The play “Who killed Frida Kahlo” was shown at the Obraztsov Theater

The Obraztsov Puppet Theater hosted an unusual open-air premiere – “Who Killed Frida Kahlo”, dedicated to the famous Mexican artist. The genre of the production is announced as an “art fiesta in Obraztsov Park”: in addition to the performance itself, the main director of the theater Boris Konstantinov, a street carnival awaits guests. Attended a Day of the Dead party Marina Shimadina.

At the entrance to Obraztsov Park, suddenly overgrown with cacti, spectators are greeted by skeletons – the organizers of the holiday: they dance, walk on stilts, treat guests with drinks and willingly take pictures with them. Before the performance, you can get acquainted with Mexican culture and traditions: break a piñata with sweets with a stick or look into Frida’s chapel – it is customary to arrange such “altars” for the dead on the Day of the Dead, which in Mexico is usually celebrated on November 1 and 2, on the Catholic Day of All Saints. Here, in addition to photographs and numerous skulls, improvised “retablos” are presented – naive pictures with gratitude to the saints for a miraculous deliverance or recovery. Samples of this Mexican “lubok” Frida Kahlo collected and used its techniques in her work, as well as, in general, the motifs of pre-Columbian folk art.

When everyone is assembled, the procession, led by huge puppets of devils and skeletons, moves in a procession through the park towards the stage. The second part of the action is the performance itself, not so much puppet as plastic. Of course, there are dolls here – this is the huge mother Mexico, who nursed Frida with her powerful breasts, and Death herself, who hunted for her all her life, and the little doll of Frida the girl. But mostly these are masks and visual images inspired by the artist’s original painting, surreal and metaphorical: pelvic bones and ribs, huge snails, a wounded deer with Frida’s face, and she herself in a rigid corset, as in the famous painting “Broken Column” (by the way, the real there is also a column in the play – it tries to fall all the time, but every time it is miraculously held).

All these impressive images were created by the theatre’s chief artist Viktor Antonov and his student Alexandra Gromova, with whom they started working on Frida back at the STD summer school in 2019. The team was also joined by costume designer Natalia Kornilova, who worked with Boris Konstantinov on the creation of the “golden mask” performance “White Duck”. Contrary to popular beliefs about colorful, colorful, carnival Mexico, she dressed the performers in stylish black costumes, against which bright red details only occasionally flash.

At the beginning of the performance, the detective genre seems to be declared, the search for an answer to the question – “who killed Frida Kahlo” or what killed her. But there will be no investigation as such. Episodes from the life of the heroine pass before the audience: childhood and boxing – despite a leg that was sick due to polio, that same ill-fated bus accident that crippled her body, a meeting with her future husband – artist and communist Diego Rivera, illnesses, operations, abortions and numerous novels. Diego appears on stage as a huge elephant with a tusk trunk, and Lev Trotsky, another beloved of the artist, gallops across the stage on the red horse of the revolution. Frida herself is played in turn by almost all the artists, even men, changing masks, which sometimes makes it difficult to understand who is in front of us. In general, the audience would do well to have a semblance of a libretto, because the text in the performance is very small and sometimes hard to hear, and plastic scenes are not always decipherable.

In general, the performance is unlikely to become a guide to the life and work of Frida Kahlo – especially for those who were not familiar with them before. But he immerses the audience in her artistic universe, in the world of bright, sensual and tragic images, closely intertwined with national motifs. During Dia de Muertos, Mexicans remember their dead relatives and at the same time have fun and celebrate life. So Frida, who so many times could be killed by illness, and an accident, and jealous Diego, in the constant proximity of death, felt a frantic craving for life and simple human joys. And in the end, it is this motive of resistance, overcoming death through love and creativity – as the main life forces – that becomes the leading theme of the performance.