The Optical Theatre (in Vladimirskoye) — MTK (museum and tourism complex). Its programmes are aimed at tourists and local residents heading for Svetloyar (the village of Vladimirskoye) and for the Voskresenskoe Povetluzhye Nature Park. In Russia the Optical Theatre will find a second birth in the village of Vladimirskoye in 2015.
The theatre's repertoire explores the themes of the shared destiny of the region's peoples, turning to the most legendary, Chthonic Forces and to the religious priorities supported by the state, and helps to awaken nativist and patriotic feelings. In this respect the Opt.T. is akin to the Japanese shadow theatre, but differs from it in that it displays full-colour images modulated by sunlight (or by light close to it in spectral composition), and the resulting pictures and views, according to the developers, are practically indistinguishable from natural ones. An important part of the complex is the special sound equipment, the use of which produces a psychotherapeutic effect.
The theatre's main programmes: "The Land of Delphinia", "The World and Man (macrocosm and microcosm)", open up the worlds of the artists Leonardo da Vinci, Mikalojus Čiurlionis and Remedios Varo.
The essence of the phenomenon
Unlike a film or a video, in which the aesthetic product is an unchangeable structure, an optical performance is a structure that changes as it is performed, open and "living" (with an unfinished cycle of action): a complex integral image, produced by many static and dynamic projection devices, is created by the author-performer in the presence of the audience. They can see the author sitting in the same hall at a special multi-channel instrument that lets him control every element of the overall composition remotely, in real time.
The Optical Theatre being built in Vladimirskoye is the only one in Russia.
It is intended for tourists to contemplate illusions that recreate bygone eras and stories of historical events. One of the main features of the Optical Theatre is the psychotherapeutic effect created by an integral flow of light and sound.
Significance
The governor expressed confidence that the creation of the entire "Grad Kitezh" complex would make it possible to hold festivals of world class, which would allow the Voskresenskoye district and the region to develop actively, not only on the strength of Diveyevo tourism.
"In its significance for the Voskresensky District, building the theatre is like the Olympics for Sochi."
According to Valery Shantsev, there is no theatre like this optical one either in the Nizhny Novgorod Region or in all of Russia.
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The governor's working visit to the Voskresensky district took place on 19 March 2015 and was devoted precisely to the construction and imminent opening of the "Grad Kitezh" museum and tourism complex in the village of Vladimirskoye. The first words of Valery Pavlinovich as he entered the new building of the complex were remembered by everyone present: "Well then, have you built a temple?" And indeed, many perceive the complex as a temple, not even of art but of culture — so broad is the intended scope of the future organisation's activity.
The governor was shown the first exhibitions of the museum and tourism complex: the exhibition of works by Aleksey Myasnikov, which has already travelled abroad, and new works from the museum of Ceramics on the theme of the hidden city of Kitezh. The auditorium of the future theatre was inspected and tried out: here the guests watched a video about Lake Svetloyar. The next big reception for "Grad Kitezh" is expected in a couple of weeks: members of the Association of National Parks and Nature Reserves of the Volga Federal District will visit the "Voskresenskoye Povetluzhye" nature park. |
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How the theatre works
It is being built in the village of Vladimirskoye in the Voskresensky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. It is assumed that the main performance of the Optical Theatre will be scenes from the life of the Kitezh and from the ancient history of the The Principality of Nizhny Novgorod, scenes from the life of the The Founding of Nizhny Novgorod, the holy and right-believing prince Yuri Vsevolodovich.
What distinguishes the Optical Theatre from cinema, television and computers is the structure of the signal of the new instruments, which is created on the same principles that exist in nature.
The mechanism of the theatre was developed by S. M. Zorin and named by him "solar".
Some of the instruments do indeed work by using real sunlight. The emission of an integral, continuous flow of the spectrum makes it possible to obtain any static and dynamic images of historical events. The image on the screen (or system of screens) is then practically indistinguishable from the natural one.
Background
The site of construction of the theatre...
