Onstage: Рыдания/Sobbing

Victor Ryzhakov's production of Kshishtof Bize's 'Sobbing' starring Svetlana Ivanova at the Praktika theater is perhaps the most powerful one-man (or one-woman) show I have ever seen. It is a tour through the lives of three women; a middle-aged woman, her mother, and her daughter in modern day Poland.  As we hear the stories of these three women, their dreams and world views blend into a single message of love, loss, and hope for the future. 

Seeing 'Genesis № 2' a few years ago at the same theater with the same actress and the same director was certainly a defining event in my theater life (I feel like I've been writing about a lot of those recently...).  Similar to the way I went into 'Lear', I was reasonably excited to see the newest collaboration of this great director (who I also consider to have been an unofficial teacher of mine) and Svetlana Ivanova, an amazing actress and powerful performer.  I was not let down...Watch out guys, this entry's gonna be a long one...

Kshishtof Bize's (I hope I'm transliterating that name right....can't seem to find it in latin letters via my trusty friend google) play is a dark, disturbing story about a family of three women who all live together in the same apartment in Poland.  The mother, Justina, is 44 years old, and after losing her job she is petrified at the prospect of losing her husband.  Her monologue follows her problems finding work despite her two degrees in higher education, to having to continually dip into her savings account until there's nothing left, to her rising suspicions of her husband's infidelity.  As her anxiety mounts she fixates on a velvet coat that she has seen recently at a designer store.  As she spirals down into insanity, she concocts a scheme to steal the coat with the aid of only a pair of bricks she finds outside her apartment.  As she walks out of the store wearing the coat, she realizes her crime has been successful as she arrives home.  However, she still cannot find peace, shredding the coat with scissors soon after she has stolen it, trying to purge her soul of guilt, in search of some kind of balance that has been lost along with her job, her husband, and her peace of mind.

The second monologue that is presented to us is that of Anna, her 18 year old daughter.  From the moment Svetlana steps onstage again, this time wearing a 'Minnie Mouse' mask (wrapping a symbol of youth, childeshness, and purity in a truly absurd, humourous and disturbing package), we are immediately put to terms with the truly amazing talent of Svetlana Ivanova.  As stunning and as powerful as the first monologue is, she is able to completely transform her body language, vocal intonation, and tempo-rhythm so effectively it is staggering.  Anna delivers to us what would be considered by any adult to be a disturbing account of her normal teenage life, ranging from unprotected sex to drugs in nightclubs to selling sexual favors for money.  Furthermore, she does so with the flair, positivity, and upbeat tempo of just a simple girl.  She is invulnerable to the world; to her, it's just another 'day in the life'.  During the monologue, Anna tells us about a pair of new jeans she has noticed in a store window, and if she were to find the money to buy them, she would be the prettiest girl in school.  As Svetlana's movements and plasticity along with the musicality and fast pace of her speech blend together to create an almost hypnotic effect, the narrative reaches the point where she is in the backseat of a stranger's car in the middle of the night, after having met him in a nightclub. She is high.  She is still all roses and smiles.  His unexpected questions of  'do you love me?' is followed by silence, interrupting Svetlana's text, but not her dream-like movements, creating an unnerving break in the hypnosis.  The question and the pause are repeated. 'Do you love me?'.  'Of course', the smiling Anna says, 'I have to be careful what I say, otherwise he won't give me the money I need to buy the jeans.'  After she has performed fellatio on him for money, she gets out of the car and hurls insults back at him, telling him he is the most boring, smallest man she has ever met, and all with a smile.  She is pleased to have enough money to buy the jeans.  We are left with the impression that she too, like her mother, has lost something.  She is seeking to fill some kind of hole with worldly goods at any cost, but no amount of money will ever be sufficient to reclaim her innocence and purity.

The third monologue belongs to the grandmother, Zofya.  She is 67, but feels much older, as she speaks to the audience as if in dialogue with her dead husband.  At one point she tells him to stop frightening the cat away, scolding him that if he keeps showing up and frightening the cat people will think the apartment is haunted.  Her story develops into a harrowing tale of robbery and murder, as two young people find their way into her apartment and after having their fill of the contents of the refrigerator, start demanding money from the old woman, eventually choking her to death.  'I know you always told me to never open the door when I'm home alone,' she says 'but the girl outside said she had a cut on her finger, and needed to bandage it up.  What was I supposed to do?'.  As they continue to choke her, she laments about how she had planned to go to the doctor the next day, and how everyone will see the bruises.

'Рыдания' leaves us with a sense that each of these three women are dealing with profound loss, each in their own way;  A mother's job and husband, a young girls innocence and purity, an old woman's love and sense of security.  Each of these things has been taken away from them rather forcibly, creating a tragic piece where the need to love and be loved is underlined.  Perhaps the most interesting, and yet at the same time most logical and expected decision is the lack of actual sobbing, weeping, or рыдания onstage.  True to Russian form, the actors (or in this case, actress) are much more focused on overcoming their problems at any cost rather than giving in to self-pity, the actual inner weeping of their soul.  As a result, the piece becomes that much more powerful, the performance that much more personal. 

On the Рыдания page on the Praktika theater website (http://www.praktikatheatre.ru/Spectacle/Details/93), there is a YouTube interview with Svetlana Ivanova and Victor Ryzhakov where he speaks about the purity and importance of love in this piece.  Victor in this interview is (as always) dynamic, poetic, ethereal and mysterious.  Perhaps it is through this sense of loss of love that we can begin to truly appreciate it's significance as a powerful and essential force in our lives.

-A