|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
NEW DRAMA FESTIVAL
15-24 September, 2006, Moscow
MAIN PROGRAMME
September 15, Friday
18:00, 21:00 Meyerhold Centre
DRUMMER WANTED Richard Maxwell
New York City Players, USA
Americans just love Richard Maxwell. He is the star of American noncommercial theatre, which is rare per se, and he gets much acclaim for his yet another project. Maxwell's projects usually deal with specific spaces: he's got a performance that takes place in an eating-house, where elderly people have sex on tables; he's got another one that takes place in a hotel room. Drummer Wanted is almost a concert with drums and piano on a peculiarly titled stage.
But the conflict of two characters is not very concert-like. She is an ill-tempered mother, he is her wicked son with a broken leg. They talk, they quarrel, they jam, they intonate lengthy monologues and otherwise mine the idea of Americans as the happiest nation in the world and of family as a social unit. This show by independent Richard Maxwell's group, is going through it's fifth season which is a sign of uncommon success.
September 16, Saturday
19:00 Teatr.doc
Special Program: DEMOCRACY.DOC
Teatr.doc, Moscow, Russia
21:00 Meyerhold Centre
GREAT TROUGHING Alexandre Vartanov
Teatr Ad Spectatores, Wroclaw, Poland
Two years ago in Moscow Great Troughing was abound with hard-hitting behind the scene twists and turns of TV business, featuring a naked man done over with pate and sex on stage. Polish version looks like an ordinary life of ordinary people, forced into companionship by shared job. Apart from sharp satire Polish performance strips the personal plot out of 'verbatim', furnish the romantic scene with an old Radiohead hit and the last but not least comes a mock concert of polish entertainment stars. The show is bizarre and endearing - the stars and the 'troughing' are virtually the same everywhere.
September 17, Sunday
16:00, 19:00 Teatr.doc
DREAMS Ivan Vyrypaev
Teatr Ad Spectatores, Wroclaw, Poland
An independent Polish theatre Ad Spectatores is situated in the centre of Wroclaw, in a former brewery. In wintertime the theatre stage its performances at a railroad station, where a side wing of the building belong to the artists. Here the most whimsical versions of contemporary plays including Russian ones are staged. Alexandre Vartanov's Great Troughing is performed at an ancient water supply station. Projects 'for the train' 'for the station building' 'for automobiles' are in progress.
Agata Kucinska - an actress and a director at Ad Spectatores - has made a puppet-show based on an early Vyrypaev's play. Her performance is delicate and absolutely depressing - exactly like the play. The cosmic scale of Vyrypaev's text is installed into the most limited space - grey marionette people are crowded inside an empty aquarium with lack of air. Still they are free to dream.
18:00 Praktika Theatre
THREE ACTS ABOUT FOUR PAINTINGS Vyacheslav Durnenkov
Praktika Theater, Moscow, Russia
This is an endeavor to make a multimedia show based on the play by the eldest of Durnenkov brothers, mixing artistic underground realias of St. Petersburg of the 1990-s with the XIX century, and narcotic speculations with the reality. Along with the director Mikhail Ugarov the artists Yasha Kazhdan and Ksenia Peretrukhina were trying to bring this dualism to life. To say the least they managed to breathe motion into 'living pictures'. Here a horse is plodding across the snowy field - on the video screen; here a stoned Artyom Semakin's character is engaged in an intricate conversation with the driver - on stage. This is Durnenkov - always dreaming to make the beautiful trip come true.
21:00 Meyerhold Centre
CHERNOBYL PRAYER Svetlana Alexievich
Lehtonen Production, Moscow, Russia
The most important in this show of a Finnish director Joel Lehtonen is the half-documentary text by Svetlana Alexievich. The playwright learned all the post-Chernobyl horrors in the vicinity of the Byelorussian town Pripyat from the residents. Although it is not easy to call them 'residents', for their past has been mutilated and their future is a very hard one. This is the story of the state deliberately destroying its citizens, of our short memory when it comes to the catastrophe. It not only makes you cry, it makes you feverishly look for the way out of the profundity of personal guilt.