Technology
"Fate has ordained that my life for more than forty-five years has been bound up with the life of the Optical Theatre. I myself can no longer tell where my personal history ends and the history of the Optical Theatre begins," says Sergey Mikhaylovich Zorin.
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Until this day I was certain that there is nothing more beautiful than the Earth seen from an orbit of 400 kilometres and the mesmerising auroras.
Today, having visited your theatre, I understood: what you have created on Earth is an order of magnitude higher than what I saw from space over the course of seven months. I am sure that this gift was given by God. Thank you for giving it to people. God keep you!Pilot-cosmonaut No. 51 Anatoly Berezovoy, 18 August 1997, Moscow.
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The actors of this theatre are beautiful and eternal, and can speak without words. One actor is LIGHT, another is SOUND, and the invisible actress is called MUSIC.
Cooperation with the Roerich Centre
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In March 2008 the Optical Theatre ceased its activity on the premises of the N.K. Roerich Centre-Museum (ICR). This was connected with the decision of the ICR management to terminate the employment contract with me as its creator and permanent director.
All the theatre's staff submitted their resignations in protest against the inhuman attitude of the ICR administration and against the confiscation of all the unique instruments I had created long before the ICR came into being (from 1969 to 1989). Having sealed the premises, the administration allowed us access neither to our equipment nor to the slides we had made. We were able to take away only part of the old apparatus and materials that I had been collecting for decades in order to create new instruments. The part of the equipment and materials that we did not manage to take away, the administration ordered to be loaded into two enormous containers and dumped at the city landfill, even though my students (the theatre's staff) asked that everything that had not perished completely in the fire and could possibly be repaired be given to them for setting up a children's studio. Naturally, the request went unanswered. Earlier the Centre's administration, in the article "Let Us Not Be Moved by Masks" posted on the ICR website, gave its own interpretation of what had happened, promising everyone that the Optical Theatre would continue its work now without its creator and the team he had trained, but on new (?) principles.. However, instead of continuing the work, the new team appointed by L.V. Shaposhnikova accidentally burned down the Optical Theatre, which led to the destruction of the unique set of continual instruments, the only one in the world, that I had created over twenty years of intense work and modernised together with my students in the course of the theatre's activity. In the article on the ICR website the blame for the fire was even shifted onto me, accusing me of badly made wiring. Yet we had worked with that very same wiring for 12 years without a single incident. The article, extremely unfair and tendentious, has been on the ICR website since the beginning of September 2008. Nevertheless, I did not reply to this article until December 2009, believing that in the ICR administration malice and the desire for revenge would give way to a constructive approach and that they would take this unjust article off the site in order to put an end to the quarrels, switching their strength, time and energy to creative work. But the ICR management not only failed to remove this article, it is also trying to hinder me in building a new Optical Theatre. To this end letters are written to responsible state officials, in which the ICR management does its utmost to belittle the role and significance of the Optical Theatre, although figures of culture, cosmonauts, teachers and others spoke of it with delight (see the Optical Theatre's visitors' book posted on our website). Taking all of the above into account and trying to put an end to the mutual quarrels, at the beginning of December 2009 I posted on our website the article "It Really Is Time to Stop Being Moved by Masks", in which I described in detail everything that had happened to the theatre at the ICR over 18 years, since I worked at the SFR (ICR) from the very first day of its founding (from October 1989) until March 2008. Yes, my subjective point of view did not coincide with the point of view of the management, but I tried to describe only facts. I did not manage to avoid an emotional assessment, and I regret a certain sharpness of it. But what was done to the theatre and its staff could have overflowed the cup of patience of even the most patient person. In the three weeks since the article appeared on the site I have received a great many letters. Most of their authors support me and lament that I kept silent for so long. But there are also authors extremely concerned about the fate of the Roerich movement, who suggest that I take the article off the site "so as not to shake the foundations of the RM". On this matter they should have addressed a different recipient many years ago, but since they have now turned to me, I answered them that from the very beginning I had no wish to leave this article on our site for long. Moreover, in my article I proposed that the ICR management