«Borovsky — Varpakhovsky. Exhibition Devoted to Varpakhovsky’s 110th Anniversary»

The exhibition devoted to Varpakhovsky’s 110th anniversary «Borovsky — Varpakhovsky» is held from 30 March to 15 July at the Memorial Museum «Creative Studio of the Theatre Designer David Borovsky».

According to Borovsky, his acquaintance with Leonid Varpakhovsky became one of the most decisive moments in his theatrical life. The exhibition devoted to their common works is not only a jubilee date, but also an expression of gratitude and respect from the artist to the director, who was a teacher and a co-author for Borovsky.

Leonid Varpakhovsky is a Meyerhold’s student and a multifaceted person combining the talents of a director, an artist, an art historian, a musician. In his works he paid much attention to the search for opportunities to save performances and invented the recording systems of mise-en-scenes. For almost 30 years he has worked on creating his personal «tutorial of directing».

The Varpakhovsky’s archive by itself is already a «tutorial» for the production of plays. The careful maintenance of documents for the production, all the stages of the performance’s creation in detail, from the genre’s determination, tasks for actors on copies of plays to the performances’ descriptions, let us recover the director’s train of thought. The exhibition curator Alexander Borovsky visually presents the works of his father: costume designs, set models, photos of performances. The correspondence between Borovsky and Varpakhovsky represents a personal fragment of their relations and the boards with cracked paint as scenery for «The Rainmaker» are presented as a background of their common creative history. Leonid Varpakhovsky determined for himself the significant meaning of the play «The Rainmaker»: «Rain is love and happiness that comes if you believe in it… Everyone is capable to bring rain, but only if you have a big heart».