“Imagination is the Most Authentic Power“

OnLife.Ru
„Imagination is the Most Authentic Power”
By Anna Romashkevich
OnLife.Ru (an internet publication), Summer 2001.

«What do Don Quixote and Sancho Panza mean to me? They are why life is worth living — the light breath of a madman blowing soap bubbles and building castles in the air in his dreams.»
 — Oksana Mysina

“I simply wanted to tend my garden
And not ruin the lovely view.
Even a border guard will understand me,
And a fisherman will forgive me.”
 — Boris Grebenshchikov

Oksana Mysina has debuted as a director on the stage of the Vladimir Vysotsky Center. The play is Quixote and Sancho, after Viktor Korkiya?s Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on the Island of Taganrog and Other Enchanted Places Not So Distant as Inaccessible to Englightened Reason. It had been announced that Mysina herself would not perform in the show but one week before the first dress rehearsal the actor who was to have played Sancho left the show. To the great delight of audiences, Oksana herself took on the role. It is a chamber show for a small, comfortable and intimate stage (there are just 130 seats at the Vysotsky Center). The play?s genre is defined as “A Magical Ritual in the Depths of the Soul“ and, indeed, all of the action, all of the dialogue, the music and other aspects of an „unseen theater” seep down into the depths of the subconscious. It is a subtle show, profound, somewhat reckless, funny, touching and uncommonly compassionate and sincere.
Dmitry Pisarenko?s Don Quixote, the valiant hidalgo from La Mancha, is a romantic, a dreamer, a philosopher, an eternal wanderer, a seeker of adventure and great deeds. He is fragile and vulnerable (despite his courage), a bit strange, easily offended and has an open mind and a sensitive heart. He is the embodiment of our aspirations, dreams and ideals. Don Quixote exists in us, every one of us who knows the value of dreams. He represents our impetuous behavior, our flights of fantasy, our eternal search for simple and complex truths, our unflagging desire to commit great deeds for the sake of love.
And what about Sancho Panza, that gay rascal and simpleton who is used to living as he pleases and whose true pleasure is in serving his master? In the Depths of Sancho?s Soul — he is the governor of his own island which has been given to him by Don Quixote. He is the author of a courtly novel called The Science of Donkeys, in which two donkeys named Socrates and Plato carry on philosophical discussions about the meaning of life. In other words, he is no less a dreamer and romantic than Don Quixote, with the small difference that he is a bit more practical. He is able to erect bridges between dreams and reality.
If there were no Sancho Panza, there would be no Don Quixote. Don Quixote may build castles in the air, but Sancho Panza is there to believe in them. Sancho is frightened of the journey to the Depths of the Soul, but he never once doubts the reality of the voyage. Don Quixote is so used to living in the world of imagation that when he meets his Dulcinea-Aldonza (Maria Buknis), he cannot bring himself to believe that he has found the woman of his dreams. Nor does Aldonza recognize her Don Quixote, the valorous knight who is fated to be hers. It is only Sancho Panza who is able to see that two lovers have met.
Sancho is convinced that his donkey Gray (Igor Sannikov) is, indeed, an enchanted knight. And he needs no proof to believe that. After all, his respected chattel is his closest and most loyal friend. Don Quixote, on the other hand, sees only a donkey in a donkey. Because for him reality and dreams never meet. Don Quixote tells his squire that “the moon is a lifeless planet.“ Sancho cannot believe such nonsense. “The moon is in the heavens,” he says, „and paradise is in the heavens. There is life in paradise which means there is life in the heavens. Therefore the moon cannot possibly be a dead, lifeless planet.”
Just as Sancho gives life to Don Quixote?s dreams with his ingenuousness and sincerity, Gray attempts to inspire Don Quixote?s horse Rocinante (Alla Sannikova). This touching and artless steed usually finds pleasure simply in the fact that he lives and eats. The donkey Gray, wizened by life, sees in Rocinante a descendant of the great Bucephalus and endeavors to teach him to read while assuring him that life has meaning even for horses. Inspired by their masters and worshiping them, Sancho and Gray in essence become their creators.
Suffering and weakened after his battle with the windmills, Don Quixote is doomed to die and his faithful Sancho helps him die quietly, calmly and without agony. He dies in order to be resurrected, in order to believe, to love, to dream and to travel through enchanted places where the Island of Taganrog has once again bloomed, and where Orpheus (Sergei Shevchenko) sings his aria to all Eurydices of the world.

, 2001