- By
- Tatiana Frolova / Théâtre KnAM
- Performed by
- Dmitrii Bocharov, Vladimir Dmitriev, Tatiana Frolova, German Iakovenko, Ludmila Smirnova
This was one of the high points of the Sens Interdits Festival in 2017. Tatiana Frolova is back, mingling the personal with the historical in an uncompromising portrait of today’s Russia.
Over 7,000 miles separate Lyon from Komsomolsk-on-Amur. It was in this city in the far East of Russia, built by prisoners in the Gulag, that Tatiana Frolova founded the KnAM theatre in 1983. It makes use of all the resources available to contemporary art – videos, photographs, sound, documentation, objects, actions – to give voice to what is happening today. The present features strongly in “I haven’t begun to live yet” – but then so does the past and the future.
In this exploratory documentary, the director summons the story of the USSR as it becomes Russia once more. The stage is virtually bare: a blackboard, a table, earth, two screens – and voices which rise, faces which express bewilderment at the future which lies before them. With a mosaic of personal accounts, Tatiana Frolova gives a voice to two generations, one born before Perestroika and the other one on the eve of the collapse of the USSR. These intimate stories are overwhelming in their sincerity. The emotion is unrelenting: it’s a play which leaves you reeling.
