Tanya – Tanya

Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Bratislav, Slovakia, 2002
Author: Olga Mukhina
Directed by Marián Amsler

about the production

Olga Mukhina was unknown to the Slovak audience until recently. The young, thirty-two years old Russian dramatist, comes from the north of Russia. From 1991 she studied in Moscow at the Faculty of Drama of the Gorky Literary Institute, and she has written five plays to date. Director J. A. Pitínský staged her play Tanya – Tanya in the Czech Republic a few years ago, and in the last season Amsler’s production of the play has its premier in Slovakia. In the play, translated and played in several Russian and European playhouses, the authoress did not renounce her inspiration from Chekhovian characters and motifs. The production was staged in co-operation with the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Bratislava and the Theatre Institute, which provided its spaces – the non-traditional Studio 12. A change in terms of the age of actors, who in this case were selected from Academy students as well as recent graduates, adds a surprising dimension of a generational message to the play. The young Muscovite dramatist’s play is above all poetry, inner monologues of characters seeking and overlooking love, which, however, are performed as mutual dialogues. These techniques in connection with typical images, a melancholic atmosphere and intentional allusions (the repairer Uncle Vanya) very much resemble Chekhov’s dramas, which is undoubtedly one of the most valuable compliments.

(...) Against a pure white scene, figures in white costumes gather around the table in order to state that in Bibirevo, like anywhere else, it is so fine, so terrifically pleasant, that it is almost unbearable. And from a distance, as if the sounds of the axe cutting The Cherry Orchard resounded...

(...) In the work with actors one may discern efforts at ordinary expression, which creates an interesting counterbalance and meaningful tension to poetic images constituting the main communication channel of the play.

Zora Jaurová, Is It Pleasant to Get Numbed?, Domino fórum, 25/2002

 

creators

directed by Marián Amsler
translation: Romana Maliti
dramaturgy: Veronika Bubnášová
setting: Eva Rácová
music: Róbert Bittner
production: Katarína Kmecová, Silvia Karovičová
assistant director: Silvia Karovičová
light design: Peter Kelíšek
characters and cast:
Tanya: Lucia Hurajová, Zina: Romana Maliti, Girl: Ľudmila Trenklerová, Ivanov: Róbert Roth, Ochlobystin: Tomáš Gál, Boy: Ľuboš Kostelný, Repairer: Ján Koleník

director

Marián Amsler (1979) is a student of dramaturgy at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in Bratislava. During his study he has participated in the productions of the play Incident by E. Baehr – L. Peerce (directed by M. Huba), A. Schnitzler’s play Green Parrot, which he also translated (directed by K. Žižka). He appears as an actor in the Slovak National Theatre productions Dance Hall and Oedipus Rex. Currently he has been preparing his final year production of the play by Chekhov Platonov under the tutelage of E. Vášáryová and M. Huba.