2024-05-31 20:34:20
The stage play Mama by the Russian exiled creator, who now calls herself Esther Bol, can be introduced subsequent Thursday, June 6 and Friday, June 7 at Prague’s Divadlo pod Palmovkou on its smaller PalmOff studio stage. Tereza Dočkalová will play the primary position of Olja within the monodrama about coming to phrases with the previous. For the Prague manufacturing, a Russian playwright residing in France wrote a be aware wherein she condemns the conflict in Ukraine.
The story takes place in Russia in 2016. Since she was 4 years previous, Olga acquired a letter from her late mom yearly from her grandmother for her birthday. Over the past six months of her life, her mom wrote twenty-four of them in order that Olga would have one for each birthday till she turned 28.
Now Olga has lived to that age. “The birthday celebration ended the day earlier than yesterday, the hangover persists, however Olja nonetheless has to open the final letter,” reads the annotation.
In response to director Tomáš Soldán, Máma is about coming to phrases with the previous, which is a recent and common theme. “It is the story of attempting to take a step on a ground coated with tinder and soot. All this, in citation marks, with one of many higher Russian cities behind the wall, i.e. with a poisonous setting wherein folks stay regardless of. It reverberates to the current in a chilling method, one really he does not wish to put himself within the footwear of the primary character. Nonetheless, he hungers to look at her additionally due to the documentary language that the play has resonated with because the first radio recording,” says the director.
A part of the efficiency can be music by the composer Jan Šiklo, partly improvised. Tereza Dočkalová is accompanied on stage solely by Rosalie Malinská, who represents Olya’s interior world.
The 39-year-old creator of the play, Esther Bol, lived till the top of February 2022 in St. Petersburg, the place she created underneath the identify Asja Vološina. After the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, she left her homeland and altered her identify as an indication of the impossibility of returning. She has now written an replace postscript for the Prague manufacturing, which for her was a situation for the efficiency of Mama.
The creator of the play is Asja Vološina alias Esther Bol. | Picture: Theater underneath Palmovka
“My performs and my identify are banned in Russia due to my pro-Ukrainian stance. I’m cursed there now,” says the creator, who studied theatrical science and artistic writing in St. Petersburg, in addition to the Moscow Institute of Journalism and Literary Creation, in an interview on the theater’s web site. Her play The Fish Man was beforehand staged by the distinguished Moscow Artwork Theater, and different of her performs had been translated into French, Polish, German and Spanish.
Nevertheless, a month after the beginning of the conflict, the playwright wrote a message on her Fb profile: “I beloved my nation till February 24, 2022 and tried to forgive myself and it. However at present’s Russia is a rustic of murderers. There aren’t any extra shades.” Since then, her identify has disappeared from theater posters and applications at house.
Within the interview, she describes, amongst different issues, how after the start of the invasion she realized with horror that she might have completed comparatively trendy and provocative theater at house earlier than. “As a result of it suited them as a canopy, as a display, an alibi. We served as a display and that is horrible,” he says, pointing to the present Russian regime.
Within the interview, he additionally expresses his perception that the European authorities ought to act extra forcefully in opposition to the Russians in Europe who conform to the conflict. “I see lots of people who stay in Europe and assist Putin. I believe it is horrible and it should not be like that,” he thinks. “Every single day in Russia they are saying on TV that Europe is the enemy and the way nice it might be to lastly assault it. It is demagoguery, however nonetheless. It appears to me that the authorities needs to be stricter in opposition to those that assist the enemy, live- li right here, and maybe extra hospitable to those that left the whole lot and left and who share European values,” says Esther Bol.
Czech viewers might already meet her work in 2022, when Máma was dramatized by Czech Radio Vltava carried out by Tereza Dočkalá. The yr earlier than final, Prague’s MeetFactory theater organized a staged studying of the creator’s play Crime. It captures the psychological state of Russians who don’t agree with the conflict. On the time, the Smíchov scene despatched all proceeds from the doorway payment to assist the struggling Ukraine, Dočkalová additionally carried out on this mission.
Video: Individuals who stay in Russia should testify
Russian lady and author Alena Machoninová skilled the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in Moscow. She described her expertise on Highlight. | Video: The Highlight Group