Arina Boyko, the librettist of the play, was born in a closed military town surrounded by fences and checkpoints, because Arina’s father was working for the Federal Security Service. We asked Arina to go to the secret town and to record sounds from different points, marking them on the map. The sounds that Arina recorded, including the dialogues between Arina and her mother, were represented in the performance with the means of noise music.
The pop-musical parts were written under the influence of Complaints Choir and Steven Sondheim’s musicals, as well as Chaikovsky military symphonies. Through humor we attempted to subvert the power of militarism and patriarchy right nearby the walls of Kremlin, where the Yermolova Theater is located. There, our team was part of a residency of young theater makers. The complicated perspective of Arina, the librettist and the main character, created tension between two worlds that she belongs to. The piece was performed as a theatre sketch only once in winter 2021.
*Arina’s parents asked not to use the real name of a military town.
Libretto: Arina Boyko
Composers: Dmitry Vlassik, Natalia Zaitseva
Stage design: Mikhail Tolmachev
Curators: Artöm Tarakanow, Sergey Okunev (Extended Day Group)
Performers: Tanya Bogdanova, Natalia Garanina, Nikita Binders, Alexei Kanichev, Bogdan Zhilin, Nikita Plakhotnyuk, Andrey Popov, Daniil Mogutov, Maxim Tenyakov.
Production: Yermolova Theatre (Moscow)
Synopsys of the libretto:
Arina is going to leave for USA to study at the University, because she managed to get the scholarship as a creative writer. Her father has told her that she can’t do it: he works for the radio-electronic intelligence service, that’s why his family can not leave the country more than for six months. Arina tries to find out what exactly her father does professionally, but recieves only very vague answers. She does stand up comedy about her life and discusses the situation with her feminist girlfriends, who see things in black and white but still sympathise with her.