We speak about all of our internal problems in the Tatar language so that it's more familiar to the people. But when you start talking about some larger scale topics, then they start saying ...

Do you remember the moment you realized that?

It happened probably after Alif started. What makes the Tatar language any worse than, say, Russian or English? Here. Well, where am I worse off? right? I don't know why it's so ... taboo.

Maybe it's because of the traditional perceptions of reality. Because, let's say, a playwright ... there's a drama it's focused on the countryside, based on country problems. But for some reason, urban themes aren't raised very often by playwrights, even though it would be kind of a gold mine, in fact. Because, seeing, for example, Mähäbbät FM [a modern Tatar comedic play about working in a radio station], where urban, student life is dissected—that's close to people's hearts; young people would want to see it; it's something they find interesting. But there's not very much of that kind of urban drama, I think.

In fact, in an village there are many changes happening, the stratum has already shifted. All these half-romantic maidens running around in headscarves, they're like remnants from the past. I mean, watching it is like looking at an artefact, like a museum showing how they lived in the 1980s and 90s, but it doesn't really have any connection to real life at all.

Did you conceive of Alif as a Tatar performance?

First we wanted to make a performance based on Iranian poetry, because I really like it. They know how to weave together unexpected images there ... and some kind of Indian philosophy, and then concepts like the tree of life emerged from somewhere. It also described everything in Islamic culture, but for some reason it didn't become a prototype for ... well, they didn't become images for our poetry. I mean, we don't think that globally. We think my homeland, my village, my mother, my Tatarstan, those are the themes we serve. That archive of a global image doesn't really exist for us.

Well, the old poetry does. But for some reason we don't return to that.

So, I say, all the same Tatar poet Ğabdulla Tuqay also used the Arabic script to write, so let's start with Tuqay ... we took the poem Tugan tel (My Mother Tongue) and the alphabet and we went from there.

And you're not afraid to go back to ancient poetry?

No, why?

Well, for example, my worldview is completely different and I don't think I'll never understand what they really meant. Never.

You won't understand because you do not have the same background, you see? So why not explore that background? That would be interesting. Why did people write that way? Why, for example, did the image of a rose not mean a rose, but something else? What was the implication?

Yes, but even those who can explain the roses, moths and candles are also people who lived in the interval between that time and ours. They also have their own worldview, their own interpretation. It's not the primary source.

It's not the primary source, sure ... that's why I want you to refer to the primary source. Like, for Alif, we used the Arabic script for writing the material; we were referring to the original source. Those are the letters Tuqay used to write. He didn't write in runes. We are relaying what he wrote. That is, we relay the source.

And, for convenience, of course ... if we were going to hold the audience's hand, we'd use the Cyrillic alphabet, right? But then there'd be no poetry at all in it, first of all. Second, the issue that we brought up there would be left unaddressed.

We're not going into poetry itself, you know? We only interpret it through movement. Interpretation happens ... through the body. We're not rewriting Tuqay; we don't add anything else to his work. We make no comments. Therefore, here, in this space, which is created outside the poem, I'm free to do whatever I want. That's where my area is.

If I took Shakespeare, for example, and cut it up, added my own pieces, monologues of construction workers, I don't know, a policeman, a homeless guy, that would be ... I would be entering the playwright's territory. Does that make sense?

No, it needs to be fully explained, of course. Because the ideas that you put into it, they won't read into it there. You'd either have to put it in the program or explain at the end.

If you want to convey your own vision ... why take this particular problem? Why use this form? It seems like you'd need to explain it.

Because human thought now has degraded to such an extent … neural connections in the human brain aren't as long.

Is that why it's so hard to read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy now? Or Gogol? Because one sentence takes up an entire page. Unfortunately, by the tenth word, the chain of events is lost.

What thoughts were you having when you returned to Tatarstan?

Well, for me ... because I had been invited to be the main director at the Russian Theater of Young Spectators, I was thinking that it was only the beginning, that I would be able to do whatever I wanted, to the extent that I wanted ... with the kind of quality I wanted.

But repertory theater has a plan that has to be fulfilled. That is, there are a lot of boxes that need to be ticked. You can't just, for example, dive deep into a source material for a year, really explore it. It's a results-based system.

For that reason, I had to start working on performances before we even got any funding for them. Just so I would have more than two months to get it ready. You have to almost immediately produce a result there, release it in two months. We spent six to seven months working on material so that we could explored it more deeply. Faced with that system, I tried to live with it somehow.

When we worked on Dostoevsky, we read the novel twice, and it's really thick. Then we read criticism of the novel and of all of Dostoevsky's works. Then we made sketches for a long time. It's all born like that.

