PASTERNAK: MY SISTER – LIFE

Premiere took place on 14 May 2016 (Gogol Centre, Moscow)

Boris Pasternak is a legendary Russian poet of the XX century, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, which brought him the fame worldwide and disfavor at home. Pasternak is treated differently by people of various artistic tastes and political views, and this ambiguity attracts Maxim Didenko in no less degree than poetic heritage that Pasternak left after him:

“This play is an experiment with conscience and submergence into the other layers of perception and tempo/rhythm. The poetic theatre allows spectators to become part of the process.”

Director Maxim Didenko stages visually and technically unique shows at the intersection of performance art, physical theatre and musical theatre. In “Pasternak: My Sister Is Life”, senior actors are reading poetry, while their younger colleagues are not only singing poetry, but also “dancing” it, thereby providing poetic images with plastic implementation.

Stage Artist Galya Solodovnikova has designed an original transformer stage setting that is able to interact with the body of an actor and allows carrying out unbelievable acrobatic tricks.

Music for the show is made by Ivan Kushnir, Didenko’s long-lasting and successful partner in art, and for him this project has turned out to be a real challenge:  “There are no usual European forms and structures in it. This music is more like a ritual or a meditation. It is similar to a frozen picture. It is like a landscape. It is like grassland and sun, but in music.”

The performance features as many as three Pasternaks in three different ages. Actor Veniamin Smekhov, who is acting one of them, has long wanted to work with Didenko: “Maxim’s work is a gargantuan deed expanding spectator’s intellectual perception. It is an intellectual circus. It is an intellectual carnival comprising sound, emotion and fantasy tied together, living together and breathing as one.”

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

Photos by Ira Polyarnaya