At the festival “Golden Mask” the verbatim documentary “CUB” was shown. It lasts only one hour and was staged by the Dominanta Youth Studio-Theater in Gubakha, Perm Territory. With us, we play it even in the old mines; in Moscow, the classical scene has become the bowels of the earth.
Gubakha dates back to the middle of the 18th century. She has her own special story. In 1986, the children’s theater “Dialogue” appeared there, transformed in 2000 into the youth studio-theater “Dominanta”. On the Internet you can find information that eight clubs operate in Gubakha, there is a House of Culture with amateur groups. From the scene, a text about how a dress, an element of a national costume, a belt, a headdress was found in an abandoned house of culture in different years … Culture was sent to the trash Of the history.
KUB is the Kizelovsky coal basin. The actors of Dominanty, together with the director Dmitry Ogorodnikov, conducted research, studied archival materials and the urban environment with the local museum of local traditions and the library, reached the events of the beginning of the 20th century, the Soviet era, years war, met former miners, recorded their stories. As a result, there were awe-inspiring and moving stories of how wives didn’t sleep at night when their husbands descended into the mine, how they instantly fell asleep when they heard the turn of the key in the front door , how they spent their free time and played each other, got lost and were born again. A whole era has developed from a multitude of domestic and private details.
Director Dmitry Ogorodnikov, who first arrived from St. Life. In the late 1990s the mines began to close due to unprofitability. By 2000, coal mining had ceased. The villages have become ghosts. People were leaving, drinking…
In the half-light of the stage, like at the bottom of a mine, there are four small tables. Behind them, four young heroines tell stories related to the development of the city over the years. The fifth table is located in the stalls in front of the audience, behind it is a more experienced actress. All of them – Marina Zuevas, Marina Pozdeeva, Ksenia Spiridonova, Yulia Trapikas, Elena Sharantay – will share their own experiences of hereditary residents and newcomers recently arrived in Gubakha during the finale.
They will explain to the public the meaning of certain words from the miner’s dictionary, they will tell you what a mine and a gallery are, of which we still have an idea. But what a “brake” is, many learned for the first time. It turns out that’s the name of the lunch they take with them to the mine.
The mines were renamed and then returned to their old names. In addition to men, women worked there. During the war, they had to replace fathers, husbands and sons who had gone to the front. The heroines remember the good and strong men who worked in the mine, the value of each of them in production.
Mining folklore is rich and unpredictable. It is amazing that people, working in the most difficult conditions, did not lose their sense of humor, organized practical jokes, lowering sheep into the mine, whose eyes glowed in the dark and, in combination with horns, created images of evil spirits. Only strong people could encounter devilry in the bowels of the earth and not die of fear.
Reminiscent of aluminum foil, shining like anthracite in the beams of the spotlights, the curtain becomes a magical screen. On this one, the faces of the miners follow one another. They are like reflections from another world, arising at the behest of the Mistress of Copper Mountain. Near the elevator, delivering to the mine. Those who have already descended underground know how narrow it is and not at all fabulously beautiful. “The Underground Kingdom” was fabulously invented by decorator Ulyana Glumova. Whole generations worked there and strengthened the power of the country, ruthlessly thrown into the dustbin of history as a race of waste. The actresses tell how they acted in the United Kingdom in the event of liquidation of mines. First of all, all the people who could be laid off were trained in other specialties, providing a future life, and only then the mine was closed. And in Gubakha they simply condemned the people, their settlements, their children and their homes to despair and extinction, depriving them of prospects, destroying the whole world, which in reality turned out not to be at all fabulous.
Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28984 of March 7, 2023
Newspaper Title: Evil Sheep in the Bowels
