The Omsk Musical Theater

Slava Polunin Theater

"Snow Show"

Vyacheslav Polunin (People's Artist of Russia) - clown, mime. Laureate of the Leninsky Komsomol Award, "Golden Angel" (Edinburg) "Golden Nose" (Spain), Laurence Olivier Award and the independent award Triumph. He was awarded an "Honored citizen" by the Queen of England for his "Living Rainbow" . The "Snow Show" received a "Golden Angel" in Moscow in 2003.

            He created a pantomime studio in 1968 which eventually grew into a clown-mime-theater "Litsedei" (Actors) that produced five performances: "Dreamers", "Eccentrics in  the attic", "From the life of insects", "Asisyai-revue", "Catastrophe".

            Besides being a talented actor, Slava Polunin  is also a great organizer.  He generates new ideas and successfully brings them to life. He gathered about 800 mimes in 1982 in Leningrad for a "Mime Parade" More then 200 of the participants, including kids and critics, were senr to an uninhabited island in Gulf of Finland

            At the present moment he has his own troupe and theater in the Paris suburb. Other members of "Litsedei" also work abroad.

            In 1987 Polunin  organized a European Festival of Street Theaters "Peace Caravan" . It was a unique project of the theater city, touring the Europe for six months. He founded the "Academy of Fools", that worked on bringing back the Russian carnival tradition. 

            Polunin left to Canada in 1993 to work for Cirque du Soleil.

He organized a clown festival in Russia during the Third Theater Olympics - "Ship of Fools"  "It is a ship of our dreams that can turn our boring life upside down"

Polunin's Show is a hundred percent success, a full house for all of his performances in all counties all over the world. His most renown production is the "Snow Show", a tragicomedy, a clownery. It is made of separate miniatures. Main characters - a Yellow clown and a Green clown. Falling snow creates a weird magic world. People come to his show to see the sketches of Asisyai and Blue Canarici (an old song in one of Italian dialects, played by "Averino") that they've seen many times and feel the fake snowflakes falling on them. And they go home happy. The show is almost psychotropic: grown-up people cry of laughter like little kids. The play has  more of a Russian sense of humor, makes you cry  and laugh at the same time. He was called the "best mime in the world" and "the best mime of our century" by the USA media.

Review

A happy-go-lucky, an extravert, he is always surrounded by his students, friends and admirers. His "Snow Show" is about loneliness. His character confesses his love to his overcoat, since he doesn't have anyone else, and drifts away in the ocean of dreams. The finale is the most spectacular moment of the entire show, when Polunin fights the snowstorm, or maybe tries to send it off the stage to the audience. But the true Polunin's masterpiece is page blows at the end. A clown throws a giant red balloon to the spectators. Somebody catches it and throws it up again. Then new balloons fly off the stage, and all of a sudden everybody is involved in the game. Grown-up people play and laugh like little kids. Sad clowns watch them play.

Victoria Nikiforova 28.05.2007