And if you cry, then live tears... To the 110th anniversary of the People's Artist of the BSSR Zinaida Brovarskaya

" . You have to love the people and the audience. And when you give yourself with all your heart to your profession, you will tolerate everything, said the People’s Artist of the BSSR, star of the Kupalovsky Theater Zinaida Brovarskaya. Those who knew her remember the beauty with huge brown eyes, the actress of a magnificent school, smart, kind, who had the widest creative range. On the stage of the theater. Yankee Kupala she played a lot of roles, to our happiness, there are still a few films - a pity, less than it could be! - allowing you to look through time and at least partially appreciate this extraordinary talent.

Drawing by Oleg KARPOVICH, I was not really born here. I do not remember any mountains or hot streams, but I remember the caressing Black Sea and the small station “Odessa-Dachnaya”, where the family of a railwayman was born on August 31, 1916, said Zinaida Ivanovna Brovarskaya in her memoirs. Parents who managed to lose two children who died from diseases (before the universal vaccination against diphtheritis and scarlet fever was still very, very far), took care of the only surviving child as best they could. His father, who worked as the head of the station, was distinguished by a bright appearance, was a charming and calm person, his mother adored music and theater, perfectly sang and played the piano, wrote poems, spoke several languages. Children's impressions of Zinaida Brovarskaya - mother at the piano, magic music, spewing tears ... Her desire to become an artist was due to this. Since childhood, she enjoyed performing – reading poetry or singing at holidays.

To give his daughter a decent education, the parents moved to Odessa. The actress recalled her childhood years: I grew up very curious, energetic and active girl. Sometimes even “schooly”, but always indifferent to everything that surrounded me. Many called me “Zinka-buzoterka”, but nevertheless, I graduated from Odessa school No. 39 on “good”. By the end of her studies, she knew what she wanted: only to the theater, only to the stage! There was no corresponding educational institution in Odessa, and Brovarskaya took a risk, GITIS wrote in Moscow. I received an invitation to come with documents. The father (parents by that time were already divorced) grabbed his head, lamenting that the actors are all starving and the daughter will eventually ask for a penny in the yards. Another thing is a culinary school! Mother secretly collected Zinaida on the road, giving a valuable thing - a blanket, which should be sold in Moscow, if you do not succeed and will need money for a return ticket.

In the role of Clay in the comedy G. Figueiredo “Fox and grapes”. 1957 “1933 ... GITIS. The Institute of Theatre Art in Malokislovsk Lane (now this lane has a chic name - Sobinovsky). No. 4. Squat yellow building in the back of the courtyard. Behind the large windows on the second floor there is a training stage that remembers at different times Tarkhanov, Kachalov, Zavadsky, Popov... Some became teachers, conducted acting and directing, others were welcome guests of students, recalled Brovarskaya. She managed to get in. As soon as she saw her name in the lists, the strechlave rushed to the Main Post Office, where she repulsed a telegram to her mother: “Mommy, I am not selling a blanket.” I was enrolled. Kissing and cuddling. Your Zina. And then on the way back, suddenly frightened that everything seemed to her that it was a mistake, she rushed to the institute - and, seeing her name again in the enrollment lists, sat on the steps of the stairs and cried with excitement and happiness: "All the internal contradictions mixed with her own imperfection, with experiences, with joys, with a premonition of something immense that could wait for me ahead - all this mixed in my soul and poured out through quiet, almost silent tears.".

She studied with the greats – Mikhail Tarkhanov, Nikolai Plotnikov, who themselves were magnificent actors and laid the foundations of Soviet theatrical pedagogy. Their course was shown to Konstantin Stanislavsky, who was interested in the successes of young people. After graduating from GITIS, Zinaida Brovarskaya, together with her husband, Oscar Gantman (a native of Cherven), went to Minsk: “Oskar Abramovich graduated from the director’s faculty of GITIS and was appointed to the position of director of the opera theater in Belarus, and I was assigned to the Young Spectator Theater, which was then led by Yevstigne Afinogenovich Mirovich.”.

However, she did not stay in the Youth Theatre for long, playing only a couple of roles - Tsarevna-Swan in Pushkin's "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" and Tonya Tumanov in the production "How steel was hardened" (and she had a future legend of the Soviet stage Mark Fradkin, who had not yet switched completely to musical creativity).

In 1937, the young Kupalovsky Theatre, then called the First Belarusian State Drama Theatre, staged the play Katerina Zhernosek based on the play by Mihas Klimkovich. Director Konstantin Sannikov saw Brovarskaya on the Tuzov stage and realized that he needed her for the role of Yadwiga! Evstignei Mirovich, who himself stood at the origins of Kupalovsky together with Florian Zhdanovich, blessed Brovary - as it turned out, for the rest of her life: she served in this theater until the very last days.

