Interview: Slava Polunin

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IN CONVERSATION WITH SLAVA POLUNIN

Slava’s SnowShow

Sunderland Empire 

Tuesday 3 – Saturday 7 December 2024

Tickets: https://tinyurl.com/SundSNOWshow 

Slava’s SnowShow, the multi award-winning global phenomenon that recently celebrated 30 years enchanting people of all ages worldwide, returns to the UK this year after a seven-year hiatus.

We caught up with Slava Polunin to discuss this amazing show.

Slava Snowshow
Yellow on the telephone by Anna Bogodist

Snowshow 

This show was actually conceived in the early 90's. It embraced all my favourite topics and items. In a sense, I was working on this show for many years, collecting bit by bit until it became a whole, in order to express myself fully. Many things in the show come from childhood memories, like the image of snow, for example.

Our show is not only different from year to year - in fact, it is different every time, because it allows big room for improvisation. I do my best to prevent the artists in the company from knowing who is playing who until the last moment. I also try to set up some unexpected things. That way improvisation becomes very natural and the show remains full of life.

What should one expect from the show?

I think that in the first place one should expect a journey into childhood. Into your own childhood sparkling with your dreams, into mine - covered by the snowy blanket, into ours – filled with anticipations and dreams. A trip into the world of bright colours, true feelings and important small details, that one only notices when little. In any case, each person sees his (or her) own story in the show, his own world. This is very important to me.

The most magical aspect of this show as in any form of artful theatre – is the intimate communication with the public, which in this case is non verbal elusive fibres of contact which often appear between an artist and spectator during the show. This very subtle interaction is something that creates the magic of the theatre.

Slava Snowshow
Colour ballons in the audience by Veronique Vial

Why not use any language?

I love absurd and fantastic reality and I do not trust “spoken word" - that is what made me choose clowning. For me, expression without words is much more organic and natural than using words on stage, visual language is much richer, more personalized and elusive, that’s why I haven’t even thought to use words.

Who comes out of the show most enchanted, children or adults?

The main part of the theatre audience for us are always grown-ups. Children are already a happy crowd of people, they haven’t yet touched the troubles of life, and the entire world is open and boundless. Imagination and joy fills them if they are not in a challenged social situation. Adults, however, often make themselves very rigid, complicate things, and start digging deep into the convolutions of life as soon as they grow up even a little bit. And yet, if one stays connected to his inner child, everything becomes so much easier and jollier. This is what we try to do.

Slava Snowshow
2 greenz in giant spider web by Aya Rufin

What makes Snowshow an everlasting worldwide success?

The fact that we do not use spoken words in our performances is just one of the reasons why Snowshow has been touring the world so successfully and for so long. The second reason is that I really like traveling. The third - I talk about things that are central to everyone’s life: simple and eternal, things that any human being can relate to - on friendship, solitude, life and death. The fourth - I do this in an original way, trying to find a new way of saying those things each time I'm doing something on stage. The fifth - I admire this world and I am very glad to be here, so I suppose every person wants to join me in this feeling. The list goes on to reasons number 6,7,8,9,10, and so on…

Of course, the show has a special edge for each country’s audience. For instance, its absurd side comes in handy in the UK. The passionate side becomes more prominent in Spain. Its poetic side starts to sound clearer in France.

We carefully study the country or city that we are going to and listen to the audience throughout the first couple of performances to grasp the main emotion in the theatre and catch the thin gentle strings connecting people in the audience to people on stage.

How did you select the music for this show? I ask this because you have an eclectic list of pieces like “Chariots of Fire”, “La Petite Fille de la Mer”, “Oh Fortuna” and “Ravel’s Bolero”

I have a vast collection of music. Whenever I hear an interesting piece, I make sure I find the original track and add it to my collection. So when the time comes to create a show, I fetch these treasures from the chest and make them part of it.

When do you play yourself in Snowshow or other projects? How do you choose which one to play?

Nowadays my students do most of the work in the show. The aesthetics of this spectacle demands full immersion and ability to live in the midst of it. It is simply not enough for an actor to play a character. Instead, they need to learn to live and feel like inhabitants of this strange world. This is not easy.

Slava Snowshow
3 clowns in bubbles by Aya Rufin

What kind of feelings do you want to pass to the audiences through your show?

The main feeling that people share spontaneously is the joy of returning to a stage of childhood where a sense of playful freedom overcomes our fears and habits. This is what I have dedicated my life to achieving on a daily basis. 

Why is the interactive participation with the audience in ‘Slava’s Snowshow’ so important?

The most magical thing in this show is probably everywhere else in the art of theatre – this is communication with the public, but it’s not a verbal connection, these are elusive fibres of contact which can appear between an artist and spectator during the show. This subtle interaction is something that creates the magic of the theatre.

Through your show, is there a message you wish to convey?

You know, I don't like to spell things out to people. Everyone feels what most resonates with them, what they find important. I don't like to preach or offer answers, I prefer to sow questions. You throw half a phrase into the audience, and they come up with the other half on their own. This engages the emotion and the imagination in a deep and long-lasting way.

In your show, there is a yellow clown and several green clowns. Could you introduce their roles and character traits?

The Yellow Clown is my character, the protagonist of the performance, who lives through different situations throughout the show: he meets a friend and then loses him, he travels through different worlds and is eventually swallowed by a snowstorm... He is a small warm spot in an endless cold universe... and my character meets strange creatures along the way. They are unlike anyone else - and not only because their legs resemble skis and their hats resemble helicopter propellers. They are creatures totally immersed in their own things, which are very important to them, but meaningless to anyone else. They have their own joys and sorrows, but they also crave warmth, friendship, tenderness...

Is Slava's Snowshow more than just a clown performance?

To me, the very concept of a clown is so huge, so all-encompassing, so endless that it is hard to imagine anything bigger. Many great artists and directors like Federico Fellini believed that a clown is the pinnacle of acting, which makes the very idea of a clown show not only rare, but also something quite significant, if, of course, we are talking about “real” clowns which are part of the long lineage of master-clowning.

Greens on the ship by Veronique Vial

Why do you want to use the element of snow in the show? What is the magic about it?

Many things in the show come from childhood memories, like the image of snow, for example.

What I love most about theatre is the magic. Initially, theatre consists of ritual, magical and aesthetic, but the magical part has been vanishing since. I would love to bring it back.

Snow is one of the magical things. It can be unbelievably beautiful, it brings immense joy, when you build snow fortresses, speed down the slope on a sledge, when you can surround your house with an army of funny snow people - snowmen…

But snow also means danger. The scary stories of people being swallowed by the snow blizzard is everywhere in old Russian tales and literature. I remember it from my own experience - when I was small, my mother often left on trips for her job. I would come out on the porch to say goodbye and see how their car dissolved into the snow mist. I was always frightened by those departures, since I worried that my mum would get swallowed by the snow.

Tickets:

Slava’s SnowShow will bring the art of clowning to Sunderland Empire from Tuesday 3 – Saturday 7 December 2024. ATG+ Pre-sale tickets available online now. General on sale at 10am on Thursday 11 July at https://tinyurl.com/SundSNOWshow *

*A £3.95 transaction fee applies to online bookings.

Notes:

Recommended for children 8 years and over

For safety reasons, we would also like patrons with younger children to be advised to sit in the circle, due to the large inflatables that come off the stage and into the stalls.

The SNOWSHOW company is made up of a number of performers; it is rarely known in advance which clowns will perform at which performance.