On the toe of a pair of bare feet, which are spread on poster tombs about Weimar, there's a card with a caution "mind your steps". It hints that this year guest dancing theatres rule the tune in the program of the festival. But the deserted streets of Weimar don't make it obvious that the festival is in swing.
In the congress-centre of new Weimarhall, one of the steel-and-glass palaces plopped in the historic centers in many cities of Eastern Germany, the public is welcomed heartily. Large set reproduce elegantly shabby 19th century Russian pub. The pub owner invites guests from the audience, and treats them to a shot of jokes and vodka. The so-called Oleg Menshikov's "live theatre", TT814, which was founded in Moscow in 1995, premiers in Germany.
One act play "Gamblers" (1982), the last drama by Gogol, is performed as is indicated in the subtitle - "The events of long bygone days". Of course, the story of cheats trying to cheat each other must be understood as a parody of contemporary Moscow situation. But Menshikov, who not only staged the play together with Galina Dubovskaya, but also played (with incredibly rich in shades mischief) one of the gamblers, relied on the original lucidity of the material.
The actor, who performed with Catherine Deneuve in "East-West" and won an award in Cannes for his role in the Russian film "Burnt by the Sun", is a star in Russia. But Menshikov is not a "revolution-maker" on stage. He brightens up the old theatre tradition with live artistic spirit.
"Gamblers" are not a psychologically realistic masterpiece, but rather a slightly leisurely comedy of tricks, which in the choreographically active Moscow production develops in the peculiarly bright work of the type. It is aimed at full-strength actors' performance to impress the public.
The ensemble, dressed in folk costumes, strums about all the wide room of the pub, providing the actors with the musical basis for their pantomimic and dancing movements and nearly operetta singing. They act with the expressive gestures, mimicry, and self-irony too. Realistic performances of the actors are perfectly and lively combined with intended "overplaying", when the actors visibly and audibly imitate sounds of a house and cattle-shed. In the end, the cheated sharper, who is robbed of his money in this intricate swindling comedy, is allowed, with the added lines, to speak philosophically hinting at deceiving and self-deceiving.
Social self-determination of the sharpers, who consider their swindling to be normal and even necessary, and also the figure of bribing official, can look critical and bitter in Moscow. But at guest performances in Germany, the viewers will take this rather (though, only on the surface) originally produced play, at the outside, only as an exciting ironical theatre. It is not at all embarrassing, confusing or provocative. The basic reason for such a performance at Weimar Festival is probably a long-lived tradition of Russian guest theatres.
The Festival is one of the projects, established after the reunion of Germany by Federal Ministry of German Domestic Affairs of that time, with the purpose of "Weimar to contribute to the self-reconciliation of German people". After the resignation of the long-term head of the Festival, Bernd Kaufmann (who now in Brandenburg Neuhardenberg palace develops a similar to Weimar, but in many respects disputable high culture program involving some big names) and acquiring by Weimar the status of European culture city, on its 12th year, the Festival obviously searches its new conceptual and creative place in and for Weimar. But with the budget pared down by 1.2 million Euro, it is hard to compose a program different from the festivals and exhibitions in other cities.
Creative council, which comprises the representatives of federal and local authorities, wants to provide for increasing the quality of the festival in 2003. For the moment, they want to replace its temporal creative leader, Ralf Schlueter, by a more eminent successor. In this view, there appear the names of all-round Christoph Stoelzl and the former official of Berlin festival, Francesca Spinazzi (who now is already responsible for dance program in German National Theatre in Weimar), and even the name of bellicose Nike Wagner is mentioned.
But this fundamental question - for whom and what kind of culture Weimar Festival must attract in the small Thuering town on the Ilm river - even on the 12th year of the festival still remains unanswered.

Submitted by Juliet Regibot