When bureaucrats play Tetris with cultural institutions, the blocks never fit quite right. Kirill Krok, the fiery-tongued director of Vakhtangov Theatre, has unleashed a torrent of criticism against Moscow's controversial theatre merger scheme, comparing the forced unions to "marrying a ballet dancer to a heavy metal drummer."
The cultural earthquake began when authorities decided to weld together the avant-garde Hermitage Theatre with the more traditional Sphere Theatre - two institutions sharing nothing but proximity in the same garden. "It's like serving caviar on a paper plate," Krok scoffed during our conversation, his voice dripping with the kind of theatrical disdain usually reserved for bad opening nights.
Particular venom was reserved for the marriage of student-driven MOST Theatre with the century-old Mossovet Theatre. "You might as well combine a kindergarten with a university faculty," Krok remarked, his fingers drumming an impatient rhythm on his oak desk. "Different audiences, different purposes, different souls."
Krok dismantled the economic justification with surgical precision: "Saving one director's salary won't repave a single Moscow alleyway." His math cut through the bureaucratic fog - even with benefits and taxes accounted for, the savings amount to less than a rounding error in the city's multibillion-ruble budget.
Behind the financial theater, Krok detects a more ominous plot - the slow homogenization of Moscow's cultural landscape. "Soon we'll have theatrical Big Macs," he warned, "identical in every district, with extra fries of mediocrity." The veteran director sees the mergers as the first act in a tragedy where unique artistic voices get drowned out by administrative convenience.
As our conversation turned to recent controversies, Krok didn't soften his stance. When asked about collaborating with recently paroled actors, his response could have frozen vodka: "My stage isn't a rehabilitation center for intoxicated performers." The message was clear - in Krok's theatre, artistic standards remain the uncompromising director of every production.
