MOSCOW -- A theater devoted to reviving the traditional circus art of clowning -- and stemming the 'clown drain' in which talented comedians go abroad -- premiered Saturday in the Russian capital.
'If Muscovites want a good laugh and a good time, within six months they'll know to find it here,' Tereza Durova, the founder and director of the Theater of Clowning, told a news conference called earlier this week to announce the premier.
Durova decided to found the theater after holding an international clowning competition in Moscow last October. It drew 300 participants from the Commonwealth of Independent States and the United States, Japan and Bulgaria.
The best performers were invited to join the theater, and groups from Russia and Ukraine did so.
'We came together for one good reason: lack of finances,' Durova said. 'People come together under one roof, the better to survive these terrible times.'
She said the theater had brought together the commonwealth's youngest and most innovative clowns, and would inject new life into the art.
'Clowning has been in decline because there are these fixed ideas about how it should be done -- you should wear a certain type of shoe, for example, or a certain type of makeup,' she said. As a result, she added, 'The best clowns are leaving the country.'
The theater will try to revive public interest in clowning, though this could be an uphill battle. As Durova noted, 'This generation of children have no favorite clown.'
Indeed, Russian children are more likely to be familiar with Walt Disney cartoons, which are shown with Russian translation on central television on Sunday evenings, or with U.S. blockbusters such as 'The Terminator', which has circulated widely on the Russian pirate video market.
