Sergey Ukhanov
A Draft
A labyrinth performance about the interconnection of times, people and ghosts
Online performance
Opening – 29.05.2020.
18+ (NB! Not suitable for younger audiences.)
Co-production of Mikhail Chekhov Riga Russian Theatre and International Summer Festival of Arts “The Access Point"
Director: Vladislav Nastavshev
Cast: Anatoly Fechin, Dana Bjork, Maxim Busel, Veronika Plotnikova/Darja Fechina
For the first time in 136 years, Mikhail Chekhov Riga Russian Theatre stages a play online. And the piece by Sergey Ukhanov, a contemporary Russian poet, prose writer and playwright, is well-suited for such a creative experiment. The audiences will be presented not only with a paradoxical, ironic and multifaceted story about sense and sensibility, but also with a fundamentally new format of a show.
We all live surrounded by ghosts and shadows: memories and thoughts, experiences and fantasies, regrets and hopes are an integral part of reality. And sometimes, it’s the only reality at our disposal, whether by our own choice or because there is no choice. However, you can always start with a clean sheet of paper. If you can manage it, that is.
The characters of this play definitely have something to say to each other: family secrets, passions and oddities in their lives would be enough to fill several TV series. Especially as each of them considers themselves entitled to rewrite the script in the middle of an episode, switching from a detective to a melodrama and from a mystery to a comedy. A labyrinth of meanings, bad puns and hidden quotations expands with every new turn of the plot, and we can only try to guess, what the finale will be like, and to follow the characters into the heart of the labyrinth.
The project is supported by the Presidential Grants Fund and the Union of Theater Workers of the Russian Federation.