2024-02-05 14:41:00
The premiere of the play “Apocalypse Tomorrow” took place at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg. The production, in which modern choreography is combined with eschatological drama, based on the text by Mikhail Durnenkov, was created by director Evgeny Kulagin and choreographer Ivan Evstigneev.
60 minutes until the apocalypse. Kirill & Friends version
The clock is counting down. The six trapped in the same space only had one hour left. The apocalypse is coming, and the last 60 minutes of life suddenly become extremely important, precious, they can no longer be exchanged for trifles. With every moment they irrevocably flow away drop by drop, and the heroes urgently need to understand what is the most important thing they have been putting off for later all their lives, what they did not dare to do, what they did not want to think about. There is no more time for pretense, secular conventions, social norms. Cultural husks easily fall off when oblivion rushes towards us.
Playwright Mikhail Durnenkov spoke about the complex and multi-stage process of creating a play. He considers the entire theater troupe to be the authors of the production.
“At first there was a “table” period: we tried all sorts of dramatic techniques. For example, character interviews, when the whole troupe asks any questions to the actor, who in the character is forced to answer them. We reasoned, talked, shared our thoughts on how we would spend the last hour (day, week). Then there was a long period in the dance class, where we tested ideas in movement. This was more the domain of our choreographer Ivan Evstigneev. I was at rehearsals all this time, wrote down some successful things, then the director and I came up with “the approximate structure of the future performance, taking into account the characters that emerged and were developed by the actors during rehearsals. Then the production itself began. Here, all the authors are in one way or another in this process,” said the playwright.
The first performance of the new company of Kirill Serebrennikov
“Apocalypse Tomorrow” suggests that, facing the irreversibility of death, a person will first of all really want sex. He will also fall into despair. There will be a fierce fight until there is blood. Laugh hysterically. Remember the times when you were happy. He wants to talk to his mother. In the face of death, people will show incredible generosity and share something precious, such as tears. Or withdraw into one’s despair and literally eat the earth out of despair.
“Apocalypse Tomorrow” is the first performance produced by the German company Kirill & Friends, which was presented to the public by Kirill Serebrennikov in January. The creators of the play have assembled an amazing cast. For the most part, these are artists from the Gogol Center: Odin Byron, Nikita Kukushkin, Svetlana Mamresheva, as well as Campbell Caspari, Adela Maharani and Capuchin Schattleitner. The artists play to the fullest, without self-pity, and come out to bow with torn knees, from which blood oozes. Campbell Caspary leans on a crutch: he and Odin Byron mysteriously suffered serious leg injuries at the same time during rehearsals.
Choreographer Ivan Evstigneev was able to translate Durnenkov’s universal images into plastic language. The collaboration of the choreographer with director Evgeny Kulagin has been known in Russia under the “Dialogue Dance” brand since 2002, when the creative duo, future winners of Russia’s highest theater award “Golden Mask,” opened their own modern choreography studio in Kostroma.
Actors of the play “Apocalypse Tomorrow”Photo: Fabian Hammerl
The artist Ksenia Peretrukhina minimalistly decorated the perimeter of the stage with movable steel shelving, on which green plants were arranged in several tiers. Transforming, they turn from modern forests into decorative walls, or gardens of Eden, or post-apocalyptic nature, into which a failed version of humanity dissolves without a trace, to restart the cycle of endless rebirth.
The performance is performed in English, which, in combination with other factors – the participation of European artists, the active use of plastic solutions – makes the production competitive at the international level.
Playwright Mikhail Durnenkov – about humanity
The literary author of “Apocalypse Tomorrow”, playwright Mikhail Durnenkov became one of the first theatrical figures against whom the Russian punitive machine turned. After the playwright published an anti-war post on social networks and wished the Ukrainian army victory, he was expelled from official theatrical institutions and a case was opened for “discrediting the army.” Since then, Durnenkov has moved to Finland and continues to create plays that are staged all over the world. He has already begun to explore the topic of the end of humanity in the 2023 play “A Short Episode in the History of the Universal Mushroom Civilization,” which was released in Finland.
“We are faced with the necessity and impossibility of saying what a person is, and what, in fact, the concept of humanity consists of – in the face of time, as in a play about the future, or in the face of inevitable death – as in Apocalypse. Both there and there – the existential experience of one’s own finitude and the need to leave a sign – a stroke – that there was a person here,” explained Mikhail Durnenkov.
See also:
A play about the life and death of the director of a Soviet crematorium
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