You want to take a trip but you don’t know where to go? You’ve already taken all the roads but you still want something entirely new? Then you need to spend some time in the open-circuited space of The Golden Ass.

The Golden Ass: the Open-Circuited Workspace is the name of the newest production by Boris Yukhananov, the artistic director of the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre.  

This trip lasts five days, but the transformations awaiting you will give you enough food for thought for several lifetimes.

Boris Yukhananov works with climate. He creates an atmosphere that is advantageous to changes in the soul. Attending one of his productions, you won’t even notice as the process of liberation from the city you live in takes effect, then immerses you in a new mystery.

Apuleius, the author of The Golden Ass, or Metamorphoses, as the novel is also called, told the tale of how Isis transformed a youth into an ass.

Saint Augustine, who, like Apuleius, studied in Madaura, notes that Metamorphoses indeed describes transformations that occurred to the author.  

We know that, for a time, Apuleius wrote speeches for court cases in Rome. However, life in the imperial capital was too expensive and he left the city. Later, in Carthage, he became an adherent of the cult of Isis. We know he was accused of working magic.

This is important to know in regards to Boris Yukhananov’s production, because this is no routine theatre production. As such, it would not be proper to analyze it exclusively from the point of view of traditional theatre criticism.  

The very method of work on the project differs fundamentally from a director’s usual work. The focus shifts from the final result to the process of creation. Those making the work are interested not in the finished performance, but rather in the vital essence of the work. The viewer is invited not only to watch, but also to participate in, the performance, which doubles as a master class. The director at any time may go on stage and comment on an actor's performance, or even give a lecture. Participants are invited to create modules - free scenes, which, like an erector set, make up the fabric of the performance. Modules are constantly added, and the process of embedding them in the overall performance is endless. Yukhananov’s term of “new processualism” is used to describe the analysis of meaning contained in each module, plus the integration of this particular meaning with the meaning of the whole composition.

A hybrid of performance and master class is pure Boris Yukhananov. Not every director is ready for spectators to ask questions or make jokes during the performance. But active participation is welcomed here. Still, the climate in the hall will not allow you to say or do anything too silly. This climate, the life-giving environment, is born of the action on stage, and the action on stage is born of it.

One of the production’s main themes is the liberation from the City, with all its commercial and monetary relationships, the City’s desire to package everything and sell it, including theatre. It is a show of resistance to the City, where the desire to sell deprives everything of meaning, and kills it. It is a form of struggle with the City that transforms a man into an ass.

“Buy an ass! Buy an ass! Everyone asks, ‘Why?’ But just buy an ass!” This variation on a children’s phrase is sung by a chorus of identical women in white dresses (designed by Anastasia Nefyodova, Golden Mask-winner for 2016 for best costumes in a musical production).

And how do you avoid becoming an ass? How do you remove a spell from yourself? What if an infant being rocked in the arms of a Madonna (Alla Kazakova) in a hijab has the ears of an ass?

After many long adventures, Apuleius’ hero Lucius received a rose, the symbol of perfection and the mystery of life, of its focus, its good fortune, its happiness, and even the symbol of art. Lucius the ass eats the rose and becomes a human.

On the first day of performances Psyche appears with a small suitcase among columns resembling palm trees - or palm trees resembling columns. Like us, she is a traveler among the worlds created here. Psyche in ancient Greek mythology is the personification of the soul. Apuleius' contemporaries lived in an era when the concept of the soul was undergoing metamorphoses and reconsideration. On one hand, the Greek myth of Psyche was everywhere, yet at the same time the Christian teaching and understanding of the soul was also widespread.

In one brilliant improvisation, Venus (Alla Kazakova) sends Psyche, the beloved of her son Amor (Anton Kapanin), to the Kingdom of the Dead. She declares: "Anyone who wishes to rise high must first fall very low. There is no other way to ascend." We espy in this notion Christian motifs of death for the sake of resurrection to eternal life.

The metamorphosis of Lucius from a young man into an ass, and the further transformation of an animal into a human being, are other encoded mysteries. This idea is supported by Ivan Kochkaryov’s set design, the elegance and thoughtfulness of which amazes the imagination. The columns form the architecture of a Greek temple and seem unshakable, but suddenly they are in motion and, with a strange buzz (musical director Dmitri Kourliandski) are rearranged as a barbaric temple, a gallery, a forest, a wall, or a capsule-cylinder, reminding us of the world’s fragility and constant changeability.

The beauty and bold wit of Andrei Kuznetsov-Vecheslov’s choreography establish the journey’s landscape.

Lucius regains his human form and returns to the city, but now he is an initiate of the mystery. This moment is accompanied by the triumphant singing of the goddess Isis as performed by Andrei Yemelyanov, who, as Isis, improvises a rock concert in English on the spot. The choice of musical style is not accidental, for, in Russian, the word for “rock” and “fate,” as understood by the Greeks, is one and same – “rok.” Naturally, in the rock stars of today you can see reflections of ancient gods and heroes.

The program explains that the project explores the relationship of the epic content of Apuleius’ text and the dramatic nature of performance. Thus does the Greek goddess Aphrodite assume the guise of a Hollywood diva at a photo-session, while this dramatic version of Psyche fires from a pistol at Cupid (Pavel Kravets) while he performs text. This is not to be confused with epic computer games.

I am not a theatre professional, but I try to attend the most important productions. I am pleased that Moscow has performances of a European, New York, or international level. But real art cannot be classified. It cannot be jotted down in a register. The Golden Ass: The Open-Circuited Workspace at the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre is not Euro-theatre, or even great Russian theater; it is a different phenomenon altogether. Sometimes the thought occurs to us that we are not watching actors playing gods, but rather gods have been called onto the stage by the magic efforts of a director.

We cannot use the usual human categories to put a value on this. Some spectators are ecstatic, others are furious. I will quote another remarkable phrase, born in the process of action and uttered by Alla Kazakova: "If Apuleius were to see this open-circuited space, he would come full circle."

This performance has no analogies. There is nothing to compare it to, and as such, it requires an effort to appreciate these topics that are quite accessible if you turn on your thinking cap. In fact, you don’t even have to do that. It is enough merely to open your soul, let it to engage in something new. After all, art need not be compared and classified.

Over the five days of The Golden Ass. The Open-Circuited Workspace you notice your own metamorphosis. You begin transforming from an ass into a person. You connect again with the mystery that you remember from childhood but later forgot. You want to play. You want to sing. You want to look at the world with an easy eye. And your TV turned on at home seems ridiculously delirious, while everything else becomes a continuation of this “open-circuited space," this journey that lasts just five days.

And so, Moscow these days is not just one of the world’s theatre empires. It’s better than that! It’s the Best City in the World!