With Marriage, Vyrypaev stages for the first time a text written by an author other than himself. The director states,
Gogol is not only a penetrating observer of human behaviour - he was one of the first to capture and express the absurdity of human existence. Its toil and its lack of meaning. But that is not all. Perhaps is a piece in the spirit of the orthodox Church.
Vyrypaev adapts the play as a vision of his own, sketching out a caricature of Gogolian melancholy with a set of props and costumes evoking the 18th century intertwined with contemporary fake noses. Actors in the cast, Modest Ruciński, Mirosław Zbrojewicz, Marcin Bosak and Monika Pikuła, say it is a new theatrical language they are employing in their work on Marriage.
"We don’t play the characters, we present them", the cast members state in an interview for the Gazeta Wyborcza daily. They call it an extreme challenge - even if they seize this new form for a moment, it is elusive to maintain. An acting technique so different from what the actors know from their training becomes for them a way of showing Gogol through Vyrypaev.
Marriage is the fifth play from the Siberian director to be staged in Poland. He started with Lipiec / July, featuring Karolina Gruszka and then staged Taniec Delhi / 'Delhi' Dance, Iluzje / Illusions and a student performance entitled Ufo.Kontakt. In a talk with Dorota Wyżyńska, he said he is aware that Gogol's play is seen primarily as a comedy in Poland.
In the Russian tradition, Gogol is a mystic, a Greek Orthodox author. The play is full of symbolism and it touches upon the hopelessness of the spritual threshold. [...] Gogol is a cruel author. Today we, the contemporary playwrights, are often described as carnivorous and depressing. But Gogol is in fact a lot more brutal in his writings. He describes the demonic nature within human beings, and the dark energy that lays dormant in each of us. It is very important to me for Polish audiences to become aware of this mystic character of the piece. And yet - and this is the challenge - we cannot loose the comic dimension of the play, which the Polish audience is accustomed to.
Ivan Vyrypaev (born 1974) is a playwright, director and actor. He graduated from the Irkutsk Theatre School in 1995, and has won prestigious Russian theatre awards and the Presidential Council award, "For Contribution to Russian Literature". He has written the plays July, Genesis No. 2, Oxygen, Valentine's Day, The City, Where I Am and Dreams. Vyrypaev's plays have been staged in theatres worldwide; he frequently directs in Poland and received the Polityka Passport award in January 2013. He has written several film scripts: Another District, Bunker, Antonina Looks Back, Bucharest 68 and co-authored Bimmer 2.
Karolina Gruszka, the acclaimed Polish actress and Vyrypaev’s spouse, is cast in the role of Agafia. The set is designed by Anna Met, and the lighting is directed by Jacqueline Sobiszewski.
The premiere performance of Wedding took place on the 4th of February 2013, with subsequent showings on the 5th - 8th of February at Warsaw’s Teatr Studio.
Editor: SRS
Source: press release, Gazeta Wyborcza