Zoyka's Apartment

Running time 1 hour 50 minute. One interval.
Performance is in Russian with Slovenian surtitles.

Director Aleksej V. Kurganov Assoc. Prof.
Dramaturg D. V. Losjakova
Conductor  G. L. Auerbach

Mentors Elena Shanina,Aleksej V. Kurganov

Cast
Marianna Kochurova, Yegor Kuchkarov, Alexander Shepelenko, Marina Chirikova, Andrei Batsuev, Maxim Gigenin, Mikhail Karakasiyan, Diana Egorova, Stepan Akmanov, Ksenia Guseva, Inessa Sukhanova, Ekaterina Kozhemyakina, Arina Sergeeva, Kristina Fedorova, Julija Makarova

The story is set in the Soviet Moscow of the 1920s. In the time of the New Economic Policy (NEP), a 35-year old "former" aristocrat Zoya Peltz wants to get rich quickly and flee the country. She is driven by her love for an "ex" count Oblyaninov, an addict and a dreamer, a charming and art-loving seducer, who through describing his "formerness" alludes to the unsuccessful Soviet scientific experiments to provide eternal life.

After the revolution, all that Zoya has managed to keep from all her property is a large flat. She has a business idea: under the guise of a tailor’s shop, she sets up a brothel for communist bigwigs. The encounters of rich and influential men and young "models" are shown in the decadent atmosphere of bizarre misunderstandings. The flat is an allegory of human dreams and expectations, caught in a whirlwind of insensitive history, and Zoya is a representative of an endless mass of the victims of a dictatorial regime that changes its citizens into hopeless caricatures of themselves. In the end, a giraffe from the eponymous poem by the tragically-killed Russian poet Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyev strolls elegantly across the stage, as an allegory of a distant and unreachable beauty far away from the violent reality.

Post-performance discussion: about the performance, the process, the school

Supported by Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Ljubljana.