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the new show by Ariane Mnouchkine • desk russia

On November 27, the Théâtre du Soleil will inaugurate its new show, a creation on which the troupe has worked enthusiastically for a year. It is a powerful, totally unusual show, which recounts, in a poetic and laconic way, the years 1917-1918 in Russia: the fall of the tsarist regime, the provisional government, the Bolshevik coup d’état… We are publishing a taken from the interview granted by Ariane Mnouchkine to The Terrace where she explains this revolutionary theatrical project which will take us, in several shows, to contemporary Russia and its “dragon”, Vladimir Putin.

“I believe that, like all our shows, this one was born from an emotion and a question that many of us have been asking ourselves for two years: how in the 21ste century do we arrive at the attempted invasion, enslavement, destruction of an independent country, by another power whose GDP is almost identical to that of Spain but which possesses an enormous power of nuisance ? What, over the decades, creates a leader, I would say a man, such as Vladimir Putin? To try to answer this question, we had to try to tell, theatrically, the birth of a system that changed the world. I should say two systems, because the war of 14 will nourish Nazism as much as Bolshevism. Perhaps, too, with this show, we imagine, very naively, erecting a sort of theatrical barricade against the various despotisms, totalitarianisms and ideological stubbornness, which, today, threaten us on several fronts.
So we immersed ourselves in History and realized that to tell the story of February 24, 2022, we had to go back to February 1917!

The first period of this fresco, which (if the theater gods are favorable to us) will certainly include several, will cover the years 1917-1918. The second, which will be created next year, will follow and will be deployed until 1945, and so on. I hope that we will have the strength and the chance to continue this Gesture, this immense epic, until we catch up with our days. Each should last approximately 2 hours 15 minutes, without intermission. »

Here are the Dragonsrehearsals September 2024. Photo: Lucile Cocito – Théâtre du Soleil archives

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