Театральная компания ЗМ
based on a story by Andrei Platonov

THE POTUDAN RIVER

Studio of Theatre Arts, Moscow
Award nominations 2010

Драма / спектакль малой формы
работа режиссера (Georg Genoux)
работа художника ()
работа художника по свету ()
Director: Sergei Zhenovach



Set designer: Alexander Borovsky




A Lyrical Story by the Author of the Kotlovan Utopia


The spectators in the lobby of the Studio of Theatre Arts are welcomed with hot potatoes, weak tea in aluminum mugs, and an accordion music – the audience is being exposed to the atmosphere of the first Soviet years. After that a Red Army man sees them off to the white room where they can witness of how life chips a high chaste feeling away turning it into a comfortable philistine ‘love’. The narration is about a young couple but the story can be interpreted in different ways. Some people will hear in it the bitterness of a Communism builder who witnesses how the Great Utopia of the Ideal Society transformed into a practical socialism. Other people, such as the film director Sokurov in his famous film version of the story, will hear the theme of inescapable isolation of human and impossibility of entire fusion with another human being.

Sergei Zhenovach and his stage designer Alexander Borovsky found an expressive plastic metaphor for Platonov’s story: rough unpolished wood that filled the white room is being gradually substituted with comfortable furniture. The protagonist and his father take the boards, one by one, out of the room which later become a thoroughly made clothes-press or a children’s high chair. In this way, almost living and sky-rocketing matter takes shape but in terms of philosophy it grows numb.



Elena Kovalskaya





TRAVELLING COMPANY
25



PERFORMANCE SPACE
10 m x 8 m


FOR AUDIENCE OF
35 - 60



FRIGHT
1 ton, 6-m van



SET UP TIME
10 hours