LEV DODIN / MALY TEATR |
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Life and Fate |
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Year 1943. The Hitler Germany and Stalin’s Russia have entered a struggle the only way out of which would be death or life.
A prominent scientist, an academic-physicist, who has finally approached the secret of creating an atomic bomb, returns to Moscow from evacuation. He is Jewish. Though Holocaust is supposed to be happening on the other side of the front, nationalism and anti-Semitism is becoming the unspoken policy of Stalin’s system. The physicist is ostracized, thrown out of his Institute and is facing a terrible dilemma: to stay faithful to the truth, the science, to himself and perish or – to repent, to confess non-existing sins and non-existing mistakes. He fully understands the consequences of the first choice. A historical coincidence will save the academic – the Soviet State needs the atomic bomb, and Stalin is aware of it. Stalin’s personal phone call to this outcast scientist becomes the miracle that will return life, hope, success and recognition to him and his family. |
Life goes on. And very soon Sturm – that’s the name of the physicist – will face a dilemma again. It happens so that to be true to oneself when acclaimed, recognized and miraculously saved is much harder then when you are outcast and hated. The tragedy catches up with him and with us again. The tragedy of loosing one’s own personality, of being true to oneself.
He is not alone. He is surrounded with a world of his near and dear, whom he loves, on whom he cheats, who love each other. Life doesn’t stop. The characters end up there, and in ghettos, and in the German concentration camp, and in one of the endless camps of Stalin’s gulag. And everywhere people go on loving, making love, hoping and suffering. Grossman’s “Life and Fate” is in fact a simple family story, presenting us with a vast panorama of the events and the problems of the 20th century. And again nowadays the freedom of a man is the only real value, and we don’t have the means of protecting it. |
Once again we are facing the world and ourselves with the most difficult questions. Once again we believe that Theatre in all its majesty of the life fully experienced and analyzed, that Theatre in all its majesty of the word, of the emotion, of the passion, the movement, dance, music and singing can make people hear, feel and understand most profound things. Lev Dodin
PRODUCTION DATES |
