IN SEARCH FOR METAMORPHOSIS

As a closing performance of the season, Yug presented Metamorphosis. Girector Gunay Sattar defines the genre of the play as a somnambulistic reportage (somnambulism = sleepwalking). It is based on the stories of Saida Hagverdiyeva. The focus is on a woman. Our contemporary. She does not have a specific name. She is the "I": one of the many whose fate is determined by life in the metropolis. This character is performed by Zumrud Gasimova. Why “I"? The narration is from the first person. But the "I" is a collective image of a naive teenage girl, who has seen the life of a woman, and, apparently, every spectator in the audience. The "I" in the universe of a big city is just the embodiment of a collective woman with many faces: obedient, complaisant, shocking, liberated, seductively accessible and unhappy, which, presumably, should help the spectators understand the metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis of «going with the flow»

In Greek, metamorphosis means "transformation" In mythology, metamorphosis stands for a universal variability of things and their unity in interconversion. But we did not see anything like this in the play. Therefore, in the finale of the action, let us ask the question: what is the metamorphosis? Is it in changing life circumstances of the protagonist? Her journey from a bad situation to a worse one? There are many questions. The director does not give answers.

The names of other two characters are  You and He. You is Ogtay Mehdiyev. According to the plot of dramatic, rather somnambulistic story, he is a Turk. A man our protagonist meets by chance. He (Elgun Hamidov) is a man whom I loves logically. Or, at least, I should love. But no! I does not love anyone. I does not understand what she wants from this life, from herself, from the men who she meets on her way. She just lives this life the way she does. As it turns out, not very beautiful, not very meaningful, not very meaningful, not very worthy life. What does it mean: the metropolis kills the soul and depersonalizes it? Or maybe it means one has to go with the flow in the megalopolis in order to survive?

The genre

Somnambulistic reportage! Considering that somnambulistic means nothing else than unconscious actions of a person during sleep, it turns out that all the characters are people who are impersonal to the city and time. The material world is much closer to them than the spiritual world, their game in life takes much more than life itself! The efforts to pull out the esoteric ideas of Mirzakarim Norbekov (Uzbek and Russian non-traditional medicine practitioner, writer), Sergei Lazarev (Russian parapsychologist, writer), etc. do not achieve the desired result. Because the director’s interpretation of role-playing games does not achieve the result. However, there is another interesting detail that very few people have noticed: the director also uses the word "reportage" in the definition of the play’s genre!

Then all the questions and claims that one wants to ask the director in the course of the play go to the background. And what? This is just information coming from the place of today's events, and it does not involve live participation. "Visual representation of reality" allows such a form of presentation that makes I an outside observer, commenting on the facts of real life, as a direct participant in the events. The director, having declared such a genre and putting actors in certain conditions of professional existence, is driving herself into a corner. Because, even if conditionally divide the action into "reportage" and "reality", then "reality" clearly loses. Why? The reality created by the director clearly lacks the psychological persuasiveness that the notion of reality in general requires: with all the resulting concepts of cause-effect relationships and conflicting principles. However, the director was more attracted to the form of presentation, not the content itself. It's a pity. Because of this story, a performance with a much greater semantic load might turn out. It would have been a play-dialogue, a pamphlet performance, but it did not. Since under this condition, the director would have to state her personal position. Simply put, to state her attitude to the problem of the modern megalopolis. And this problem exists for a long time. The problem that we can call actual, but which is not talked about. And again - sorry! The selected genre of a "reportage" as "a visual representation of events through direct perception of the author - an eyewitness or participant of the events", gave such an opportunity. Director consciously (or maybe not) missed this chance. Perhaps, because she does not want to sharpen an already acute problem. May be she has taken a fancy to the form, and perhaps she provides this opportunity to the public, who must decide whether they like this "benefit" of modern life or not. And it's good if the viewer did not like it: it's unpleasant to see your life from the side without mythological idealization. Both in terms of aesthetics and morality. Alas, the director has failed to become a "provocateur artist". She deprived herself of the opportunity to say: "Do not you like it? Well, do not live like this!"

Director games

The performance of begins with the appearance of three characters one after another: two men in orange overalls and a woman in an orange jacket, looking like a jacket of track keepers on the railway. Orange color, from the point of view of artistic ductility under theatrical spotlights, easily changes to purple or crimson red. This is also a kind of director's illustration of the scenes of emotional saturation. Each character has his own serial number. Like players on a sports field or prisoners in prisons. Then huge, silvery balls and umbrellas appear in the hands of the characters. Why did the director need these metaphorical symbols? Ball, as a prototype of the globe, playing which you can hint to the viewer that not only we are so confused-unprincipled, it's everyone so live today? Perfect! Here again, responsibility for what is happening is removed. But not only from the director, now from the audience! And what? We are not alone in this imperfect world! The whole world is drowning in moral mud! We are against the whole world - how? So, there is nothing to be upset! Let's play together a role-playing game of substitution!

The umbrellas. Umbrellas as hemispheres, denoting the habitat of each character? May be. But maybe not. In the hands of characters, these are just props: an epathetic detail, claiming originality, but in fact it pushes to the operetta move and the way of existence of the actor-character in the space of scenic history. It's a pity! The detail could have worked, if the director had not left it at the level of a claim to originality. And do not forget about the numbers! What are they for? After all, these numbers 111 on the chest of You and 341 on He, and triple sevens on I should mean something! Well, if this is a game, judging by the application of an open theatrical move in the prologue of action, then what: esoteric numerology, blackjack or the Russian version in twenty-one point? But this too is left at the mercy of the viewer. As he decides, so it will be! The viewer, maybe, would have decided, if the director had on this account, besides the desire to shock, also the staging thought: what to connect these figures with? With the games of fate? Then this is numerology. Hence, esoterics. And one more claim to the philosophy that provokes real spiritual and moral searches for the characters. But this did not happen, alas. If the figures are related to the entertainment of gambling (or not quite gambling!) Players? Then it's blackjack! In any case, the director must decide this. Because in any scenario, even these two options (and they can be much more!) the way the actor exists on the stage, his game and the relationship of the characters, the audience should be specifically aimed at this idea. And this is determined by the director, who is still in search of the declared metamorphosis...

About the actors

Zumrud Gasymova is I. A wonderful actress with good professional background and practical experience. Her character sails with the flow in search of not herself, but comfortable adaptability. If three sevens are figures of a gambling card game, then she is a potential winner. If this is true, then the future for us is absolutely undesirable!

Ogtay Mehdiyev is You. The actor, whose character is not devoid of brutality. It is endowed with magnetism and special expressiveness of physical actions.

Elgun Hamidov is He. Expressive actor, whose character is closer to the role of a lyric hero. Endowed with indecisiveness and a tendency to reflect, but capable of actions and actions "like everyone else."

Epilogue

Yug has never been boring, and that's why we like coming here. Always. Here lives a spirit of the founder of this theater, Vagif Hasanov. It is always in search of new forms, sounds, and opportunities. Here people live and serve the idea of ​​great art, whose hearts are wounded by the theater forever. The management of the theater, actors, workshops are united by creativity. There is no naked cash calculation, but there is a search: ideas and ways of expressing it. Here they easily experiment, realizing that not only in disputes the truth is born. It is born in practical search as well.