stop the mutual accusations and switch all efforts to creative work: "I propose that we meet each other halfway and stop writing negative material about one another once and for all. As soon as the ICR takes the article 'Let Us Not Be Moved by Masks' off its website, I will immediately take this article about the ICR off the Optical Theatre's site, for any peace is better than war." On 13 December, having learned that the ICR was going to celebrate its anniversary two days later, I sent the following text to the address roerich@icr.su: "I congratulate the entire staff of the International Centre of the Roerichs on its 20th anniversary. For 18 years, from the first day of the founding of the SFR-ICR, I worked at the Centre and naturally would like to see it flourishing. I sincerely wish the staff of the ICR great creative success in all their affairs and undertakings. The accumulated misunderstandings and mutual grievances must be cast aside. A sense of responsibility before the future must prevail. In that future I am ready to cooperate, if the Centre does after all decide to realise S.N. Roerich's wish to have an Optical Theatre within the structure of the N.K. Roerich Museum. Creator of the Optical Theatre S.M. Zorin". Thus, I was ready to take my article off the site as early as 14 December, had there been at least some positive signals from the ICR management. Now, at the end of December, it has become clear that these signals will not come. I suppose that my congratulation was concealed from the staff, and that many at the ICR still do not know about my article either — hence the "comrades'" wish to wage war to a victorious end (?). But I absolutely do not want to drag all the quarrels into the new year. Since I called for showing responsibility before the future and casting aside all quarrels, I must be the first to do so. That is precisely why I am taking my article off the Optical Theatre's site and inviting the concerned Roerich movement to see how the ICR management responds to this step. |
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A new kind of performing art
The optical theatre is a new kind of performing art, realised with the help of special instruments developed by the author. Over the last two decades the author's slide films and optical performances have been seen by tens of thousands of Soviet and foreign viewers. Among them were such leading masters of our culture as A. Tarkovsky, Yu. Lyubimov, Yu. Solntseva, A. Schnittke and other artists, writers and actors. The reaction of the audiences shows an urgent need for the wide dissemination of this new art form. But this calls for fundamentally new technical instruments, a school of performers, funds and time.
In the home creative laboratory the following works for the optical theatre have been created over these years: "Holy Rus", "Requiem", "Karma", "Inscrutable Are the Ways…", "The Calling", "The Himalayas", "The World of Roerich" and others, as well as the cycle of slide films "Beauty Will Save the World".
In addition, over the last 15 years about 120 of the author's slide films, intended for relaxation, activation, switching of attention and the awakening of the creative impulse, have been put into the practice of intensive teaching and aesthetotherapy in various cities of the country. During the same period a special technical set of instruments consisting of 16 classes was developed, as well as a theoretical substantiation of the necessity and even the inevitability of the appearance of a new performing art based on audiovisual means. Such an art is precisely the optical (audiovisual) theatre by technology and magical by its possibilities and purpose — a living open structure with an unfinished cycle of action and with feedback between the author-performer and the audience, who are inevitably drawn into the magic of co-creation. Today the author has complete clarity as to how to create such an optical (magical) theatre as a new aesthetic value, as a "window into the world of nuance".
By its technological features the optical theatre could be related to the audiovisual screen arts (cinema, television, mono- and multi-screen systems for showing slide films). But the optical theatre differs from them radically. Unlike a film or a video, in which the finished aesthetic product is an unchangeable closed (dead) structure, an optical performance is a structure that changes in the course of the performance, open and "living" (with an unfinished cycle of action).
In a film or a video the process of creating a work of art is alienated from the viewer and takes place "there" and "then"; for it to meet the viewer it has to be preserved in some way, which film and video technology makes possible, and delivered to the viewer. Having covered a certain interval of space and time, the film meets the viewer. But the replicated copy on which the sounds and images are recorded cannot enter into any feedback with the viewer during the screening, i.e. the events on the screen do not respond to people's reactions and emotions. Exactly the same picture occurs when mono- and multi-screen slide films controlled by computers are shown. The programme for them is likewise composed and entered "there" and "then", and the process of creating the programme and loading it into the computer's memory takes, as a rule, a period of time tens and hundreds of times longer than the duration of the slide film itself.
