STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

Description

Trains and long travels inspire open conversations even among strangers. Both heroes of this story admit that each of them has a person in their life whom they prefer to see leaving and not coming. One of them suggests getting rid of “disturbing” family members.

The play was staged in the year of the hundredth anniversary of the master of her genre, the American writer Patricia Highsmith, and although the impulse of creation of the play is not devoted to her, still it is related to the anniversary, in particular, the essay “Price of disgust” by the Russian literature scientist Maria Semjonova read by the director Vladislav Nastavshev. Fragments of this essay are also used in the play, also the author herself can be seen there, as the lives of other people, the opportunity to observe them, to follow them, to affect them at least by her work and via her heroes, have made up for her own dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction with herself, with other people, with the world as a whole. Writing for her is a way to survive in a life where love and hate go hand in hand.

Writing could be replaced by any other form or art; therefore, this feeling is so well known and becomes the “frame” of the play where the story about the evil Charly Bruno can be placed. Nastavshev gives the artistic feeling to further development by bringing the audience dangerously close to the feeling that killing is a usual act happening as frequent as watching a movie or peeling an orange. Nastavshev knows how to present the most dreadful things in an aesthetic manner and this is appealing to the theatre audience willing to have the impossible, in particular, to participate and not getting involved at the same time.

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN SYNOPSYS

Credits

Location

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Artist / Company biography

Vladislav Nastavshev has studied in St. Petersburg at the National Theatre Academy, in Lev Dodin’s master class, and at London Theatre College. His plays are characterized by attention to aesthetic details and evil poetics, which make the actors to balance on the margin of emotional and physiological ability, by making one to remember the theater ideal of Antonin Artaud. At the same time, an uncompromising attitude to the world contributes to development of the new theater truth. Nastavševs often chooses controversial plots or gives provocative interpretations of well-known creations.

Major plays at the National Theatre include The Old Woman Daniil Harms, The Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca, in other theatres – Dark Avenues by Ivan Bunin, Miss Julie by August Strindberg, Travelers by the Sea and Land by Mikhail Kuzmin, Lakes of Hopes and The Black Sperm by Sergey Uhanov, Cynics by Anatoly Borisovich Marienhof, Medea, Greek Medea, tragedy by Euripides staged in Moscow, at Gogol’s centre and Riga Russian Theatre.

Vladislav Nastavshev usually creates the set and costumes for his own productions and composes music for them. In 2009, he became a laureate of the All-Russian Contest of Composers named after Andrey Petrov; at the Prague Quadrennial in 2015 he received a gold medal in the category of scenography and was also nominated for the grand prix. He has received the Latvian Theatre Award Spēlmaņu nakts as the Director of the Year, and his productions have been awarded as The Production of the Year several times already.

Performances