Kama Ginkas must be one of Moscow's most invisible celebrities.


Hardly a theater person in Russia would fail to include him in a list of the country's top five directors. His compelling, pin-sharp productions draw almost unanimous praise in a town known for its sour-faced critics. Western observers, whether writing about Ginkas's Moscow shows, European tours or productions done abroad, are equally enthusiastic.


Rival directors, despite belonging to a breed that is usually as skeptical as it is jealous, are apt to lower their voices to a more respectful tone if the conversation turns to Ginkas.


Yet, for all of that, Kama Ginkas would have to work at it to be more unnoticeable than he has been recently in Moscow.


He doesn't have his own theater. He doesn't have his own troupe.


He hasn't even had a show running in Moscow for more than a year. The last one he staged here premiered in 1991.


Now, at least the latter hitch is about to be remedied.


Following five months of rehearsals, Ginkas is on the verge of unveiling the newest in his series of productions based on the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Enigmatically entitled "K.I. from 'Crime,'" it is intended as an intense exploration of a minor but endlessly fascinating character in Dostoevsky's great psychological novel, "Crime and Punishment."


Like his acclaimed productions of "Notes From Underground" and "We Play 'Crime'" (an experimental half-Swedish, half-Russian-language version of "Crime and Punishment"), "K.I. from 'Crime'" will run at the Theater Yunogo Zritelya, where Ginkas's wife Genrietta Yanovskaya is the artistic director.


The "K.I." of the title refers to Katerina Ivanovna, the belligerent, terminally consumptive mother of three who was left destitute when her drunkard husband Marmeladov was run over and killed in the street. But if that sounds like a recipe for doom and gloom, listen to what the director has to say.


"I want people to be in ecstasy over Katerina Ivanovna. I want them to say, 'This is one fabulous woman!' She's unpleasant, she's petty, she's even malicious and cruel, but she is alive! And she is totally natural, which makes her funny and charming at the same time. Even as she is dying and has no hopes of recovering, her natural impulse is to go on living at full speed."


Ginkas, 53, has wanted to stage the story, which he calls "the most difficult female role in world literature," for 20 years. But until now the pieces just wouldn't fall into place. While he usually writes his own dramatizations, his every attempt to mold a play around Katerina Ivanovna ended in failure.


Then, when his son's first play, "Bald/Brunet," was a hit at the Stanislavsky Theater a few years back, Ginkas asked him to try it.


Working under the pseudonym of Dani Gink, as he also did with "Bald/Brunet," the young writer produced what his dad calls "a stunning play."


"That may not be apparent to a reader," Ginkas says, "but I think the spectator will see it in performance."


Is it odd that Ginkas, a Lithuanian Jew, should be so attached to the works of Dostoevsky, a notorious anti-Semite? According to Ginkas, not at all.


"You can be a genius and still have pimples," the director says, before adding on an almost teasing note: "He didn't hate only Jews, he hated Poles and Europeans in general."


But for Ginkas, Dostoevsky's hatred was not so much for certain peoples as it was for the philosophy of rationalism, popular in Western cultures.


More importantly, says Ginkas, Dostoevsky diagnosed the major ills of the 20th century. He saw that ideas of mass equality -- which so attracted the Socialists -- and ideas of super-humans -- which so attracted the Nazis -- were dangerous.


That is something Ginkas learned by experience.


Just six weeks old when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, he was taken from his parents and placed in a Jewish ghetto in his hometown of Kaunas. Of the thousands of people interred, he was just one of six to emerge alive.


Even after his parents freed him from the ghetto, he had to move constantly from home to home, sheltered by others. One savior was a famous Lithuanian actress. Another was a Catholic nurse who saved Jewish babies by hiding them in the beds of the handicapped children's hospital where she worked.


As an adult, Ginkas found that his brand of art long kept him out of favor with the Soviet authorities. From 1968, when he graduated from theater school, until 1980, he "did shows that irritated those organizations which were supposed to keep an eye on order."


He and his wife traveled the provinces, taking work where they could find it. And while Ginkas gained a sparkling reputation among theater insiders, he was occasionally reduced to staging shows in his Leningrad apartment because no theater there would touch him.


But those days are over now. And when "K.I. from 'Crime'" opens Tuesday, Moscow will finally see one survivor's well-studied observations of a character "who somehow keeps on living even when living is impossible."





"K.I. from 'Crime'" ("K.I. iz 'Prestupleniya'") plays Nov. 1, 14, 21 and 28 at 7 P.M., Nov. 4 at 9 P.M., and Nov. 6 to 8 at 9:30 P.M. at the Theater Yunogo Zritelya, 10 Pereulok Sadovskikh. Metro: Pushkinskaya. Attendance is limited to 53 spectators. Tel. 299-4961. Approximate Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.