All my life I did what my heart told me to do. And it was very hard for me - Yuri Kuklachev

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Having abandoned his family, on the last day of 2015, he boarded a plane to Koltsovo. Because on that day it was important for him to meet and talk with the inmates of the juvenile colony in the small town of Kirovgrad.

Explaining the meaning of this act, Yuri Kuklachev retells his entire life. And this story has nothing to do with a beautiful fairy tale about a funny clown and his cats.

In the cold room of the juvenile correctional facility's club, no one at first even notices the short gray-haired man. Here they are waiting for the clown Kuklachev, but he does not look like him at all. But this is it.

And when he begins to speak, he immediately runs into a wall of incomprehension: cold, evil glances from under their brows await boring moralizing from him and set a block in advance. But after a few minutes, the barrier disappears. And this is despite the fact that there will be no clowning. There will be no trained cats either. There will be a simple heart-to-heart talk.

“I just want that when my granddaughter grows up, none of you will offend her,” Kuklachev honestly confesses why he travels to children's colonies with such “Lessons of Kindness” from year to year. Sometimes he breaks down to shout, sometimes he allows himself to call the audience “Bobby”: “Because if you don’t think about what you want to achieve today, tomorrow you will have emptiness. And others will fill this void for you. And you, like a dog, like Bobik, will run after them, wag your tail and wait for sugar to be given!"

But he is forgiven for this, because everything he tells is about his life too, Kuklachev himself explains:

- On December 31, I was told: "Yuri Dmitrievich, it's a holiday, the table has already been set, well, where are you going?" And I answered: “No. I will not stay. I need to see the guys so that they hear me, understand. " I did not come to teach something, to read lectures. No. It's useless. I came to tell you about my life.

I was born after the war. It was a hard time. I wanted to eat all the time. And I was not born in an acting family. I achieved everything myself. By their labor. I want to pass on this experience so that the guys also start working on themselves.

I was seven years old when Uncle Vasya told me: "Yura, tell me why you came to this world?" I looked at him like an idiot. How for what? In order to live. And he asks me: “This is understandable. But who do you want to be? " I didn't know. And he says, “Now. Don't sleep tonight. You think about who you will become in life. " I still remember it as a nightmare. I suddenly realized that I was living in vain. I didn’t sleep that night. I started mentally playing different professions, trying them on myself. And I thought about it a lot, a very long time.

One day my father brought home a KVN TV set. Included. And just showing Charlie Chaplin. I liked it so much! I laughed so hard! At some point, he jumped up and began to try to repeat something after him. I heard laughter, someone laughed. And I felt so warm from this laughter, so joyful that I said: “I have found! I found myself! I realized what I was going to do in my life, I found a thing that pleases my heart. I'll become a clown! Set a goal. I was eight years old. And from that moment on, I went to this goal: I overcame myself, worked on myself. This is my mission. I had to fulfill it.

In general, we all came to this world to fulfill our mission. We are all the chosen ones. More recently, we were tiny tadpoles who, racing with millions of their brothers and sisters, rushed to salvation, trying to survive. And they survived. Think about it: 22 million tadpoles like you were simply flushed down the toilet. And the Lord gave you the opportunity, allowed you to continue your life. And therefore none of us has the right to waste our lives.

The mission of everyone is to find their own gift in themselves, to find an opportunity to benefit people with their work. I'm lucky. I found. But this does not mean that everything was further easy and simple. Yes, I am a master, I love my job, I know how to do it, I am the only one in the whole world. But I did it myself. I still have calluses on my hands.

I entered the circus school seven times. They didn't take me. They explained: “Young man, look at yourself. What kind of clown are you? Humiliated. They laughed at me. They laughed in my face. And from the fourth grade, year after year, I tried hard.

And here I am sitting at home one day after another failed attempt to get into this school. Depressed, humiliated, ridiculed. The father comes and says: "Well, son, have you accepted?" And I answer: "Dad, no one believes in me." He says: “You are wrong. I know a person who believes in you. This is me, your father."

He saved me then. I realized that there is no more power than the one I have inside. My desire to become a clown is so great, I am so confident in myself that no one can break me. I prayed. Into the Universe, up there, I sent a signal with every part of my body: “Lord, help me! Help me make my dream come true! Help me become who I am!"

And literally two days later, in a trolley bus, I met a girl who was playing in a folk circus. This is an amateur circus, amateur performances. I didn't even know about that. But that's how a casual conversation on public transport got me going.

She took me to the gym, where there was everything: trapeze, mats, everywhere they jumped, juggled, walked on the wire. I thought: thank God, this is it, I got to where I was supposed to.

And I started studying. Silently, persistently, work on yourself every day. At the age of 16, I won an amateur art competition dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Soviet power. I became the first clown of the Soviet Union. And then they took me to the circus school. I achieved my goal.

It seemed that everything, the difficulties are behind. But no. Further tests were even more. I was admitted ahead of schedule - in March, although the entrance exams were only in July. But as soon as they accepted it, a disaster struck: a can fell during training and cut my leg. To the bone. She cut my tibial nerve. So that's it. The leg, the doctors said, is likely to remain insensitive for life.

I had an operation. And they say: “Now hope. If the leg starts to hurt, then the nerve is being restored. And if not, forgive me, you will remain disabled. And suddenly my pains started. Ever beat your elbow on a corner? Remember this sharp, searing pain? It hurt the same way. Not just one second, but constantly, continuously. A terrible pain began at the foot and rose up the body to the neck, choking me. Stronger and stronger.

