Theater "Antrepriza": Play "Malysh i Karl(SON)" (ru) 24 May 2025

Morning. A construction cradle on the facade of a house. Pavel in work clothes paints the facade of the house. Pavel. Homeland. What is the motherland? And what is "I"? Who am I, and why should my "I" be tied to any one place? I'm just one person, and there are a million places, both beautiful and ugly. Of course, I have memories connected with the place where I was born, but I have a lot of memories connected with places where I was not born, but just happy. But when I am very, very bad at heart, I remember not the 4th city hospital in Samara, and I imagine myself in the hole hobbit Bilbo. The fireplace is burning, Bilbo rustles pen on paper, and, without taking his eyes off the written, asks: "Little boy, shall we have tea with raspberry jam?" These memories are much happier than, for example, memories of my school or military service. They warm the soul like a good brandy. Like the poems of Mandelstam, who rotted in the camp of the Motherland. Like Pasternak's poems, who lived and died in condemnation by his beloved Motherland. And another thing - if we talk about the homeland and myself, what is more important - me or the place where I was born? I can write a good book, make a movie, compose a song, and people who will read it, see it, listen to it, will become a little better, a little kinder, more cheerful. And what can the place where I was born do? I don't know. Probably nothing. Then why should I die for the place where I was born? And the people, what about the people? All those beautiful people who represent your homeland? Relatives, friends, acquaintances - talented young men and beautiful girls? Who will protect them?

Well, nobody attacked them. My friends and acquaintances are all alive and well. They have fun at festivals, work at jobs, fish, hunt beavers. They say a beaver can be a very violent and strong, dangerous animal if cornered and threatened. He can bite, and his teeth are terrible. He uses them to fell birch trees. They say that one beaver bit a hunter's leg, cutting his femoral artery with his teeth. It would be just as silly to think that a beaver would go to the territory of another beaver, crawl into its burrow and attack its neighbor, so that the latter, God forbid, would not do the same to him in the near future. No, of course, all animals have territorial wars. But so that their own land is plenty, but the neighbor needs to shit, destroy, chase away, kill - this is not. What's the point? To defend? Yes. To attack when life is threatened? Yes. And from the fact that I've accumulated a lot more fat - no, I'd rather lie in a hole. I didn't save that fat to spend it on stupid things. That's what I think a normal, sane beaver would think.