The organizers of the theatre olimpiada would be foolish not to use the presence of the worlds best street theaters as an opportunity to learn fr om the masters. If one considers that the street theater movement born at the dawn of perestroika faded out soon after, and that those few representatives who have mastered this difficult technique have received contracts in the West, leaving us with pop stars, then we must be honest: we are again too late, by about ty years.
There were great experiences with schools of street theater. Polunin's «Litsedei- Litsei» gave instruction in St. Petersburg fr om 1987, and there was also «The World Caravan» in 1989.
The school will give participants the chance to acquaint themselves with achievements in world culture in this field. Moreover, the organizers of the Olympiad have received offers from various groups expressing the desire to work with our students and young actors.
Thus, the idea of opening a school was born, which will offer master classes with leaders of street theater, clown technique and carnival centers. One of the conditions for working in the school is willingness to do the menial work connected with receiving our guests. Each student will know have a list of responsibilities according to a tight schedule. Such organization is dictated by the ethics and ideology of street theater, wh ere the car carrying sets can also transport the leading actor, the director can sell tickets, and the primadonna can prepare a pyrotechnic display. Here, there are no servants or masters, only a team.
The Managing Director of the school is a director, teacher, actor, bus driver, lifter and special effects expert Yuri Berladin, a person of the street (in the best sense of the word), with experience in mastering the open spaces of European countries and of our vast homeland. Obsessed with the idea of transplanting the street movement to Russia's expanses, he dreams of erecting a monument to street theater at the crossroads of the two roads from Kerch to Vologda and Vologda to Kerch, wh ere, once upon a time, Happy met Sad.
The Managing Director and the Artistic Director, Vyacheslav Polunin, agree that the school has its foundation in the Stanislavsky-Tukhachevsky system, as it was named by famed Italian director and street theater theorist Horatio Chertok. And it is to him that the school’s motto is attributed: «We don’t just need actors, we need samurai».