and I am not going to laugh.”
By overloading the actors he ensures that spontaneity will arise from their performances,
“details that you don’t even know where they come from.” Krymov compares this
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 81
process to Jackson Pollock’s painting, “if he thought about every line, it wouldn’t have
the expression it has.” And because spontaneity lives in the rehearsal room, inevitably the
performance keeps growing. Surprise is at the core Kyrmov’s the creative process, “in
my shows there’s a point where you wonder ‘how is this going to happen’ but then it
happens and then you wonder ‘where did we find the strength to make it happen?’ The
important thing is not to lose the meaning—that is what matters” (“A Conversation With
Krymov”).
The performances are alive, playing by the rules of the game that the ensemble
and Krymov have created but without being adamant about what those rules are. They are
highly emotional and rooted in poetry: “If you touch the cup that’s it—you have to leave
your husband,” Krymov clarifies to actress Annelise Lawson, who plays Masha, in a
scene where Vershinin makes a magic trick that makes a cup cross the table towards her,
a metaphor for their nascent affair. That rule will motivate the acting. As Krymov offers:
“I’m asking please do not move the cup because I love you but I can’t touch it.” It is a
complex game.
psychological level of the character, the present situation of the game on stage and the
game with the audience. In one of Krymov’s most recent productions, the children show
In Their Own Words. A. Pushkin “Eugene Onegin”, the four actors simultaneously play
in four levels: they play themselves, the quirky narrators, lead characters in their telling
of Eugene Onegin and other minor character. Similarly, in The Square Root of Three
Sisters, actors played themselves and their roles, but swapped roles in many occasions.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 82
Every level is always present, but some become heightened in certain moments of the
performance.
With the help of Maria Smolnikova, Krymov employs an exercise for the actors to
live in the character. This exercise is very interesting in nature since it seems to
consists of an interview in character, where other actors, Krymov and Smolnikova ask
questions (sometimes with no easy answer) to an actor in character. What Krymov looks
for is truthfulness and specificity in the actors’ responses; not only living in the giving
circumstances but finding a way to make them interesting for the audience⎯ a delicate
eloquent way, “other directors have their hand tools, chisels... Krymov brings a hammer,
a tiger saw. He hasn’t reinvented the wheel—he has invented the combustion engine.”5
At the end of a long day of rehearsing, Krymov jokingly throws himself into David
Chambers’ arms, mimicking exhaustion. It’s all a game, and two minutes later, Krymov
can be seen seated on a chair, his blue eyes gazing at infinity, thinking.
5
Andrew Freeburg, in discussion with the author, January 2016.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 83
Forget what you have read; forget what you have seen; forget what you know.
Since Dmitry Krymov made his directorial debut with Hamlet in 2002, he has broken all
the rules, even the ones he established himself. Each of his plays has been a new
experiment that has challenged all expectations. He is the response to the yearnings the
masters of the past expressed in that centenary celebration of the meeting in Slavyanski
professionals who could create a theatre based on spectacle, Design, not words. But
Krymov didn’t stop there. After challenging theatre pedagogy by having designers
perform, he expanded his own boundaries by inviting actors. Now, for the first time, he is
using non-Russian actors for his new production at the Yale School of Drama. After
staged a play based on monologues; a play based on plays, and eventually made a classic
play explode. Even the genre he created, Designer’s Theatre, has trouble keeping up with
It seems that, after all, the real axiom of Designer’s Theatre is not the designers on
stage, nor the idea of Design as action, but that there is no rule that cannot be broken.
When design is alive on stage, with spontaneity as the imperative, nothing is sacred.
Creation and destruction give way to one another. Krymov is aware, “there are no rules
that you cannot break. Even my own rules I like to break” (personal interview). And
maybe because of this, he prefers not to write his system down. Krymov has a restless,
questioning spirit. And each question goes into a folder that will eventually become a
show the same way his images transform before our eyes on stage.
A NEW KIND OF JOY: THE THEATRE OF DMITRY KRYMOV 84
When approaching the writing of this project it was necessary to acknowledge the
fact that with Krymov, last year’s ideas might already be part of the past. Krymov’s
theatre embodies the constant search for pure theatricality. However, as Krymov and
Designer’s Theatre grow, this paper hopes to serve as a witness of a special moment in
time preceding more exciting changes. Where Dmitry Krymov is headed will prove to be
Works Cited
Bown, Matthew Cullerne. Socialist Realist Painting. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1998. 141.
Brown, Bryan. "In Search of the Idea: Scenography, Collective Composition, and
Efros, Anatoly. The Joy Of Rehearsal: Reflections on Interpretation and Practice. New
Eisenstein, Sergei, and Daniel Gerould. “Montage of Attractions: For "enough Stupidity
in Every Wiseman"”. The Drama Review: TDR 18.1 (1974): 77–85. Web.
Freedman, John. “A Lesson, Attack on Soviet Drama in 'Gorki-10'” The Moscow Times.
2012.
Freedman, John. “Director Dmitry Krymov's Beautiful, Very Russian Blues.” The
Freedman, John. “Dmitry Krymov by John Freedman.” BOMB. 136. Summer 2016.
Freedman, John. “Dreamy Show That Is Theater With a Capital T.” The Moscow Times.
2009.
Foux, Olga. “The Spiral Turn.” International Theatre Institute Info. (2010). Web. 20
March 2016.
Giurgea, Adrian. “Approaches to Theatre Training: All Eyes on Design: When Designer
and Actor Are One.” American Theatre. 26:1, 2009. 46-47; 145-147.
Grynszpan, Emmanuel. Baryshnikov and Krymov collaborate for the ages. Russia
Krymov, Dmitry. "A Conversation with Krymov." Yale University. Off Broadway
Krymov, Dmitry. "Meeting With Director Dmtry Krymov." Kinoteatr Zvezda, Moscow.
Mak, Irina. «Такое невозможно больше нигде — только здесь». Новости искусства.
Rydler, Yulia. Interview with Dmitry Krymov. “Persona Grata.” NTV America. 13
Sellar, Thomas. “Conversation: Tom Sellar & Dmitry Krymov” TMU 30 Years. 2015. 19-
25.
Shea, Brendan. “Catching Light in a Hat: Interview with Dmitry Krymov.” Записки
Shulgat, Anna. “The New Russian "Hamlet": Without a Hero.” Slavic and East European
Sidorov, Evgeniy. “Наталья Крымова. Имена” Знамя 4, 2006. Web. 1 March 2016.
Szondi, Peter. Theory of the Modern Drama: A Critical Edition. University of Minnesota
Press, 1987.
Thomas, James. “Demon: A View from Above - When director and performers are
Practice. By Anatoly Efros. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. 1-19.
Print.
Thomas, James. “My Manner of Telling the Story: An Interview with Dmitry Krymov.”