2023-09-28 18:26:00
On Wednesday, September 27, the premiere of the play with Chulpan Khamatova in the title role took place in Berlin. “Museum of Unaccounted Voices” is the second performance by Marina Davydova, theater critic, curator, program director of the famous theater festivals .Net, Wiener Festwochen, and now the Salzburg Festival. In the production, the director comprehends the experience of two personal emigrations and discusses what happens to peoples in the merciless millstones of history. Viewers find themselves in a space stylized as a museum, which comes to life, transforms and forces them to go through complex contexts.
When the stage turns into a museum hall
Not a single review read the day before can reflect the true action of the performance. “Immersive performance”, “performance-installation”, “museum space” – these words alone make one feel bored. But you won’t be able to get bored in the rapid development of the stage action, which from the very first minutes will tenaciously swirl in its own rhythm. When it’s time for the final scene, you’ll be amazed that you didn’t even notice that an hour and a half had passed.
From the doors that open into the hall, the audience immediately finds themselves directly on the stage. They whisper in surprise, secretly point with their fingers – right among those who came, Chulpan Khamatova, the Russian star, the leading role in the play, stands. She nods, greets, smiles at those who approach her. Also, in the thick of the audience is director Marina Davydova. She is noticeably worried – only yesterday the actress had her first rehearsal in the hall; there are many “raw” places in the technically complex production. When the action begins, the director lowers his head and closes his eyes, listening intently to the text.
Scene from the playPhoto: Nurith Wagner Strauss
The bell sounds, and the stage turns into a museum hall: niches open in the walls, in which typical artifacts of a historical museum are illuminated: attributes of royal power, a coat of arms, Monomakh’s cap, an icon. An energetic, unpleasantly confident voice begins the tour. The audience is bombarded with a speech full of high-power pathos and ideological cliches about the formation of the Russian state, listing the exploits of its tsars and rulers. At some point, spectators are asked to take their seats in the auditorium. The excursion continues, listening to her becomes more and more uncomfortable: the voice either fills with rage towards the enemies of the state, then breaks into a screech, then suffocates in obsequious panegyrics to the greatness of the empire. At this time, the scenery seems to be out of control, the image rebels and “floats”, inscriptions appear on the walls in the languages of the peoples inhabiting the country: “this is not true”, “we are not taken into account”.
“Museum of Uncounted Voices”
In the next scene the actress performs. Without saying a word, she makes the audience cry: she dances to Ukrainian songs, goes to a rally together with the Belarusian people, tries on national clothes. Five former Soviet republics – Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan – talk about their tragedies and nightmares, past greatness, historical injustice. Nations bicker, quarrel, accuse: Armenia reproaches Ukraine for not recognizing the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, Ukraine responds that Armenia ignores the Holodomor, which claimed the lives of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s due to the fault of the Soviet regime. Everyone has their own indisputable truth, their own view, their own story, and the disputing voices merge in a dense hum.
The further development of the performance turns to personal destinies, biographies, and documents. The concepts of “man” and “state” are moving further and further away from each other until an insurmountable gap becomes clearly visible between them. The last scene turns out to be the apotheosis and semantic center of the production. This is an autobiographical monologue written by the director of the play Marina Davydova about herself, filled with personal memories, stories, reflection, and emotions. At the same time, it is impossible to separate Chulpan Khamatova, an actress who spoke out against the war and was left without a home, from the text of the lyrical heroine: “I am a national traitor to Russia, in whose head excerpts from Russian poems are spinning. I cannot erase these poems from myself – this language – these boulevards…”
A soulless artificial state does not care about a living person. “These are not Russia’s problems!” sounds from the stage. No personal story can be fitted into a standard framework, no identity can be cataloged like a museum object. “If you are Armenian, why don’t you know Armenian?” – says the actress. And mercy is always higher than justice. “Your postcolonial discourse is the same garbage as the colonial one,” says Chulpan Khamatova. In his personal statement, the director gives comfort, refuge and protection to every unheard voice.
#premiere #Chulpan #Khamatova #Berlin