September 18, Monday
15:00 Praktika Theatre
A SCULL IN CONNEMARA Martin McDonagh
U Mosta Theatre, Perm, Russia
Yet the best Russian attempt to stage the dramatic trilogy of Martin McDonah by the theatre U Mosta. Simple realism in details, grotesque without a smile - and as a result precisely captured tone of the playwright, whose stubbornly unwilling to die crones and witless back country residents do not fit the Russian tradition to weep over fictional story. After watching this show of Fedotov, which is abundant with Cohen-like graveyard bickerfests, it becomes clear that grim humor is the alfa and omega of modern theatre.
18:00 Teatr.doc
MANAGER Verbatim
Teatr.doc, Moscow, Russia
At first a few people headed by Ruslan Malikov secretly intruded Moscow offices, then they staged everything they managed to learn by means of peering and eavesdropping. The show is funny and pompous at the same time. Medium-level managers do not live it up, they are the best at monotonous and meaningless work. They do not care about anybody or anything, they just sit at their computers gradually growing blind and feel happy. The best way to get ready for a job interview.
21:00 Praktika Theatre
Hors Concours: THE BEAUTY QUEEN FROM LEENANE Martin McDonagh
U Mosta Theatre, Perm, Russia
A role of the more than thirty-years-old spinster's mother is given to a man. This doesn't mean that he plays a transvestite. The half-paralyzed woman who always watches the Australian TV-show, who kept her daughter out of marriage, is masculine, but a woman still. She, who is not very emotional, but highly unpredictable, provokes her daughter to kill her by throwing her wheel-chair off the stairs. The murder does not bring happiness, just another level of pain. Definitely one of the best Russian performances based on McDonagh's plays.
21:00 Meyerhold Centre
CLAUSTROPHOBIA Konstantin Kostenko
Teatr im. S. Jaracza, Lodz, Poland
Three men in one cell: young and inept, old and wise, and a lout. The triangle turns, every side exposes one of the characters to danger. This Polish version of a cruel but sentimental play by Constantine Kostenko is low-key and detailed, somewhat similar to a film. The director plays one of the characters; the set consists of a shabby table and two bunk beds, and the tins of condensed milk as a Russian accessory.
September 19, Tuesday
16:00 Teatr.doc
4.48 PSYCHOSIS Sara Kane
'Fantastic Reality' Theatre, Syktyvkar, Komi, Russia
An independent theatre from Syktyvkar has found a simple and effective approach to tragic British 4.48 Psychosis. The starring actress does not writhe in agony or overweigh the audience with aggression. She plays a person with strong suicidal tendencies as though her character is a common girl, not very stylish or good-looking, from the outskirts of some city. Not from Moscow, not even from Minsk, where the other Psychosis is staged, but some place in a big country, where there are millions of the girls just like her, who do not have a personal analyst. We will not see the face of the analyst, by the way, he has turned his back to the audience and drives her gently to despair.
21:00 Meyerhold Centre
MADYBABY.EDU Gianina Carbunariu
Teatrul Mic, Bucharest, Romania
A beady-eyed girl in a mini-skirt is flying to London. She speaks bad English, but she does it a lot and she deranges a respectably dressed guy who occupies the next seat. Thus they get acquainted, but nothing good can come out of the triple friendship of one Romanian girl and two immigrants. This play about acclimatization of Eastern Europe in the world of competitive economy was written and staged by 28-years-old Gianina Carbunariu after the Royal Court drama seminar.
September 20, Wednesday
16:00 Teatr.doc
DOC.TOR Elena Isaeva
Teatr.doc and SOUNDRAMA Studio, Moscow, Russia
Elena Isaeva has 'smooched' her play about an Astrakhan doctor off real surgeon with whom she incidentally got acquainted at her friends' in Moscow. This resulted in a poetic but harsh text which has much in common with the doctor's memoirs - a popular genre of the XIX century. This story about a genuine man who runs risks at a daily basis in order to save lives is staged by Vladimir Pankov and Andrey Zavodiuk, an actor from Pushkin Theatre with his outstanding acting in the main role. This is of the most successful performances of the last season, participant of European festivals.
