Black Mass, lights flicker in the darkness, chains clink. Half‑naked figures in some kind of rags sway in a trance. Shaved heads, skin and bones, bodies smeared with lime, eyes rolled back. The leader stands out — a real Koschei the Deathless, only in an ancient Egyptian style. His thin body exudes antiquity, he whispers spells in an unknown language, the flame grows brighter. Meet: you are looking at the legend of the experimental theatre, Anton Adasinsky.

This episode from the blockbuster “Grom: A Difficult Childhood” is practically a cameo by Adasinsky. On the one hand, he played an independent character here — a rather vile, but damn colourful anti‑hero named Glashatay, an assistant to the villain Anubis. On the other hand, this episode with the ritual of the shaven‑headed androgynes directs connoisseurs of the St. Petersburg underground to the aesthetics of the Derevo theatre, created by Adasinsky and which became a major phenomenon not only in Russia but also worldwide. By a coincidence (which is clearly not accidental), the prequel to “Major Grom” is set in the hometown of both the Derevo theater and Anton Adasinsky himself, and at the same time when our hero triumphantly emerged as a leading figure in Russian theater.

The 1990s, from a political and media perspective, are associated with, say, the fearless (and later murdered) journalist Vlad Listyev and the creator of financial pyramids, Sergei Mavrodi (who ran for president); both of them appear in the film. And the culture of that time is a wave of frenzied nonconformism. With the collapse of the USSR, an explosive wave of interest in various performances and actionism begins. The art group E.T.I. uses their bodies to spell out a word that is currently banned from publication (there were no bans on profanity in the media); naked and crawling on all fours, Oleg Kulik pretends to be a dog and attacks visitors to the gallery on Yakimanka; the AHE theater conducts alchemical experiments and mysterious rituals on the streets of Leningrad‑St. Petersburg. The interest in everything paranormal, parapsychological, and magical, which emerged among Soviet people as early as the 1960s (ufology, Bigfoot, Juna), is intensifying incredibly: while Allan Chumak is charging water on the TV screen, artists, directors, and performers are rushing to break free from the bounds of ordinary logic and human experience. On the theatrical stages, texts by the Obériuts and futurists are being performed at full force. Sergei Kuryokhin’s “Pop Mechanics” appears on television with banners reading “Burliuk,” which literally articulates its own connection to the Russian avant‑garde tradition that was interrupted during the Soviet era (prior to that, it had been revived by the St. Petersburg “New Artists”; their leader, Timur Novikov, received the title of Chairman of the Earth, which was once held by Velimir Khlebnikov). Non‑systemic art is emerging from the underground into the mainstream. And the performances of Anton Adasinsky, who is unlike anyone else and yet capable of resembling anyone, are of particular value to witnesses of the era.

In the 1990s, during the heyday of “Tree,” Adasinsky was considered almost the leader of a sect or even a cult. It’s no wonder: everyone in the team has shaved heads, they’re quiet, and they move in strange ways. The actors of “Tree” must adhere to a strict routine; they’re forbidden to act anywhere else, forbidden to participate in other projects. They follow a strict diet and practice everyday austerity. They’re no longer just actors — they’re a squad of the Impeccable. They crawl on the floor in the foyer before the performance begins, and on stage they can transform into either zombie‑like puppets or touching characters from a fairy‑tale plot, lizards or birds — as in their most famous performance, “Quetzal.” Or become hilarious clowns and act out a love story in the hypnotic illusion “Once Upon a Time.” “It was a difficult period for me,” Adasinsky now recalls the years of the highest activity of the group he created. “Keeping such a company in this form for many, many years is a whole odyssey.” The Derevo Theatre has existed since its inception and still maintains a constant touring schedule with a base in Dresden.

To turn one’s consciousness upside down, to give it a good shake, to knock the mechanism of perceiving the world out of its well‑trodden rut of automatic thinking — this is Adasinsky’s method in working both with the public and with students. “I studied at a theatre academy in St. Petersburg, attended classes, performed in plays at the Youth Theatre and at the Lensovet Theatre, appeared in some TV series from time to time, and worked as a clown at children’s birthday parties,” says theatre director Maxim Didenko. “Once, Anton was giving a lecture at the theatre academy illegally.” He talked about a different way of looking at the world, in principle. In this perspective, everything I had lived by was subjected not just to doubt, but to a rather humorous refutation. And then my friend Roma Gabriia and I caught up with Anton on the street and asked him to join us for a master class. It was a tough master class, during which Anton led us through exercises that radically expanded the boundaries of consciousness and physicality to such an extent that all my doubts about the system in which I existed were simply washed away. I realized then that what I’m currently involved in is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And I’m still doing exactly that. Today, Maxim Didenko is one of the most sought‑after Russian theatre directors in Europe, famous for his energetic horror‑dances based on the texts of Kharms, Pelevin, Sorokin, and Babel. These days, for example, his major premiere is being staged at the Gorky Theatre in Berlin — The Last Word.

When, in the play “The Last Clown on Earth,” Adasinsky dances his own unique dance at the limit of endurance, when his slender body convulses, and his arms, legs, and head swing as if on hinges, then along with the rigidity, one can feel vulnerability and fragility. The helplessness of a marionette in the hands of a deranged puppeteer. The concept of the actor‑puppet was popularized a hundred years ago by the great theatrical reformer Vsevolod Meyerhold. It is only natural that it was Adasinsky, one of the most persistent followers of the forgotten masters of the theatrical avant‑garde, who played the role of Meyerhold in Alexander Shein’s film “VMayakovsky” (2018). On stage, Adasinsky resolutely ceases to be himself. But on screen, he is not the same as on stage. In cinema, he is invited precisely to play himself. Due to his shaved head and particular composure, “tough Anton” may look like someone for whom prison feels more like home than freedom, and the creators of “Grom” specifically tapped into this aspect of his stage persona.

Alexander Sokurov literally says about his 2011 “Faust,” in which Adasinsky played Mephistopheles, that he deliberately invited non‑professionals to this film (meaning, obviously, “actors without a theatre degree”). Sometimes, he says, you need to invite not an actor who is capable of playing a suitable character, but a person “with the necessary personal range.” For this role, played in German, Adasinsky received "Nika" and "White Elephant" — the prize of the Guild of Russian Film Critics and Critics).