6 June 2019

Photo by Andrei Bezukladnikov
Dmitri Kourliandski's opera Octavia. Trepanation, staged by Boris Yukhananov, premiered in 2017 in Amsterdam at the Holland Festival. The libretto is based on Lev Trotsky's essay about Vladimir Lenin (1924), and on fragments of a play attributed to Seneca about the Roman emperor Nero. The stage is dominated by an enormous head of Lenin, and centaur skeletons. It is a complex, multivalent work, in which the theme of tyranny is projected onto the contemporary world. The Russian premiere, for which the Electrotheatre has announced an audition for volunteers to participate as soldiers in a Terracotta army, will take place on the stage of the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre on October 17 to 19 as part of the Territory festival. Dmitri Kourliandski speaks about his dissection of the revolutionary song “Varshavyanka,” and about the trepanation of tyranny.
RECENT ENTRIES
A Bird of HappinessIn Memory of Vladimir KorenevPerformance of the opera Octavia. Trepanation at the Interferences FestivalOctavia. Trepanation wins the Grand Prix of the Moscow Art PrizeThe shortlist for the Golden Mask awards has been announced. The Stanislavsky Electrotheatre has received 22 nominationsSession Three of MIR-6 BeginsCatabasis. Demons in GermanyBoris Yukhananov's Suitcases, an installation at CosmoscowCritic Vadim Rutkovsky on the Theatre of Boris YukhananovJohn Freedman and Noah Birksted-Breen on Stanislavsky Electrotheatre