He studied under Georgy Tovstonogov and was also a "green student" acquainted with many eminent people of the creative literary and acting environment. I raved about the theater from a young age. He was bored of living, by his own admission, but it was not boring to stage performances. All this is about Kama Ginkas, who for half a century continues to amaze his viewer.
Birth
By nationality Kama Ginkas - this can only be guessed by name - a Jew. A nation as a nation is no better and no worse than others. However, everyone knows how Jews were treated in the middle of the last century, especially during the Great Patriotic War. Namely, before the war, Kame fell out of the world, already a tiny kid knowing persecution and misfortune.
A happy event in the life of his family happened on the seventh of May, the forty-first year. The hometown of the future director was Lithuanian Kaunas. The father of little Kama, Monya (another option is Miron), was a doctor. At one time, he graduated from Kaunas Medical Institute. Kama Ginkas himself later in his memoirs about his childhood and father said that he partially followed in the footsteps of his father - he was the boss, and Kama became the boss. True, in different areas - Kama in the theater, and his father - on an ambulance. However, this happened a little later - after the war. And then, in the forty-first, six-week-old Kama, a completely kid, she and her parents were driven into the Kaunas ghetto. There they spent a long year and a half. Kama, of course, does not remember anything about this time. What he knows is known only from the stories of his parents.
After a year and a half, the Ginkas family managed to escape. Kama Ginkas does not know when exactly this happened, he only knows that the escape took place on the thirteenth day - his mother had loved the number thirteen all her life precisely for this reason. At the end of March 1944, a brutal seizure (and, of course, killing) of children occurred in the Kaunas ghetto. The Ginkasy escaped shortly before.
For some time they were hiding with Lithuanian friends who agreed to shelter them. Lithuanians usually betrayed the Jews, but that family could be trusted. Kama recalled that he very much sunk into the soul a silver spoon, which he saw in this house. Apparently, for the kid this was a real shock - after the horrors of the ghetto, hold a silver spoon in his hands.
Acquaintance with the theater
Even at the age of five, little Kama knew for sure: an artist is the most wonderful profession. The artist is shocking the audience! And Kama wanted to "shock." He decided that he would certainly become an artist. Kama had his own puppet theater, he did some home productions. And when he was fifteen, he first appeared in the then Leningrad - he went to visit Aunt Sonya, dad's sister. In addition to walking along the streets and museums of the city on the Neva, the young Kama also visited one of the performances of the legendary Georgy Tovstonogov. The teenager was shocked and further strengthened in the desire to become an actor.
Attempt number one
After graduating from school in Kaunas, Kama Ginkas went straight to the selection committee of the acting department at the Vilnius Conservatory. He was confident in himself - the words that his external data did not correspond to the internal ones became that big blow for him. In other words, Kama was not taken. Then he considered that the matter was in appearance, not realizing that by his nature he was simply not an actor.
In such frustrated feelings, Kama Ginkas literally in the same days met his school teacher, with whom he had once set up sketches in amateur performances. After hearing the insult of the former student, the teacher advised him to enter the directing department in Leningrad. A similar option to Kame never crossed his mind, but - why not try? And he, without thinking twice, went to the northern capital.
Attempt number two
Ginkas arrived in Leningrad completely unprepared. What kind of directors will be accepted, what needs to be learned, and what knowledge to possess from history, literature - Kama did not know anything like that. But by some miracle, the first three competitive stages of the master - George Tovstonogov passed.
And at the last - the colloquium, where it was required to be savvy in various humanitarian fields - was cut off. However, by that time he managed to fall in love with Tovstonogov and director. Kama returned home, knowing for sure that sooner or later he would become a director.
Attempt number three
Kama was going to act exclusively to Tovstonogov, and therefore there were three long years of preparation ahead. The father, who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, insisted on Kama entering the medical department, but Kama showed obstinacy. This caused some aggravation in relations with his father, aggravated in the future - after all, Kama still entered the acting department. The director himself recalled in an interview that his father then injured him with words about his classmates entering a prestigious architectural institute, and in spite of his father Kama, who always had “not very” drawings, he also decided that he would enter the architectural department. He prepared, worked as a copyist of drawings, despite the fact that he was never interested in architecture. So he entered the architecture, but at the same time went to acting. Of course, he chose the latter. Those three years that remained until admission to Tovstonogov studied there. And the father did not talk with his son all this time.
After three years, Kama Mironovich Ginkas reappeared on the threshold of his aunt’s house in Leningrad. With such a mood, which, in his own words, he never had before - on the rise, as they say. With this mood, he went to college, went through all the competitive tours and was enrolled in the directing department to Georgy Tovstonogov - where he was aiming. It was there, by the way, in the exams, that his fateful meeting with his future wife, Henrietta Yanovskaya, took place. However, we will discuss this in more detail below.
After institute
After graduation - and this happened in 1967 - Kama Mironovich Ginkas (pictured), by his own admission, was unemployed for some time. As, however, and his wife. They lived poorly, but in peace. And in the same sixty-seventh year, Kame smiled fortune. He staged a play based on one of Victor Rozov’s plays at the Riga Drama Theater. After that, the young director began a period of active creative activity.
For three years he worked in Leningrad, and in the seventieth year he went to distant Siberia, to Krasnoyarsk. Over the next two seasons, Kama was the main director of the Young Spectator Theater there, and his performances invariably enjoyed great success among the townspeople. From the very beginning of his career, the performances of Kama Ginkas and himself began to be called sharp. The master’s manner of directing - and now Ginkas can be called that way - adheres to a similar manner.
Moscow
In the early eighties, the director Kama Ginkas rightly decided that Moscow gives a creative person more opportunities, and he and his family moved to the capital of our country. Over the next seven years, Ginkas changed several stages - he was the head of the Mossovet Theater, "directed" on the stage of the Art Theater, was the "conductor" of the Mayakovsky Theater. But since 1988, the Moscow Youth Theater has burst into his life, and Ginkas is still faithful to him.
One can rightly be called a merit of Kama Mironovich that he brought an element of “adulthood” to the essentially children’s theater: now not only red hats and pockmarked chickens are on the stage, you can also see wonderful performances by Kama Mironovich Ginkas by Dostoevsky or Chekhov, Wilde or Shakespeare. The wife of Kama Henrietta works with him, and this is truly a wonderful creative tandem.
Confession
As already mentioned above, Ginkas is called a "sharp" director, and this, of course, is not liked by everyone. However, Kama Mironovich has his admirers, and there are also enough awards. Among them are the Stanislavsky Prize, the Tovstonogov Prize, the State Prize of Russia, as well as the title of People's Artist, received fifteen years ago.