I was prescribed an anesthetic injection. Morphine. They started injecting me with drugs at the age of 16. And I got hooked. I remember how good it was, how every day I flew away, how I waited for this injection, how I depended on it. It's good that my mother came. She saw me and was scared: “Son, what's wrong with you? What are they doing here with you? " And when she found out that they were injecting me, she said: “You wanted to be an artist? You will never become one! After three injections you are drawn to this drug. And they prescribed 15 injections for you. You will get so hooked that you will never become anything, you will disappear, you will never achieve anything. If you want to get out, be patient. " She left in tears.

Night has come. I endured. The nurses came. They offered an injection. I refused. And the pain intensified, I was burning all over, I could not breathe. But he endured, fought with this horror. By six in the morning I just fell asleep. But that night I won. Because I had a purpose in life. For her sake I decided: “I will die, but I will not be a drug addict. I have to become an artist. There is no other way."

Since then I haven't even drunk. Not a single gram at all. Because it interferes with the achievement of my goal. And there is nothing more important than her.

But I came to the school on crutches. For four years they tried to expel me as incompetent. They didn't need a disabled person. As a result, they wrote a collective letter with a request to expel me, and handed it over to the director of the school. He put together a commission. Called me. I came running and ask him: “Do not exclude me! I want to learn!" He looked at me, took this piece of paper and in the presence of the commission, in front of all those who demanded my expulsion, tore it up: "Go sonny, study." The commission hissed, of course: "How so?" But he protected me, told them: “As long as I am here, the boy will study. He has the heart of a clown."

Only thanks to him I graduated from college. Became a clown. An ordinary carpet clown. I own all genres. But I was just like everyone else. Nothing special. And they didn't take me anywhere. Because even without me there is a queue: folk artists, children of folk artists … And who am I? No one.

And again I turned to the Lord. And he helped again. He sent me a skinny, wet, pathetic, blind kitten. I found him on the street. I wanted to pass by. But he screamed so pitifully that my heart did not allow me to leave him. Brought home, washed, fed. And he stayed with me. Love came to the house with him. But the main thing is that he helped me find myself once again. I decided: “Of course! Right! Nobody did a number with cats before me! Nobody in the whole world knows how to train them."

I tried. Did not work. But I'm stubborn. I developed my own program, approached the question differently from everyone else, but in a different way: I didn’t break the cat, forcing it to do something. I began to watch her, to look for what she herself liked. In short, I did not, but she began to train me.

I came home somehow, but the cat was gone. Lost. I looked and looked, I found it in the kitchen, in a saucepan. Pulled her out of there - she back. And then I realized. Here it is! Here is my number! This is how "The Cat and the Cook" appeared. We have traveled all over the world with this number. We got all the prizes in the world.

I left the circus and created my own theater. But even that was not easy. The idea was, there were rooms, but there was no room. In 1990, a contract was sent to me from the USA. They invited me to work there. And I didn’t want to leave! The situation is hopeless. And everything would be lost if one day I did not jump out of bed at seven in the morning. An inner voice woke me up:

- Why are you lying? Get up urgently and run!

- Where to run?

- Run to the Moscow City Council.

- Why Mossovet?

- Don't ask, go. Time is running out!

I caught the car. He left. I enter the building - and immediately meet the mayor. I say: “Hello! Help. The contract came to me, they call me to work in America. I’m leaving. And I will not return. The children will study there, I will get a house there, an economy. I will never be able to return. And I want to stay here. For God's sake, give me a room. " He turns to some of his subordinates and suddenly says: "Yes, give him a cinema."

Honestly, it was. I didn’t pay a ruble in bribes, I don’t shove any chocolates or bottles of champagne to anyone. And they gave me 2 thousand square meters. m. in the center of Moscow, opposite the White House. There were kind people. We made the scene in two days. And they began to perform.

The theater is already 25 years old. I love him so much. He is beautiful - the way I saw him in my dreams. I did it because in 25 years I hadn’t let anyone steal a dime. I, like a beast, sat on every ruble, so that nothing goes past the theater, so that everything goes into business.

The building was taken away from me. Already in the 2000s, a banker encroached on my theater. Times were already different. The invaders took away my property intelligently, through the courts. They worked so beautifully that a mosquito would not erase a nose. But we defended the theater. Nice people helped. And the bank that attempted to assassinate him was the first to have his license taken away. God helped.

God is in each of us. He speaks to us through our conscience. If you can hear her, then everything is in order. And if not, you are in trouble. At the tombstone, she will come up, take it by the neck and say: "Well, how did you, my friend, live without me?"

Remember that oligarch who was born in Russia, got a good education here, made intelligence, connections, but spent them on deceiving and robbing? Remember him? Remember how he left for England? It was there that his conscience strangled him. At the last moment of his life, all the abomination that he himself had spawned attacked him. It was then that he realized: yachts, houses, millions of stolen goods with you cannot be taken. You came into this world naked, naked and you will leave. The worms will devour you - both your body and your soul. Apart from hatred, filth and children fighting for the inheritance, he did not leave anything.

Therefore, it is important that each of us find himself, understand his mission and live honestly. Listen to your heart, but don't expect everything to be easy. It will be very difficult. Because nothing is given just like that.