…Artists in the 20th century turned to myth as a means of overcoming mundane, petty-bourgeois existence. In it they saw an archetypal space in which the deep foundations of human existence are manifested. Boris Yukhananov, the artistic director of the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, turned to the plays of Jean Cocteau and Jean Anouilh, deconstructing and reshuffling them, allowing viewers to decide for themselves how deeply they are ready to immerse themselves in myth. Orphic Games consists of 12 performances running over a six-day period, with the participation of hundreds of actors. Not everyone will withstand such a marathon, but the point is in the very possibility of this proposed sensory experience. In the modern world, where pictures flash before our eyes leaving no memory of them, where a person is often reduced to a function, and one’s life is limited to a set of standard operations, art - and theatre in particular - emerges as a space in which time, if it doesn’t stop, at least slows down. Among other things, this is the meaning of the new-proccessualism, of which Yukhananov speaks. It is essentially a new ritual: experience in place of consumption; emotions - often traumatic - in place of atrophied feelings. Today's versions of the ancient mysteries simultaneously invoke an archaic consciousness, for which an integral perception of the world perception was characteristic, and a contemporary one - infinitely fragmented, and at times schizophrenic (it is no coincidence that the director refers to the genre of his opus magnum as "punk-macrame"). Hence we have in the set design video projections of common high-rise buildings replaced in the course of the action by stalagmites in caves; surreal monsters born in the depths of the subconscious, and futuristic incarnations of either future people or aliens.

At the same time, the action on stage is subject to mathematical formulas, of which some apocryphal symbols appear in the program and in the credits: "Any element from Y has its own prototype." But, if you think about it, mathematics does not provide structure, it only describes regularities that exist independently of people, who are full of irrationalities (or, at least, what we are not yet able to comprehend). In the Greek myth, Orpheus descends to Hades in search of Eurydice, but, in finding her, loses her again when he fails to keep his promise not to look at her until she leaves the realm of the dead. These characters exist on two levels in the plays written in the 20th century. On one hand, their relationship is the embodiment of a typical love cycle, from the excitement and poetry of the first minutes and days (Anouilh), to the habits they grow into later (Cocteau). On the other hand, it is a metaphor for art, the creative process in which the relationship between the artist and his work in many ways resembles the life of lovers, sometimes tragic. Love is the only alternative to vulgarity and philistinism, but it is fragile and cannot always resist the persistence of philistinism.

In spirit, the production is somehow reminiscent of a new season of Westworld: the action is broken down and embellished, balancing between the genres of thriller and show (without ever losing its ritual component). Orphic Games is a journey inside the chaos of human life and the seeming orderliness of death. This journey in a “stream” of 12 performances is looped and cyclical, it has no final destination, just as there is no exit from the uneven white circle that appears on a black backdrop onstage. Inside of it, however, everything is possible, even the absence of death…