Театральная компания ЗМ

LIQUIDATION

LIQUID Theatre, Moscow-Chelyabinsk
Directors: Ksenia Petrenko, Alexei Zherebtsov



Site-specific theatre



Accompanied by music from Einsturzende Neubauten, people wearing miners lamps run up and down lumbering stairs, swing down ropes from the roof and use petrol saws in complete darkness. This is what a performance by a young company working in the site-specific genre looks like. Productions by the Liquid Theatre emerge from the place where the actors are at the time. To start a new production they do not need a play just an impulse or a theme. Having found themselves at different points in a single space the artists begin work using all their dance, acrobatic and drama skills. They have performed in a vacant factory in Chelyabinsk, as well as in a Moscow park; they have played in the style of post-industrial punk and copied the lifestyles and manners of office workers.


In addition to developing a new genre the Liquid Theatre also converts industrial buildings, a new trend in Moscow. The capital was originally constructed in circles around the Kremlin, and the circles of factories and industrial buildings that used to be on Moscow’s outskirts have now become the centre. More and more often these days old factories and buildings are being taken over to house art galleries, artist studios, clubs and theatres. Liquidation is located on the site of a working paper mill that has given away some sections of the factory to the theatre.

Elena Kovalskaya




There are no seats for the audience here. The space is also not marked off; the audience can go where they like. Although before the performance the visitors are given recommendations where they can enter and which parts are best left alone. Liquidation contains virtually no words, everything is built on images; people in working clothes with small miners lamps, live guitar music, spontaneous dance, the growl of a petrol saw, acrobatic rope tricks…

The audience reacts in different ways some dance, some kiss and other watch the show in fear. However, when a light is smashed, fireworks are let off, or a girl with a serious face preserves flowers given to her by an admirer it is really hard to remain indifferent.
Moskovsky Komsomolets