The first time I met Semyon Zlotnikov was in1975, when I was working as a "dramaturge" in Lensovet theatre.  To be precise, first I met his play – I came across it in a pile of dusty manuscripts – my heritage from a predecessor.  I fell in love with his plays from the first pages – they are full of irony, sorrow, humour - and an almost absurd belief in the human ability to find a way out…

 

He looked like a bear – now an old grey-haired bear – over six-feet tall, strong and usually good spirited. He was born in Uzbekistan: after the earthquake that destroyed the capital – Tashkent – whose inhabitants were evacuated to Russian cities including Moscow and Leningrad.  He stood out among the pale Leningrad crowd – and looked at things with the sharp eye of an outsider. (Even inside Russia itself the move from South to North matters a lot, but Uzbekistan is really Asia, it has nothing to do with Europe…)

 

I fervently encouraged the production of his plays.  It was not easy then – almost thirty years ago, – young actors wanted to jump into rehearsing immediately, but a leading star – a very famous lady – said that she would leave the theatre at once if any of Zlotnikov’s plays would be staged there.  Fortunately, more and more actors and directors of our generation shared my passion for this strange lyrical, grotesque, and funny plays and they eventually were staged in many theatres of Russia.  I myself thoroughly enjoyed co-directing two of Simon’s plays - "A Man Came to a Woman..." and "The Team" -- in an amateur theatre “Four Little Windows”

 

His characters look like us – but at the same time, his plays are full of hidden quotes from Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin.  This fact reflects the way many of us survived Brezhnev’s stagnation – we breathed not the gloomy reality, but any other reality we could reach for – and for many the great Russian literature of the past was an escape route for the soul.  The action in his plays seems take place today – but at some moments, one feels an additional dimension – as if all the stories had happened already and would happen again.  It might well explain why he moved to Jerusalem – it is a space just like that in one of his plays – the conflicts, events and situations keep on happening for a thousand years, they vary just slightly in costumes and props – and stage set has weathered.

 

In the USSR he was “Semyon”, in Israel he became “Shimon”.  In 1930s-40s practically all Shimons in the Soviet Union turned themselves in “Semyons” in order to survive – and named their children in the same manner for the same reason. He did not emigrate but just came back home, as many of the one million Russian-speaking population of Israel, who belongs to more than one culture. Russian literature always has been of mixed blood.

 

Last summer, while setting up our exhibition in Jerusalem, we spent a lot of time together with Shimon and his wife (a former librarian who turned herself in the manager of an old people’s home) - and their small second child (they named him Matan – “the gift”).  We walked the streets of Old Town, lazily floated on the surface of Dead Sea and chatted until late in the roof garden Simon built on the top of their house in North Jerusalem.  I read his new plays and reread old ones – the new ones are interesting, but the old ones have acquired the taste of mature wine – which explains why they are still on stage – and practically, more than ever.  One of the best Russian actors, Albert Filozov, plays a lead in “A Man Came to a Woman” since 1989 (in repertoire of “The School of Contemporary Drama”) – and it still sells out.