In the optical theatre, by contrast, the highly complex integral image, obtained from many static and dynamic projection devices, is created by the author-performer in the presence of the audience. They can see the author sitting in the same hall at a special multi-channel instrument that allows him to control all the elements of the overall composition remotely and in real time.
When the author repeats an optical performance, any nuancing, any degree of improvisation is possible. Exact repetition, as in cinema, is practically impossible, just as it is impossible to repeat a theatrical performance in absolutely identical fashion. The performing nature of optical performances, the many-sided living link between the creator-performer and the audience — even this alone shows that a new kind, a new direction is appearing among the screen arts.
The phenomenon of feedback in a collective meditative act of co-creation has yet to be studied, but it undoubtedly exists (an emotional and psychological link, a link through a certain "biofield" that arises in the collective, non-indifferent perception of a work of art).
According to numerous responses from viewers, at optical performances, which are so far held at an experimental level, it proves possible to achieve a special state close to catharsis.
S.M. Zorin Collection of articles based on the proceedings of the academic conference "The Modern Laocoön. Aesthetic Problems of Synaesthesia", ed. by E.G. Yakovlev, Moscow: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1992. – 128 pp.
Interesting facts
- Sergei Zorin created his first light-and-sound compositions 40 years ago, and they were called "Holy Rus" and "Requiem". At that time, in the years of atheism, this was a bold act.
- Today the only optical theatre is in Italy. "I will not conceal that, as the inventor who over four decades created the whole set of unique optical instruments of this theatre, it was very pleasant and surprising for me to learn this. The Italians, who came regularly to our international conferences, invariably visited the Optical Theatre as well, saying that they would dream of having something similar in their future cultural centre. It was precisely because they were so impressed by our theatre and by the light-and-sound compositions they saw in it that I was twice invited to their Commune, where I was received with great warmth and hospitality…."
- In 2006 it was destroyed in Moscow by staff of the N.K. Roerich Centre-Museum under the leadership of L.V. Shaposhnikova.
Repertoire
An example of the Optical Theatre's repertoire (November 2007).
The world and man
The creative work of the Demiurge and of Man. The underwater world. Dolphins. Author: Sergei Zorin, accompaniment by Daria Golovanova 1 November Thursday 18:30
A descendant of the Albigensians, or the invisible man
About the Cathars (Albigensians), about their extermination by the Catholic Church in the 13th century and about the descendant of the Albigensians L.S. Theremin, our contemporary. Author: Sergei Zorin, accompaniment by Daria Golovanova 6 November Tuesday 18:30
The realm of Roerich
Part I of the cycle "The Himalayas". Author: Sergei Zorin, accompaniment by Daria Golovanova 8 November Thursday 18:30
The radiant genius of Raphael
From the cycle "Titans of the Renaissance". The life and work of the great artist. Author: Sergei Zorin, accompaniment by Daria Golovanova 13 November Tuesday 18:30
Atlantis-Egypt-21st century
Reflections… on the existence and destruction of earlier civilisations and on the possible future of the modern world. Author: Sergei Zorin, accompaniment by Daria Golovanova 15 November Thursday 18:30
Alchemy. Light from the depths of the ages
Famous alchemists. Their life, death and immortality. Authors: Elena Zorina and Roman Romanov 20 November Tuesday 18:30
The Little Prince
An optical performance for children of senior preschool and junior school age, based on the plot of the work of the same name by A. de Saint-Exupéry. Authors: Daria Golovanova and Roman Romanov 24 November Saturday 16:00
Mercy
A theatrical staging of the only surviving play by N. K. Roerich. Author: Irina Gryzlova, accompaniment by Daria Golovanova 27 November Tuesday 16:00
Altai. The Path to the Summit
A journey along the trails of Altai to Belukha. Author: Alexander Efremov, accompaniment by Daria Golovanova 29 November Thursday 18:30