Unison (theater)
The Unison Theater is a Moscow theater company of the humorous and philosophical genre of pantomime . It was founded in 1988 by Irek Raschidowitsch Ibatullin, who acts as the director of this ensemble.
history
The founder Irek Ibatullin, who studied at the Kazan Aviation Institute in the second half of the 1970s, began to be interested in the silent theater and the art of pantomime. In 1977 he visited a Kazan pantomime studio to deepen his interest and develop his ideas. A year later, his future wife and stage partner Elena Fridrichowna Marijahina came to the same studio. In 1980 they got married.
In the 1980s these genres blossomed in the Soviet Union. Performances by foreign artists took place in Moscow. The Ibatullins attended performances by Marcel Marceau, the Canadian theater "Sans mots", the Dutch duet "Mini & Maxi", the Swiss troupe "Mummenschatz".
Then they decided to found their own theater and in 1983 they gave up their professions, he as engineer and she as concert master pianist, to devote themselves only to the stage.
The “Fantasia” studio they founded took part in several festivals of this genre in Kazan and other Russian cities. In parallel with her activity, Ibatullin took part in courses for directors of pantomime in Moscow. After a program had been drawn up, the company founded its own professional theater troupe, which was given the name “Unison” as an allusion to the musical unison .
In addition to the directors and founders, the first composition of the ensemble consisted of the students of the studio Alexei Chichow, Jenche Gafiatullina, Sergei Indjukov and Sergei Gumerov. The first professional work by “Unison” is the play “Chochorony” (composition of the Russian words laugh - “хохотать” and funeral - “похороны”) (1988), which combines elements of the absurd with motifs from traditional Russian funeral games.
After developing the game program “DUR-Show” in 1991, “Unison” appeared at Russian festivals of comedy and pantomime. Subsequently, there were appearances in the show "Smechatschi" by Jan Arlosorov and employment over two seasons in the Moscow Theater of Comedy.
Style and genre
Unison is a theater that does without words. It is a symbiosis of the comedy from the situation, musical eccentricity and lyrical comedy or slapstick comedy. All of Unison's skits and pieces show laconism, the originality of changing the situation, carelessness and inventiveness, expressive personalities and their own style.