Shakespeare’s play was played in the bushes and in the water

Storm and apocalypse converged in bliss

There is a lost island Nega in the near Moscow region, invisible to passing boats and yachts, where amazing things happen. Last summer, the artist Sergey Katran opened it and, together with his friends and colleagues, arranged a series of actions in the spirit of an art utopia. The new season on the invisible island began with an unusual theatrical production, which takes place in different locations. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, together with the Apocalypse by John the Evangelist, was played in the genre of improvisation: the text was read without much preparation, adding pepper to the classical text and changing roles. The MK reviewer got several heroes.

“Ship at sea. Storm. Thunder and Lightning…” — the first lines of the last play by William Shakespeare are read by the author of these lines from a sheet, sitting in a wooden boat and admiring the metal sculpture “Thunderstorm”. A four-meter sculpture sticks out of the water, resembling the Shukhov Tower broken in the middle. Sergey Katran soldered it especially for the premiere. The art object contains several metaphors. On the one hand, it is lightning that comes not from the sky, but from the water. On the other, a finger pointing upward, as if waiting for the answer to come from above. “I was inspired by the famous scene from the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, this is a surface sculpture – it must be“ read ”together with the reflection in the water,” the author explains.

Water works like a mirror, and, looking down at the water, you understand that it contains optimism: if the Italian master of the Renaissance, the fingers of God and man reach out to each other without meeting (which researchers interpret as the impossibility of connecting the divine and the human), then the modern artist, on the contrary, the divine grows out of the human (or vice versa). Against the backdrop of such scenery, the participants in the action sail to Nega Island, and a scene is played out where the Neapolitan king Alonzo, his brother Sebastian and son Ferdinand, Duke of Milan Antonio are shipwrecked. Final lines: “Sink! Drowning! Let’s drown!.. ”- they shout, already mooring to the shore overgrown with sedge, after which some of the participants in the improvisation go under the water in the truest sense of the word – the good water is warm.

In several walkers, the boat delivers more than 20 people to the island. Actress Lyudmila Kornienko meets everyone on the shore, she conducts a purification ritual: Nega Island accepts only those who have left problems behind and focused on pure, like untouched nature, art. All worries and pains must be spoken out under the gaze of the figures, which the participants in the performance made with their own hands from fabrics and ropes on the other side (these are the spirits of the island – there are such in Shakespeare’s play). Then wash yourself with river water from a bucket – and the path to bliss is open.

Gradually, the whole company gathers around a weakly smoldering fire. At this time, a male voice is suddenly heard from the bushes, measured, clearly and calmly reading the “Revelation of John the Theologian”. The speaker is in the hands of the director – Vera Levchenko. At this moment, two world-famous texts (one is 1000 years old, the other 400) form a paradoxical parallel: if you think about it, both there and there, despite the catastrophe, have a good ending.

“Now you will be Miranda,” Vera says and hands me the text. The role of her father, the wizard Prospero (the legitimate Duke of Milan, who was overthrown by his own brother), goes to Sergei Katran. We read to the languid sounds of the biblical “Apocalypse”. Katran gradually turns Prospero’s story about his brother’s betrayal almost into rap. After the magician’s spell – “You want to sleep. That will be a good dream. You can’t resist him,” I fall on the shoulder of the “father”. The sheets of the second scene are sent to the fire, and the action is transferred to another location, where the next part of the script is already waiting on a branch.

Here, a blogger, Dmitry Front, is already reading for Prospero, sitting on a tree; after a couple of scenes, I will give Miranda to another “actress”, and Prospero will go to the actor and director Ruslan Malikov. In a performance on the verge of a happening, there are no rules, the participants juggle roles, the scene changes all the time, moving either into sedge thickets or into a clearing. The whole island becomes a scene where the dramatic love of Miranda and Ferdinand unfolds, where Alonzo, his brother and Antonio go crazy, where the savage Caliban roams (a pug named Toad plays), where the disembodied air spirit Ariel flies …

The final scene passes knee-deep in water: a skeleton appears from a large suitcase, which served the participants of the performance all day as a table, behind which one of the scenes unfolded. This is another “hello” to Shakespeare – only to his Poor Yorick from “Hamlet”, reminding that everyone has their own skeleton in the closet. But the main thing is that any storm can end well, and even when you find yourself in its epicenter, in the most desperate situation, you can find the strength in yourself and be smart to look at the frailty of being with Yorick’s ironic-joking look.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29058 dated June 28, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Storm and apocalypse converged in bliss