Now we're preparing for Mayakovsky; we're reading all his works. Then we also read criticism of it, so that there's enough of a layer for the artists themselves who are trying to convey this personality. We're doing Vladimir Mayakovsky's Tragedies, which he wrote about himself over a span of twenty years. That's why you need to read it all.

I think that's the right way to go about it ... more so than to just quickly slap together a mise-en-scène, memorize the words and go out ... just to fulfill particular norms and requirements.

When I returned, I wasn't thinking about that problem at all, about systemic problems.

So, theater is basically a system?

Of course it's a system. We have the state itself: it exists in this rigid format, and you can be punished for any deviation from the general line. We can see this in the Gogol Center and in some independent art projects ... nothing having to do with an attempt to change something can be done with funding from the local budget. Therefore, everything is done with money from outside, from sponsors, foundations, and so on. Or just your own money.

They're always working on some state projects, and, for the most part, they have money. But, in the creative sense, you're serving ... well, like at weddings ... yeah, it's like being a wedding photographer. There's nothing creative about it. For that reason, many of them are ready to get involved with hip, creative projects for little money. But, unfortunately, there are very few such ideas ... or the idea scares people off.

Yes, but development is basically the initiative of individuals. Does the system care more about preservation than development?

Well, the initiative, sure, but I just wonder for how long these people can last, and whether there will be enough of them. Because it's such a large stratum, really, that needs to be shifted, and without a certain kind of place and without funding, it's hard to keep people. And then, I don't think that the system actually needs any changes. Even if new platforms open up, even if we seem to be moving towards some kind of openness, a Europeanism ... in essence, the form can change, but the content remains the same.

And it'll never change?

Well, no, one day, of course, something will change. I just don't know when ... or what will happen.

Kalfaklar, tүbätäılär, [kalfaks and tyubeteikas, traditional Tatar headwear], stuff like that—that kind of supposed authenticity is more like a souvenir.

But really ... it's like you need to think in two directions: toward the past, that is, the past that we don't know, the signs that we can no longer read, because the signs, symbols and traces have been lost, and, at the same time, also think in more global ways.

Why can't we use the Tatar language to talk about global, international issues? I mean, why should we use Tatar when speaking only about local problems that are of concern only to Tatars? I don't understand that.

If we work on a global topic and they start to translating us into other languages, that would be a kind of victory, really, a concrete result. Because they respond to modern, urgent issues.

How did the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts change you?

Change me? Well, my teacher Oleg Lvovich Kudryashov is still teaching courses. He's a professor there in the directing department. In my opinion, he's one of the best in Russia, because he doesn't force students to conform to him.

But Mr. Kudryashov doesn't tear down your individuality, so the directors that graduate from his course are completely diverse, even of different genres, one might say. That is, you couldn't label them; you couldn't tell right away that one studied under Kudryashov.

That is, the mistake is the same ... but he understands that, for example, for the first student it's his strong point, he focuses on it and gets stuck and needs to move in another direction and try something different. Therefore, he scolds him. And he praises the other, because he has just begun to do this, and if you scold him, rap him on the knuckles, as it were, he'll stop trying.

That's his system. On the one hand, it might seem unfair, but in fact he's a very good teacher.

And now, when I put a play on, I always want to do it in a different way. Because you have to use different "keys" to open up different playwrights, like, Shakespeare and Tufan Minnullin [Tatar playwright], for example.

Often you can judge the talent of a director, so to speak, right away. For a lot of them, they treat Molière, Shakespeare, or whatever Joe Schmo modern playwright all the same. But for me, these are ... well, completely different representations, different mentalities, different languages, so we have to do them differently.

I start with the authors, go through all their work.

Take Shakespeare for example, again. You could set Hamlet in a garbage can, and for me, that would be very strange. I'm not sure I could go along with that. Even though I'm an open person in this regard ... I'm all for new readings.

But this should be in accordance with the author, with his images, and so on.

You said that the form changes, but the content does not. How would you change the content?

Here we're holding on to this parochialism. We love to pour everything into bronze, erect a monument ... and then after five years ... well, not five, but people may remember it for twenty years and put flowers on this monument for its anniversary. And then, after the generation that knew the Tatar culture and even the Tatar language passes away, no one will pay any more attention to this monument. And in another 20 years, it'll be demolished and a building will be put up.

What's the point? They spend their budget all on bronze, but no money is allocated for the development of culture, which would give an impetus for some kind of professional self-awareness.

That is, we're trying to mummify and build a kind of mausoleum, but one day we'll just throw it all out like it was rotten. I mean, not us, but the next generations.