19:00 Meyerhold Centre
NON-HAMLET Vladimir Sorokin
Comedian's Shelter Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia
Every spectator of Andrey Moguchi's new performance can rummage in the pocket on the back of the seat ahead. There lie big spectacles with a red glass and a blue one. Please take this innovation seriously: the former actor of the comic troupe Litsedei Anvar Libabov whose vehement hosting we are to look at through the whole first act of Non-Hamlet recommends to watch it with spectacles on. Otherwise get ready for harmful radiation and unpredictable results. Since Libabov is joking no more than the main character of Sorokin's Dismorphomania, we'd better listen to him. Moreover, there will be all-prize lottery which you can't escape for your lucky ticket is in the hands of madmen.
September 21, Thursday
16:00, 20:00 Teatr.doc
MY MOM Tatyana Frolova
KnAM Theatre, Komsomolsk-na-Amure, Russia
This individual project of an actress of independent KnAM Theatre is dedicated to her mother, who died in a hospital. The blond girl is on the stage, she speaks with an individual accent about her relationships with her mother and meanwhile the screen is showing a home video with an elderly woman who is trying to say something unhackneyed into the camera. The mix of two monologues, feverish and halting, tragic and banal gives the impression of peering into someone else's life. This is exactly what Tatyana Frolova wanted.
19:00 Meyerhold Centre
NON-HAMLET Vladimir Sorokin
Comedian's Shelter Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia
20:00 Praktika Theatre
Hors Concours: JULY Ivan Vyrypaev
Praktika Theatre and Kislorod Movement, Moscow, Russia
This is the fourth (after Dreams, Oxygen and Genesis #2) Ivan Vyrypaev's play starring Polina Agureeva from Masterskaya Petra Fomenko, who played in the award-winning film Euphoria, directed by Vyrypaev, who had also written the screenplay for it. First performed at the New Drama Festival.
September 22, Friday
16:00, 19:00 Teatr.doc
YAR.MO. CONTRA ET PRO Andrey Matyukov
A. Matyukov's Independent Project, St. Petersburg, Russia
The gay prose by Yaroslav Mogutin is a pure melodrama with one exception: the emotional focus of this journalist and cover boy is on he himself and his sexual experience. This found a very amusing expression in the performance of Yuri Vasiliev and Andrey Matyukov from Aleksandrinski Theatre. Vasiliev is one of the best teachers of speech and voice classes in St. Petersburg Academy of Theatre, and Matyukov is a graduate of one of the best acting technique teachers Veniamin Filshtinski. Their collective work has resulted in scandal and staginess and certainly the in self-identification of the actor with the main character of Mogutin's play.
18:00 Meyerhold Centre
PLASTICINE Vasily Sigarev
Humor and Satire Theatre, Yakutsk, Russia
Vasily Sigarev's famous play Plasticine has a very short stage history. It is actually limited to Kirill Serebrennikov's in Playwright and Director Centre. Sergey Potapov, Mark Zakharov's disciple and nominee of the Golden Mask Festival has staged the play in Yakutiya in the Yakut language. Few concinnities, but still a minimum of aggression on stage. It seems like the residents of Yakutiya do not take Sigarev's realias as a horror from aliens' life. Sigarev's rough language is almost eliminated by the particular qualities of Yakut phonetics so to some extent Potapov's Plasticine is an appropriate performance for a humor and satire theatre.
20:00 Teatrium na Serpuhovke
PEREKHOD (PASSAGE) Vladimir Pankov
Playwright and Director Centre and SOUNDRAMA Studio, Moscow, Russia
Prostitutes sing and dance in Passage, a drug pusher tries himself at hosting a TV-show for kids, and hoboes are rapping. The new performance of Vladimir Pankov - actor, leader of Pan-Quartet and musician - has a lot in common with an actual musical. The texts, which are written by young playwrights, and clever imitate verbatim, the characters who are the representatives of the undersides of society make this show a very peculiar musical, but a lilting one, like everything that is directed by Pankov.
