Театральная компания ЗМ
Sasha Denisova, Konstantin Chelkaev + a group of city dwellers

Protocol

Meyerhold Centre, Moscow
Presented in the frame of Russian Case 2018
Directors: Sasha Denisova, Konstantin Chelkaev
Set designers: Sasha Denisova, Konstantin Chelkaev
Age category 16+

A dozen of Muscovites belonging to the so-called creative class – young people from the IT, advertising and bank offices, journalists and students, psychologists and designers. They dance as well as they can, they sing and they talk about themselves and about each other.

The Meyerhold Centre production is an example of the new theatre trend – city-dwellers’ theatre, i.e. the kind of theatre which is created through collaboration of professional directors and playwrights with city-dwellers.

The social uplift in Russia which led to mass rallies in 2011-2012 concluded in a new conservative twist of the authorities and a golden age of city-dwellers’ unrestrained creativity. Today in Moscow they create shows, write poetry and prose, make performances, make posters and mobile-phone films.

PROTOCOL is a collective portrait of a typical Muscovite made by Muscovites themselves. Playwright Sasha Denisova and choreographer Konstantin Chelkaev helped Muscovites to express themselves and created a simple, clear and expressive form for them.

The new PROTOCOL by the Dance/Doc group combining contemporary dance and documentary theatre deals with day-to-day life. Everydayness is the kind of a mindset when reality is accepted as a given. During a month the participants of the performance recorded every day of their lives, singling out things like routine, rituals, weekdays, holidays, habits, annoying factors, city, environment, duty, transport, food, mediocrity, office, unusual, household, weather, objects, etc. I am what my daily life consists of. Where is happiness among all its constituents? Can it be so that our life slips away among the small, insignificant, routine details?