SUBLIME PLATONIC WORLD

Vuvana is the title of the premiere performance at the Pantomime Theatre. The word is strange, meaningless and untranslatable. It seems to be a childish word used during games. The author of the play is Vusal Rzasoy. Nargila Garibova (Honoured Artist) and Vusal Rzasoy are both directors, artists, music designers and directors in charge of plastics. This is their collaborative work. The cast of the play also includes Nargila Garibova and Vusal Rzasoy.

Rethinking

It has no specific meaning although refers to everything that a child feels and experiences when plunging into the surrounding world. To a certain extent, actors also remain children. It should be great to feel so. Because reinterpreting life is the only way to keep one on the stage, surprising and pleasing the audience with art and creativity. So, what is Vuvana? We asked this question to the author of the idea, director, actor and artist Vusal Rzasoy:

Vuvana is a small world beyond time and space, where inhabitants live not by reasoning, but by heart and soul. There is no language in Vuvana, no verbal communication. People cleanse themselves of their thoughts and live a sense of love that helps them to rethink themselves in order to reach the highest point in the development of self-awareness. It encourages you to experience higher harmony with the world around you merging with the surrounding nature: trees, water, stones, fire, and earth. Thanks to hearing and feeling the world, one establishes a connection with the universe, senses its light, realizes its influence on its life. Thus, he lives in harmony with himself. In return, the Universe helps us to understand that the goal of every living person is to reach and to know the divine state of love that gives us an opportunity to live in harmony and beauty.

That is the philosophical and esoteric perspective of the actors on our life - an unconventional approach to rethinking our lives and destiny. Director of art, Bakhtiyar Khanizadeh, welcomes and creatively encourages such researches. He generally welcomes any initiatives of young actors encouraging them to be creative and professional in practical action.

Dream of Vuvana

When Vusal Rzasoy approached Khanizadeh with the idea of ​Vuvana, he neither discouraged nor prohibited the play writing off the drawbacks in it to actor's inexperience. On the contrary, he approved, supported, and encouraged Vusal. Then, Vusal and the Honoured Artist Nargila Garibova began to compose the play, gradually saturating the actions with scenic symbols and metaphors. This collaboration allowed both of them to be actors, directors of the whole process of developing mise-en-scenes and plastic drawing, artists and music designers. In short, they were able to fulfil all the functions related to the production starting from librettos to artistry.

Vuvana is a dream about an ideal world where harmony rules beauty, giving rise to a feeling of all-embracing love. The action is saturated with metaphors, allowing us to read the author's idea from the prologue to the epilogue.

In the beginning was...

Nothing: no colors, no sounds of the world. Darkness. Silence. Then came the sound of rhythmic friction. Then, inside a small light spot, there is a woman bearing resemblance to the Foremother. She cleans the space. It seems she is just washing the floor. But Vuvana is not a household story, rather a philosophical parable. So, the lady washing the floor is actually the Lady creating the vivifying space full with energy called Life, which is called Qi in Chinese philosophy. She has to work hard so that this energy fills the world with sounds and colours, returning the tree of life and Him, the man who is going to help her to create the world of Vuvana. The two, who are destined to create or to give birth to the energy of life, which fills in the space of Vuvana. But everyone has his or her own vuvana. Therefore, they do not hear the mantras of the universe. They will have to do a lot to create a common Vuvana: one for two. The Universe, and Vuvana. Only then will they feel like a grain of sand. A man and a woman. Two worlds, two ways of life, which are dictated by their natural principles. But there is something that is more important and higher than these principles. Their spirit. Their soul. In the struggle of opposites, they pass the path that allows us to understand: any confrontation is counterproductive. It decreases our strengths and destroys us. The only sure way is the way of creation, which means spiritual perfection, the only one leading to harmony, beauty, and love. When they both realize this, their voices merge with the voice of the universe. Coinciding with universal vibration, He and She will sound in unison with It achieving a total harmony.

About metaphors

Some critics take the liberty of asserting that the times of metaphorical theatre remains in the past. They claim that modern theatre is a theatre of forms. In other words, formalist. Well, maybe that is true. It is not the first time that this trend keeps returning to the structure of the world theatrical process in more than two thousand years. As a rule, such a ‘break-in’ in theatrical process occurs precisely when society, in search of lost ideals, rebuilds itself morally, spiritually. The concept of the hero disappears. Instead, we have an image of a charming anti-hero. He is destructive in nature, believes in his own moral values and truth. With undisguised cynicism and disarming immediacy, he takes himself what he thinks is rightfully his own.

There are no such heroes or performances in Bakhtiyar’s Theatre. Here the search for spirituality is associated with the search for an expressive artistic form. It is in a stage metaphor. Perhaps this is due to small scenic space of the theatre. In such a space, the tricks of artistic metaphor are simply necessary! There is no verbal communication between the characters, rather a state of feelings, thoughts, emotions that are expressed through the inner state, the plastic expressiveness of gestures and bodies. However, it seems that it is not just that. The point is the concept of the theatre itself, which does not seek to entertain, amuse the public for the sake of cash, but develops, educates, compels to compare and think: who are you? Why did we come into this life? Where are we going?

Metaphor code

The audience receives many such encoded messages. Perhaps not all of them will be interpreted in the sense that the authors of Vuvana wished. But after all, everyone has the right to their own interpretation! The main thing remains unchanged: the dialogue took place, and it will continue between the theatre and the audience in time. And this suggests that such a conversation today is extremely necessary.

The language of stage metaphor

At the beginning of the play, the Foremother stands by the tree. This is a dry, dead tree. She goes to the spring, takes water from it and waters the area around the tree. The watered area responds to the life-giving power of water by giving birth to a Man. Then the woman waters the tree. It is refreshed and slowly returns to life. Leaves appear on it. Man and Woman receive energy from the tree of life, and the Universe responds to it with the mantra of the OUM. But we only hear it. Neither She nor He does hear it yet. While the sacred sounds of the universe are inaccessible to their understanding, and therefore cannot bring their consciousness to the level of super-consciousness. Like all the sacral, the mantra of the universe requires enlightenment. So, the heroes must take the path of knowledge.

The man and the woman will have a difficult way of knowing themselves, the world around and inside themselves. Then, a world tree will appear. It seems to sprout from the great cosmos, dropping its wonderful crowns on Vuvana. In the branches of these crowns, she will fight in search of an exit. She is either Eve or Lilith... And aside, calmly watching this, He will settle down, methodically splitting the nut behind the nut, taking the corn from the shell and absorbing their life-giving energy, as if dissolving between the palms of the hands. And this great patience of the Man will help them both to find common breath: with each other, and with the universe. And then the main thing will happen: they will hear the mantra of the Universe and sing it together. The path to harmony is found. From now on, they will live in the ideal world of love and beauty.

By the end of this story, He and She will be soaring in outer space, among the stars and constellations. Something pagan is seen in the floating of white constellation stones, shining in the blackness of the stage space, astrological extrapolation of the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

By the way, twelve represents the cosmic mind and the Will of the Most High, symbolizes the divine circle around the Universe. He and She, having achieved perfection, become part of the universal soul, a reminiscent of Chekhov's character Kostya Treplev from The Seagull.