Rezo gabriadze biography examples

Gabriadze is the kind of figure who can truly be called a man of his age. He was the writing talent behind the films of Georgy Danelia – those cinematic masterpieces that live forever in the subconscious of every Russian currently over the age of 25. Even if writing the screenplays for Mimino and Kin-Dza-Dza had been his sole contribution to this world, it would have been enough to cement his name in the history of performing arts.

But his work does not stop there. He has written and directed dozens of other films and produced a huge number of paintings, drawings, and sculptures (including the tourist favorite Chizhik-Pyzhik on St. Petersburg’s Fontanka). Yet, perhaps the most famous of all his creations is the Puppet Theatre, which he founded in 1981.

Gabriadze built his theatre in Soviet-era Georgia against all the odds, rebuilding a tiny building in the center of Tbilisi’s Old Town with his own hands. They say that one of the main turning points in gaining support from bureaucrats for the project was Gabriadze’s favorite phrase, which he attributes to a French Minister of Culture: “Monsieur Leon Armand Guerry claims that a country which has no puppet theatre has no right to call itself a country of theatre.”

Over the past 30 years, Gabriadze has created six shows, including Alfred and Violetta, which is based on Dumas and Verdi; The Emperor of Trabizond’s Daughter, a story based on the chivalric tales of the title character; and an entirely original piece titled The Autumn of My Spring. All of these performances have toured halfway around the world, appearing at festivals in Avignon, Edinburgh, the United States and Canada. Gabriadze has also

Georgian screenwriter, playwright, theatre and film director, visual artist and set designer. Rezo Gabriadze graduated from the Tbilisi State University (Department of Journalism) and earned an advanced degree in screenwriting and directing from the University of Moscow. He is the author of more than thirty motion picture screenplays.

In 1981, Gabriadze founded the Tbilisi Marionette Theatre. In his early shows he used string puppets for highly romantic and poetic pieces: Alfredo and Violetta (1981), based on Guiseppe Verdi’s La Traviata; Marshal de Fantier’s Diamond, or A Poem ofOld Tbilisi, 1982). The first slight deviation from exclusively using marionettes was taken in The Emperor of Trebizond’s Daughter (1983) where he mixed different manipulation techniques with elements of live theatre. Later on he continued to experiment with various techniques, even reaching the point of giving up string puppets altogether in The Song of the Volga (1996).

Early on Rezo Gabriadze created his personal world where he mythologized Georgian urban folk culture incorporating its anecdotal characters into actual world history and introducing animals (including birds) as the lyrical author’s alter egos. Most important, however, is his use of cinematic techniques as a structural organizing principle: episodic structure, close-ups, panoramic views, pre-recorded soundtracks of famous screen actors lending their voices to the characters.
Rezo Gabriadze is also a creator of theatrical metaphors. In The Song of the Volga, for example, a spinning bucket of steaming water with small squares as windows stands for a train evacuating war refugees. This production, along with the earlier The Autumn of Our Spring (1985, awarded The State Prize of the USSR), became true puppet epics in which innocent “little people” (or “little animals”, to be precise) were unwilling participants of the tragic turns of huma

Butterflies and Burning Sandcastles

One of the puppet theatres I had most wanted to contact was the Gabriadze Marionette Theatre. I had seen them perform in Paris and then again in Tbilisi and yet I never quite made contact. It was a disappointment since Rezo Gabriadze was one of the puppet directors I had most wanted to interview and Ramona one of the best puppets shows I had seen. But alas, one doesn’t get everything one wants.

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I did however discover that there was another place in town, the Tbilisi State Puppet Theatre (TSPT), which has existed in one form or another since 1934. And so I late February I found a Facebook page for them and and sent them a message. I was contacted by Ana Sanaia, an actress and their manager. She was happy to have me come see them. I found them in an old factory building called The Silk Factory, where they had a small theatre. I was let in on a day when there was an art exhibition in an adjacent gallery. The Silk Factory was used for a variety of purposes including a production studio that I was shown, which might be a place where I can edit the final version of Gravity From Above.

I was enjoying a conversation with a woman named Salome Berikashvili when Ana Sanaia came in. She was very glad to meet me. The show for the day was a short version of Tbilisi’s history done through allegorical imagery. The play called Sakartvelo (Georgia) featured a modified bunraku style not too different from the Gabriadze Theatre. They performed mostly on a table top, with performers in black moving the figures from behind. The main figures were a wooden donkey and a bird. But whether cotton balls for clouds or flat cutout dancers or pails filled with sand and turned upside down, then lifted up to represent an older Tbilisi, the sense of invention was continual. The main director Niko