A cage, agrofibre, chains: can the system be broken, Orwell-style

“I don’t agree that the system can’t be defeated, so the plot of our performance is not like the ending of the book,” says “Kyiv Modern Ballet” artist Illia Miroshnichenko. Together with his colleague Kateryna Kuznetsova he staged the performance “1984” based on the novel by the Englishman George Orwell. The premiere will take place on January 21 at the Kyiv Opera and Ballet Theatre for Children and Youth.

George Orwell wrote the dystopia “1984” in 1949. The action takes place in a future Britain. The country has turned into a vast totalitarian empire. The protagonist works at the “Ministry of Truth”. He has to adjust texts in newspapers and textbooks of the past to fit current state policy. He feels doubt. He tries to keep his consciousness from manipulation. But the system, according to the plot, nevertheless breaks the personality.

“We will have different characters, a different chain of events too, but there are moments we kept. If in the novel there is Big Brother, who watched everyone through a telescreen, our antihero will be Light,” Miroshnichenko continues. “The nature of things is always dual, so light too can be perceived not only as good.”

Radu Poklitaru had only two comments on our libretto, regarding the climax. One of our heroines is a blind girl. Blindness is easy to show through movement, but how do you depict deafness? We agreed that all this can be shown through the surroundings. In the performance we touch on the theme of people with physical disabilities and how they feel in society. We don’t use words, so we have to influence the viewer’s inner state by other means. The music will be in one style — many strings, a great deal of cello. The composer is the Icelander Hildur Guðnadóttir. She wrote the music for the films “Chernobyl” and “Joker”. We will also create body percussion. These are sounds you can make yourself.

To create the sets, together with scenographer Volodymyr Chumachenko we went to a building supplies market. We walked around for two hours, but we devised and found everything we needed. We will have an interlude curtain composed of three elements — chains, a metal cage, a huge piece of agrofibre. Since the performance has two storylines — a love line and a social-domestic one — this curtain will separate them. We will play with the sets and adapt them.

With these materials we create different frames for the characters. The mesh is associated with a cage — that is an aggressive mood; the agrofibre gives a calmer atmosphere. These materials help evoke the desired emotion in the viewer.

Sometimes you have to make it as unpleasant as possible for the audience to watch, so that afterwards they can relax and exhale. If we achieve that, it’s 80 percent of success.

Details: Gazeta.ua