The idea of creativity for me is to convey values to people, mostly spiritual values. All my performances are based on these very values, which tell about the relationship between the soul and the Lord, and about the deep relationships between people that lead them to God.
The purpose of our creativity is to walk this path ourselves in order to draw closer to the Lord. Because when we start walking the spiritual path, trusting God, we help ourselves, and therefore help others. This is the purpose of our creativity: the expression of ourselves, our feelings, the expression of our inner world. So you can share with others what you yourself are experiencing and feeling.
Creativity itself inspires me. God is an example of creativity. Whatever the Lord does, He does it creatively, without straining, without performing any kind of work. He simply lies, and all the universes emanate from His pores. He simply plays the flute and with this sound supports the entire universe, all creation, all living beings. See how amazing and beautiful it is! And the Lord himself is very creative in everything he does. How each flower is arranged is also all creativity that never repeats itself! Krishna is often compared to a dancer who takes the stage, and every day of His life is like a dance.
Vedic culture and Indian creativity are very inspiring. In general, in India, theater is taken very seriously as an opportunity to convey and experience deep emotions. They relate to creativity, first of all, as to the bearer of spiritual culture. There is such an ancient treatise on theatrical art — Natyashastras. There Lord Shiva lists several types of theater: costume theater, word theater, song theater and soul theater. The theater of the soul is closest to me, where people can express themselves in different ways. A theater, where, perhaps, there are no special beautiful songs and words, but there is a soul. I have seen performances staged by India more than once, in particular, I was very impressed by Vasanta rasa, the spring dance of Lord Krishna’s rasa, in Orisa. This interesting and deep performance was played by teenage girls, and they simply amazingly conveyed the feelings and experiences of Krishna.
I have no professional creative education as such, but it so happened that since childhood I have been doing creative work. He showed his first performance in kindergarten, when I was invited from the older group to the younger one to tell the children a fairy tale. I remember how I gathered everyone, seated them and began to tell them very emotionally. 🙂 At school I studied in a theater puppet studio, participated in children’s competitions, won various prizes, records — in those days they were very popular. We had a doll fairy tale with which we went to schools and kindergartens. Then he was engaged in creativity in the army.
When I embarked on the spiritual path and became a devotee, my creativity opened up in full force. When I lived in Moscow, I even managed to create my own real theater with a stage and an auditorium, with a dressing room, backstage, light, sound — in general, everything is as it should be. It was a small, chamber theater, for about 50 people. The devotees loved that they could come and experience this atmosphere.
I am fortunate to have been taught by professional actors. One of the teachers was Marat Nigmatullin, a professional actor of the Tashkent theater. It was he who taught me theatrical skills. He conveyed theatrical experience: how to work, how to move on stage, how to breathe, how to speak. I am very grateful to Marat Nigmatullin for all this. Then in Tashkent we staged a puppet show «Shepherd boy Gopal and King Kamsa» («An extraordinary shepherd boy»), which was later shown for many years.
Then Vibhulamsha appeared in my life, he is also a professional puppet artist and also invested a lot in my wife and me. Later, when our performance was slightly transformed, he finished a new script, staged scenes, did a very good direction — this performance is still going on.
I also learn from other professionals when I meet. In other words, life teaches me. 🙂
Participated in many festivals in India. We performed a lot in Russia. In Moscow, they gave performances in many halls, went to orphanages, to schools — in Moscow, they toured about 100 institutions.
How are my works created? It is more like a process of meditation, some kind of revelation. I am very much inspired by the various stories about Krsna, about the devotees. And then from these plots I then make a script, write, reflect, add something, expand the dialogues that are there. The script creation process can take place anywhere. For example, I remember sitting on a train, reading a story about Madan Mohan. And right there, on the train, he began to compose the script for the play.
I have been writing scripts for a long time, about 20 years, there are already more than a hundred of them. When you write, the authors of the books will understand me, then you completely immerse yourself, forget about yourself, about what is happening around. When I make phonograms myself, I can also sit for hours, glue it all together at night, select the sound, the voice. This process is very entertaining.
WORKS
The creative process itself took place in an untraditional environment: in a monastery, in a temple, in the country. The play involved 14 professional actors who experienced real spiritual realizations during the production of the play. Moreover, the wisdom of the Scriptures and the creative process began to change the very reality of their lives!
The material of the play is based on events from the Vedic Scriptures of Srimad Bhagavatam. This is the story of the Vedic king Puranjan, which happened 5,000 years ago. The play raises fundamental questions: the state of the soul in the material world, the true nature of the living entity, the oblivion of this nature, and what should be the highest goal of human life.
The performance begins with mantras, turns into plastic visualization and, finally, the action develops into a dynamic dance depicting how the king enjoys life in the city, how merrily he lives with his beautiful wife, satisfying all her whims, how illusory this happiness is. In the end, he abandons her, going to hunt poor animals-this is illustrated by the gruesome scene of killing animals and the Queen’s despair.
Later, the grim reality of the family is depicted: king Puranjan has hundreds of sons and daughters who ravage and plunder the father’s Kingdom. This makes the king tired and desolate – the material life that he himself so longed for, in the end, brings him real suffering. King Puranjana forgot his eternal friend, God, and spent his entire life in the pursuit of sense gratification, but at the moment of death, he loses everything he had.
In this story, king Puranjana represents us, the living entities. He gets into the material world, seduced by the beauty of a woman-the personification of our mind. And since the king was very much attached to his wife, in the next life he gets the body of a woman.
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