The Great Patriotic War interrupted this path for several years. On June 22, 1941, the swimmers were on tour in Odessa, native to Brovary. “I was reading something, and Molotov was speaking on the radio. Oh, my God, there's no one around! Stefania Stanyuta, with whom we lived together, went to the morning performance. Not really understanding what happened and what all this threatens, I only felt that something terrible had happened, and ran to the theater. Soon, the actors learned that Minsk, where everyone had families and loved ones, was bombed and communication was lost. In the abandoned capital of the republic, Brovarskaya had a mother and husband with her son from her first marriage, which she accepted as a native. Later it turned out that Gantman and his son were walking in the direction of Borisov together with the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater, who was on tour. In Odessa, the Kumalovites were mobilized to help in hospitals, where the wounded were constantly taken, until the opportunity to get out to Moscow appeared. They left the last echelon, leaving the scenery, taking only Belarusian national costumes in their luggage. And at all stages and stations jumped out of the cars shouting: “Belarusian theater is coming!” Who knows what happened in Minnesota

In the role of Yulenka in the comedy A. Ostrovsky “Profitable place”. 1953 Brovarskaya was lucky: in Moscow she met her husband and stepson. The Kupalovites were evacuated to Tomsk, and Oscar Gantman was appointed to Ashgabat. Of course she went with him. She spent a year there, not knowing what to do with her mother, who remained in the occupation, endlessly listening to reports from the fronts. Having heard that front-line theaters are actively being formed in Moscow, I left Ashgabat. It seemed to me that without me, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief would not cope with his tasks. In those harsh times, many actors sought the forefront. Perhaps this is the inner nature of our profession: “When guns thunder, the muses cannot remain silent.” Since the end of 1942, Brovarskaya rehearsed together with a small front-line theater "Ogonek", organized under the wing of a popular magazine of the same name, and in 1943 their campaign life began on the Ukrainian front. Together with the army, the theater advanced and retreated, forest glades served as the stage for the artists, often the performances were interrupted by the phrase “All to shelter!”, it happened to them on a truck to pass minefields, fall under artillery fire and be surrounded... Everything was bathed in a sense of importance, the need for their work: “The viewer at the front is a special spectator.” We were treated kindly from private to general. They were so attentive, so happy, so grateful, that it was impossible to convey that flying sense of joy that covered us, the artists, after each concert.

Zinaida Brovarskaya returned to Minsk after all the wanderings only in 1950, sent her to the Russian Theater (Gorky’s NADT), but the actress firmly decided: she started with Kupalovsky, there and will continue. From the very first days she was appointed the leading in the play “Pahlinka”, on this stage she played more than 100 roles. The mother in the “Zatsyukan Apostal” by Andrei Makaenka, Queen Clay in the production of “Fox and Grapes” based on the play by Guilherme Figueiredo, Zinochka Zelkin in “Hto Smyaztsa Aposhnim” by Kondrat Krapiva, Yulenka in “A Profitable Place” by Alexander Ostrovsky, Ibsenovskaya Nora, Bagbik in the play “That Salad, That Gat” by Bertolt Brecht – the first production of the legendary Valeevsky... Herzhi’s favorite role was in Boris Erin’s play “The Game with the Cat” based on the famous tragicomedy of the Hungarian writer Istvan Erken – with her Brovarskaya brought from Hungary the Grand Prix of the international theater festival. In “The Laughter of Langusta”, staged by Gennady Davydko, the actress played another great stage star – Sarah Bernard.

Zinaida Brovarskaya as Frau von Kaunitz in The Clock Stopped at Midnight. 1958. In 1959, a tragedy occurred – 12-year-old son Brovarskaya died under the wheels of a truck. The theater was ready to cancel the evening performance, but... the actress came on stage in the role of Queen Clay. Someone snorted behind her, accusing her of insensitivity, and this was an attempt to fill feelings with work, so as not to slide into madness. And much later, at the age of 85, almost blind, she got to the theater almost to the touch - and went on stage in "Palintsy" and "Memorial prayer." “Our profession is a trembling business, you need to cry with live hot tears, you need to laugh, opening your heart wide, you need to enter this life and accept it with all the nerve cells,” she said. - The actor is a special man. He is the creator and the creator at the same time. Lights will go out... The confession of the most secret and secret thoughts of his hero begins, the radiation of the soul begins. Theatre is primarily an actor. No matter how interesting and rich the rehearsals may be, but ... the curtain opens, and it is the actor who remains alone with the audience. He carries not only his attitude to the problem of the play, but also his heart, his world. I will never believe that the simmering struggle of human passions, which breathe the best performances, will ever become uninteresting to the viewer.”.

People’s Artists of the BSSR Zinaida Brovarskaya and Maria Zakharevich in the play based on the play of the Bulgarian writer V. Petrov “Theater is my love”. 1983 Zinaida Brovarskaya worked a lot on radio and television, and also starred in films

The first role of the actress on the screen was Zina Zelkina in the film Who laughs last? Vladimir Korsch-Sablin. And after the role of the wife of Gauleiter Kube in the picture of Nikolai Figurovsky “The clock stopped at midnight” on Brovarskaya often with hostility scoffed neighbors and passers-by – such was the payment for convincing acting. She also played Empress Alexandra Fedorovna in the TV movie The Collapse, and other lesser-known roles.

“Acting is writing in the sand. Almost nothing remains, except yellowed photos and logically correctly constructed stingy reviews. And sometimes they don't even exist... How many bright colors and original finds are born and die during the performance with our hero. Therefore, with such impatience, the actor, going on stage, expects understanding today and now. There will be other shows tomorrow