Bright path.19.17
Moscow Art Theatre
Presented in the frame of Russian Case 2018
Director: Alexander Molochnikov
Choreograph: Polina Pshindina
Set designer: Sergei Tchoban, Agnia Sterligova
Age category 18+
Choreograph: Polina Pshindina
Set designer: Sergei Tchoban, Agnia Sterligova
Age category 18+
A view of the Revolution after 100 years of history has been brought to life on the stage of the Moscow Art Theatre in a magnificent show with 60 artists, a world-known architect who has created the space uniting images of Stalin’s sky-scrapers, the Moscow metro, the famous arch of the General Staff, Tatlin’s tower and many more motives forever inscribed into the conscience of the Homo Soveticus. 25-year-old director Alexander Molochnikov continues his travels based on the history that never happened and first presented in the shows “19.14” and “Rebels”. He belongs to the generation of people who call the 1917 Revolution “an overturn” and are convinced of the manipulative nature of historical discourse.
Trotsky is a prankster, Lenin easily turns into Stalin, implants a flaming motor into the chest of worker Makar instead of his heart, becomes “father Vladimir” for him and separates him from his beloved ballet dancer Vera, who marches on the stage together with the enthusiasts of the first five-year plans. All this happens in a dream which allows this absurdist anti-utopia to unfold on stage, reminding a pathos-ridden TV show and a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, a social realism hit and rough post-dramatic deconstruction.
Molochnikov included into the show images of the most famous films about the revolution – from Eisenstein’s “October” to Alexandrov’s “Radiant Path”, where Liubov Orlova flies around the statue of “The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman” to the sound of the “March of the Enthusiasts”. He conceived and made for the show a small film, “Chevengur”, based on the text by Andrei Platonov. The pathos and horror of the revolution are mixed in the show into a cocktail, the ingredients of which you cannot make out.
Having brought together in one show the best actors of the ensemble and other theatres, from Igor Vernik and Irina Pegova to Inga Oboldina and the Artistic Director of Krasnoyarsk’s Theatre for Young Spectators, Roman Feodori, the director has created a model of an entertaining historical and political blockbuster, where the Soviet myth is presented as a half-forgotten dream free of hopeless re-sentiment.
Trotsky is a prankster, Lenin easily turns into Stalin, implants a flaming motor into the chest of worker Makar instead of his heart, becomes “father Vladimir” for him and separates him from his beloved ballet dancer Vera, who marches on the stage together with the enthusiasts of the first five-year plans. All this happens in a dream which allows this absurdist anti-utopia to unfold on stage, reminding a pathos-ridden TV show and a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, a social realism hit and rough post-dramatic deconstruction.
Molochnikov included into the show images of the most famous films about the revolution – from Eisenstein’s “October” to Alexandrov’s “Radiant Path”, where Liubov Orlova flies around the statue of “The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman” to the sound of the “March of the Enthusiasts”. He conceived and made for the show a small film, “Chevengur”, based on the text by Andrei Platonov. The pathos and horror of the revolution are mixed in the show into a cocktail, the ingredients of which you cannot make out.
Having brought together in one show the best actors of the ensemble and other theatres, from Igor Vernik and Irina Pegova to Inga Oboldina and the Artistic Director of Krasnoyarsk’s Theatre for Young Spectators, Roman Feodori, the director has created a model of an entertaining historical and political blockbuster, where the Soviet myth is presented as a half-forgotten dream free of hopeless re-sentiment.
Alyona Karas
На странице использованы фотографии Екатерины Цветковой