September 23, Saturday
16:00 Praktika Theatre
Special Program: OPEN CIRCLE
Lithuanian Theatre and Music Academy, Vilnius, Lithuania
About a dozen of students of Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the best Lithuanian educational institution qualifying artists and directors, sit in a circle tying to recollect their childhood, spent in a small town with only one showplace - a ludicrous stellar on the main square. Later on the thing was pulled down, and the part of history, the part of life went with it. The part of youth with first innocent cigarettes, mother's hateful friends and love unbound.
19:00 Vahtangova Theatre
Premiere: THE BEAUTY QUEEN FROM LEENANE Martin McDonagh
Vahtangova Theatre, Moscow, Russia
An old wife spends whole days in a rocking-chair waching TV and waiting for her daughter. Her daughter does not relish the prospect to nurse the annoying and altogether nasty crone, warm a disgusting soup Campbell for her and make her coffee. She wants a husband, but she hasn't got one. Irish playwright Martin McDonagh composes his black comedies about the boondocks, which are undoubtedly well-known to him, with emotion and with the attitude of a hard-boiled cynic.
September 24, Sunday
16:00 Praktika Theatre
PLAY ABOUT MONEY Viktoria Nikiforova
Praktika Theatre, Moscow, Russia
Victoria Nikiforova, the playwright: 'This performance is an attempt to show a piece of real life. In the real life nobody speaks iambic pentameter, nobody asks 'To be or not to be', but everybody gets a loan, everybody pays interest, buys apartments, sits at a restaurant, shops at a hypermarket. And counts and counts and counts. The characters are common contemporary people who think it possible to anticipate nearly everything, but it turns out that the calculator capable of making provisions for life and for love is not invented yet. It is really amusing.'
Eduard Boyakov, the director: Money is the source of the majority of human passions, psychological complexes and taboos. It is likely to cause the deepest fears of our time. Humanity does not fear nature, wars or God anymore. It fears only money and death.'
SPECIAL PROGRAMME
Praktika Theatre
September 15, Friday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
The First Discussion: Five Years
13:30
New Drama Attempts
Liubimovka
The new names of the 2006 festival
Readings
September 16, Saturday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
Vladimir Pankov
SounDrama
13:30
New Drama Attempts
Liubimovka
The new names of the 2006 festival
Readings
September 17, Sunday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
Eduard Boyakov
The Living and the Dead in Russian Theatre
13:30
New Drama Attempts
Moscow-Wroclaw-Moscow Seminar
Alexandr Rodinov, Krzysztof Kopka, Mikhail Ugarov
Performed by the actors of Teatr.doc (Moscow) and Teatr Ad Spectatores (Wroclaw, Poland)
September 18, Monday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
Vyacheslav and Mikhail Durnenkov
September 19, Tuesday
11.30
New Drama Heroes
Juri Klavdiev
Dramaturgy for Kids
13:30
New Drama Attempts
Kinoteatr.doc
Marina Razbezhkina: How to Teach Seeing the Reality
18:00
New Drama Attemts
Kinoteatr.doc
A View to Life
September 20, Wednesday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
Ivan Vyrypaev
Impossibility of Tragedy?
13.30
New Drama Attempts
TV-Channel
17:30
Theatre of Screen
LULU
September 21, Thursday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
Andrey Moguchiy
Non-Play
13:30
New Drama Attempts
Verbatim Abroad
September 22, Friday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
Marina Davydova
'New Humanism' on Stage
13:30
New Drama Attempts
2006 Yasnaya Polyana Laboratory
September 23, Saturday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
Mikhail Ugarov
The Drama of New Drama
September 24, Sunday
11:30
New Drama Heroes
Opinions
|
|
|
|
|
|
