Alexey Zuev Production Center Performance Afterplay based on the Chekhov motives

AFTERPLAY
Brian Friel
(Afterplay based on the Chekhov motives)

Project «Open Stage»
The Department of Culture, 
City of Moscow
Producing Centre headed 
by Alexey Zuev
With support from Moscow Drama Theatre «ApARTe»

First production in Russia
Premiered on October 27, 2006

Participant of the International Theatre Festival 
Festival «At the Chehkov's home», Taganrog, 2009
Festival in Breda, Netherlands, 2009
Festival of R. Blaumanis, Valmiera, Latvia, 2008
«EuroArt», Iasi, Romania, 2008
«Open Stage», Moscow, 2007
«Chekhov's seasons in Ialta», 2007
«Spring in Melikhovo», 2007

Translation - Sergei Task
Direction and cast - Alexey Zuev, Marina Kangelari
Music - Classica Nova
Production Designer - Ekaterina Frolova 
Costume Designer -Olga Polikarpova

The show runs 1:30 without intermission

Brian Friel’s AFTERPLAY was written after Chekhov’s motives and adapted to contemporary theatre language which is familiar to present-day viewers. Two actors play out two love stories, two rendezvous that change their characters’ lives completely. Music by Piazolla and Mozart helps the actors to render the emotional atmosphere of the action.

Part One is an interesting interpretation of Chekhov’s The Lady with the Lapdog. End of the 19th century. Yalta. A resort game suddenly transforms into true feelings of the two mature people who loathe to part. The author voices the thoughts of Chekhov’s characters which helps the spectator to penetrate the hidden world of their relations.

”But back to the peculiar thing. Remember my sly game? Well, it. . .inverted itself. Or else my world did a somersault. The bank, colleagues, home, card games, they all subsided into make-believe – they were fictions. And the only reality was the Marino Hotel and the silver waterfall and the town square and you.”

Part Two is Brian Friel’s original play that describes a fictional meeting between Sonya Serebryakova (Uncle Vanya) and Andrey Prozorov (Three Sisters) in a run-down cafe in Moscow in the early 1920s. Twenty years have gone by since the time of the two well-known Chekhov’s plays, and now the viewers not only learn what has happened to the characters during this period but also witness the conception of a new relationship. Neither lost hopes and life illusions nor a different social order nor their age stop them from being open to new-found experience and reversal of fate.

” I’ve always been surprised by one thing – especially since they are such intelligent girls. They believe that the life they lead isn’t their real life at all, not their authentic life. Isn’t that silly? Their life in Taganrog is a sort of protracted waiting time for the real life available only in the Moscow of their childhood, a Moscow they haven’t seen for over forty years! . . . I know that they will never leave Taganrog. I suppose some people live like that – in perpetual . . . expectation. Isn’t that peculiar?”

— • —

Brian Friel, the Irish Chekhov

Born in Omagh, Northern Ireland, on January 9, 1929, in a Catholic family. A leading Irish playwright, author of 24 plays, short stories, film and TV scripts, translations of plays by Turgenev and Chekhov, as well as several pieces of non-fiction on the role of theatre and the artist.

His plays are being produced across the world, including the Dublin Abbey Theatre, the London West End and Broadway. In 1972, he was elected in the Irish Academy of Arts and in 1983 he became Honorary Doctor of the National University of Ireland. His Dancing in Lughnasa received three Tony Awards in 1992, including Best Foreign Play.

About himself, Brian Friel said it best in one phrase: ”I am married, have five children, live in the country, smoke too much, fish a bit, read a lot, worry a lot, get involved in sporadic causes and invariably regret the involvement, and hope that between now and my death I will have acquired a religion, a philosophy, a sense of life that will make the end less frightening than it appears to me at this moment.”

To celebrate his seventieth anniversary and forty years of artistic career, in 1999, the New York Lincoln Center launched a Brian Friel Festival that featured his two original plays and his adaptation of Uncle Vanya. In Russia, the author is represented by Will Theatre Agency (e-mail).

Sergei Task

MA from Moscow State University, philological department (”English language and literature”) and MFA from the University of Iowa (”Theatre and playwriting”). 
Since 1978, a professional writer, member of Writers Union. He published poetry, fiction, plays and criticism in Russian and English. He translated Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Orwell, Vonnegut, Salinger, Paul Auster, Stephen King, plays by contemporary foreign authors. He taught in American colleges and universities.
In 1999, he founded Will Theatre Agency.

Alexey Zuev

He graduated from Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio in 1993. 
From 1993 to 1998, he was an actor of the Tabakov Theatre and MAT named after Chekhov. Since 1999, he takes part in the projects of the International confederation of theatre unions, Moscow ApARTre, and other theatre companies. 
He did parts in many films. He got Cult-Hero Award in the nomination ”Best Actor” for the leading part in Czarevitch Alexey in 1998. For details see

Marina Kangelari

She graduated from Shchukin Drama School in 1994. 
1994-1999 As an actress of Taganka Theatre she played Marianna (Tartuffe); Lisa (Adolescent); Ophelia (Vysotsky); Tatiana Nikolaevna (Thought); took part in the productions of Master and Margarita, Zhivago, A House on the Quay, et al.
Since 1999, as an actress of Satirikon Theatre, she played Pheasant Chicken (Chanticleer), Vyshnevskaya (Profitable Job).

Classica Nova Association

Founders of the Classica Nova Association in Russia, laureates of Russian and international competitions Tatiana Larina (flute), Svyatoslav Lips (piano), Vladimir Serov (flute), Dmitry Tatarkin (guitar), are conducting concerts of classical and modern music, in cooperation with contemporary composers, and often premiere the pieces that have been written specifically for them. In their concerts, on different occasions, many talented musicians, laureates of Russian and international competitions, as well as jazz festivals, take part. Among them, chamber orchestra Amadeus under Freddy Caden, Moscow Quartet, jazz trio under Evgeny Borts and others. Classica Nova often tours Russia and abroad, performing solo and in collaboration on the best stages.

Ekaterina Frolova

She graduated from Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio, department of designers and technologists, in 2006. She works as a designer at the Bolshoi Theatre. She did several shows, among them Mandate by Erdman and They Are Singing Again by Friesch at the MAT School-Studio, Winter by Grishkovets at RAMT, Celebration by Slade, and She co-designed My Fair Lady at the Moscow Operetta Theatre. She is a regular participant of exhibitions of young theatre designers called Theatre Wrap-Up, Klin 2005 et al.

Olga Polikarpova

She graduated from Moscow Art Theatre School-Studio, department of costume designers, in 1999 (Professor A.Maklakova’s workshop). She designed costumes for over fifteen shows in Moscow and other cities of Russia. She is an author of articles and books, and participant of exhibitions dedicated to period costumes.

We thank for support:

Ilse Liepa, Irina Kulakova, Tatiana Samoilova, Andrei Sokolov, Nanalia Hechian, Emilia Bershadskaya, Alexander Matin, Varvara Lubovnaya, Elena Soboleva, Maria Ter-Gabrielyan.