A radical performance about love is presented on the stage of Ok16

Yura Chudikov made a performance based on the "Song of Songs". In the play, a naked man rolls on a blood-soaked table. Shock! Scandal! No, it's just a theater.

The Song of Songs by the Solomons is fundamentally performed in the performance as a love text, the biblical context is clearly absent. There is a moment when the heroine repeats "bitterly!" many times, it resembles one of the versions of the essence of the text, they say, this is a set of wedding songs. The wedding plot is easy to see in the structure of the performance: a woman sits, sings, speaks, then a man appears, and they stay together. But the action is done in such a way as to supposedly release this energy of connection between a man and a woman, and this is such a strong energy that contexts fade into the background. "An act in one act" is the name of the performance, and this emphasizes the intensity of what is happening on stage.
The annotation states that the essence of performance is the study of physicality. In fact, physicality is present on the stage by the very fact of a male naked body. It is shown from the screens, at the end of the performance it appears on the stage directly. But the rhythms of the performance are so intense that we listen to the text more than we consider its simple visual component. It's more like we're exploring the emotional potential of love, for which the body is just a tool for discovery. Another question is that the naked body on stage is a very strong artistic means for our modest culture. A naked male or female body is not perceived by society as something neutral, any presentation outside looks scandalous. And in fact, the play explores only the public reaction to such means of detection. At the premiere, the hall was filled, Yuri Divakov has a lot of fans.
In general, the event looks just quite decent. For the first half of the celebration, actress and singer Marta Golubeva generally just sits at a long table. It doesn't move very much. She sings and recites the "Song of Songs", and Dina Danilovich's video art with Eldar Byakirov is shown in the background. I know Eldar well as a theater manager, for me this is his debut as a professional performer. This first part of Yurka Divakov's performance seemed to me personally the most interesting. Restrict the artist in his movements, give him only music to help him (by the way, the wonderful music of Erich Orlov-Shimkus), and the emotional text of the "Song of Songs" translated by the International Biblical Community.
I would like to emphasize how inventively and variously this half-hour monologue is constructed. Repetitions, rhythm, external elements were carefully found in the text, and the existence of the artist was strung on this frame. Without a single hitch, Martha Golubeva, strictly subject to the rhythm, withstands emotional amplitudes from a whisper to a scream. It's a great acting job that's worth seeing. This is a great example of a cool performance for the chamber stage, but the logic of the performance requires that the audience watch the artist from afar. This remoteness gives both the intensity of the message for the artist, and sets the logic of the finale.
In the finale, the hero Byakirov appears. He is completely naked, but the public only sees him from behind. At first he sits, then gets up and shoots the heroine, but does not kill. The rest of the act really takes place on the table, on which a liquid similar to blood was constantly sprinkled at that moment. The actress throws him some bloody entrails, and the performance ends with a man and a woman almost hugging together.
The performance looks stylish and fashionable externally. Artist Tatiana Divakova is responsible for her husband's performances for the visual component, knows how to create a common space with minimal means, where each specific detail looks interesting and meaningful. It turns out such a modern fashionable glossy beauty that is profitable to show on instagram. In such scenery, emotional exaltation (especially in the finale) looks emphatically disturbing and "ugly". The love in question in the play is not a sublime romantic feeling, but a toxic desire to completely own and control your partner. "My beloved belongs to me, and I belong to him."
In an interesting way, the play allegedly becomes part of the controversy over the same domestic violence. Violent, aggressive behavior, according to Divakov's play, is a natural continuation of emotional relationships. In order to somehow resolve the situation with violence, you need to be more careful about love itself.