Gremina Elena: photo, biography, personal life

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The heroine of this article is an outstanding Russian playwright, screenwriter and director. Having begun her activity in the post-perestroika period with the founding of the theatrical movement "New Drama", she became the real ideologist of its main direction, which most of all valued proximity to the existing reality, whatever it was. Over the years, "New Drama" has grown into a modern independent project "Documentary Theater" - "Teatr.doc".

Early years

Elena Gremina was born in Moscow on November 20, 1956, and her future dramatic fate was predetermined from birth.

All of Elena's young years passed in a rich creative atmosphere that reigned in the family of the two main men at that time in her life - her father, the famous screenwriter Anatoly Borisovich Grebnev, and her older brother Alexander Mindadze, who continued his work in cinematography, and to by that time alreadywho became an established screenwriter and film director.

Involuntarily joining the ongoing process of creating new scripts and discussing events taking place on the set in their family, Elena began to try to write from an early age. Year after year, her talent has developed more and more.

By the time she graduated from secondary school, Elena Gremina was a girl who had completely determined her life purpose and therefore entered the drama department of the A. M. Gorky Literary Institute.

Already in 1983, the premiere of the play "The Myth of Svetlana", based on one of Elena's first plays, took place on the stage of the Leningrad Theater for Young Spectators.

Father

Anatoly Borisovich Grebnev, Elena's father, was a famous screenwriter, director and screenwriter. When his daughter was twenty years old, he was awarded the high title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR, and later became the Lenin Prize Laureate.

Having worked at various times in such newspapers as "Young Stalinist" and "Soviet Art", in 1960 he became a professional writer and screenwriter, writing about his contemporaries, subtly and accurately drawing their characters. On the account of Anatoly Borisovich, scripts for such well-known and beloved by millions of viewers paintings as "Wild Dog Dingo", "Wake Mukhin!", "Old Walls", "Strong in Spirit", "Time of Desires","Prohindiada, or Running on the Spot", the series "Petersburg Secrets" and many others.

On June 19, 2002, the life of a remarkable screenwriter was tragically cut short as a result of a car accident.

Creativity

In the post-perestroika period, which marked the beginning of the 90s, a crisis came in the domestic dramaturgy that had existed before that time. Some changes were required in the established theatrical system, in which the majority of the audience had already lost interest. At this time, the formation of the theatrical movement "New Drama" began, one of the founders of which was Elena Gremina. The authors of the "New Drama" tried to write as honestly as possible about real life and the realities of those days, as far as it was possible with the political structure of the country existing in those years.

Elena Anatolyevna has become known to a wide range of viewers since 1992, when the play "Russian Eclipse" ("The Case of the Cornet O-va") was staged at the Moscow Pushkin Theater. Over the years, such plays by Gremina as "Behind the Mirror", "The Sakhalin Wife", "Eyes of the Day - Mata Hari", "Nylka and Vylka in Kindergarten" became in demand, the performances of which could be seen in the theaters of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Omsk, Saratov, Krasnoyarsk and many other Russian cities.

Not without the creativity of Elena Anatolyevna and television. Together with her father Anatoly Borisovich Grebnev, she became one of theco-authors of the script for the most popular multi-part television movie "Petersburg Secrets", and was also the main author of such series as "Adjutants of Love", "Thirty Years" and "Love in the District".

In 2014, Mikhail Ugarov, Elena Gremina's husband, filmed based on her play "The Brothers Ch." feature film of the same name dedicated to one day in the youth of A. P. Chekhov and his brothers.

Private life

Mikhail Ugarov and Elena Anatolyevna met in 1993. This happened during a seminar for young playwrights, at which Mikhail was presented with Elena's play "The Wheel of Fortune", which he liked very much. In turn, Gremina came to a real delight from the work of Ugarov "Doves". As they later recalled, a "romance of texts" first of all arose between them, which soon grew into an official marriage.

When two playwrights united in one family, everything that was in the life of each of them before meeting each other became common. For two, two sons Ivan and Alexander - the children of Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov from previous marriages. For two, one love. For two, one new common cause - the creation of a theater.

Both Elena and Mikhail were not only important, but also interested in each other's opinion about their own work. Every now and then one of them became a writer-playwright, and the other became a spouse and critic, after which they changed roles.

Mikhail Ugarov was a famous director and playwright, and later an artistichead of the new "Teatr.doc", which he created with Elena in 2002.

According to Gremina, Mikhail was a quiet, intelligent and modest person. In their union, it was Elena Anatolyevna who was destined to become the family locomotive, who took over the entire prose of life, leaving her husband his creative genius and ideas. So it was at first, until the time of the new theater came. When this happened, they acted as equals as its creators and fighters for the right to exist, honestly and fearlessly defending their small independent theater to the very end.

In April 2018, Mikhail Yurievich Ugarov, the only true great love in Elena Gremina's personal life, died of a heart attack.

Later Elena Anatolyevna wrote:

No condolences needed. I am very, very lucky that we met - this could not be. We are too different. But I was lucky once in my life, I, injured, unhappy, incapable, as I thought before this meeting, to the personal happiness of a person - I met him, we got to know each other and decided to be together …

Son

Alexander Rodionov, the son of Elena Anatolyevna, today is one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Russia. In 1999, following the path of his mother and stepfather Mikhail Ugarov, he graduated from the Literary Institute. And over the next ten years, he managed to establish himself with dozens of plays that were embodied both in the theater and in cinema.

OnAccording to Alexander, the scripts for such famous films as "Free Swimming" and "Crazy Help" by B. Khlebnikov, "Live and Remember" by A. Proshkin, "Everyone will die, but I will stay" by V. Gai-Germanika and "The Tale of the Darkness" N. Khomeriki.

Also, Alexander Rodionov is one of the playwrights of "Teatr.doc".

Teatr.doc

Created in 2002 by Mikhail Ugarov and Elena Gremina, "Teatr.doc" is still one of the most unique projects of Russian theatrical life.

On its stage you can see candid documentary performances reflecting all the social and political events taking place in modern Russia. This independent non-profit theater dedicated its productions to the Magnitsky case, the mothers of Beslan, Bolotnaya Affair and even Pussy Riot activists, based on real events and interviews with real people who directly participated in them.

Due to the non-standard themes of the theatre's performances and the sharpness of its social and political outlook, "Teatr.doc" has repeatedly had problems with the authorities throughout its activities.

Instead of afterword

Elena Anatolyevna Gremina outlived her husband Mikhail Ugarov by only a few weeks.

Being an absolute person of art, she was very emotional, keenly feeling and experiencing any pain. The death of her husband in April 2018, with whom she lived for 25 years, affected her he alth. Due to the rapidly deterioratingFeeling well, Elena Anatolyevna was placed in the Botkin City Clinical Hospital, but all the efforts of the doctors were unsuccessful.

She passed away on May 16, 2018.

"Teatr.doc", the favorite brainchild of Elena Gremina, whose photo can be seen in this article, continued its work as planned. After all, as long as this theater exists and performances created by Elena Anatolyevna are on its stage, there is no better way to honor her memory.