Posted on 11/28/2001 12:19:12 AM PST by StoneColdGOP
MOSCOW -- A naked woman spending the best part of an hour yelling at the top of her lungs while sitting on a wooden stool has become Moscow's latest theater sensation, leaving audiences stunned and reviewers enthralled.
French actress Valerie Dreville and Russian director Anatoly Vasilyev have set out to shock with their rendition of German playwright Heiner Mueller's Material Medea, based on the ancient Greek Medea myth.
By all accounts, they have succeeded.
UNEROTIC NUDITY
Shortly after the show begins, Dreville-Medea starts undressing slowly (albeit utterly unerotically) -- and proceeds to burn all of her clothes onstage -- with the exception of her high-heeled shoes, which she never takes off.
In a disconcerting one-woman show, she then goes on to perform a series of bizarre acts, like ripping up dolls representing babies, while hysterically yelling that she feels old and ranting at ex-lover Jason, who left her for a younger woman.
At the end, she just sits and repeats the same sentence over and over again, while a theater employee quietly ushers out a dumbfounded audience.
LANGUAGE ISSUE
The audience's bewilderment is compounded by the fact that Dreville acts in French, a language few here understand -- although they get a chance to read a Russian version of the text before the play begins.
But the shock delivered to the audience is fully intentional and even necessary, Vasilyev argues.
``This play is a classic tragedy: the audience experiences a catharsis and the experience eventually strengthens the actress,'' he said.
Dreville agrees: ``Sometimes in life, it is necessary to experience being shocked. The performance is a shock for me too, a healing and liberating one.''
What may have come as the biggest shock to the theater management, however, is Dreville's nudity, which prompted it to bar people under 18 from attending the play.
But Dreville herself insists her onstage nudity is ``totally justified.'' While describing herself as ``extremely modest,'' she said that she did not worry about this aspect of her performance.
``I do not even think of it, I feel absolutely no shame, as though it was not my own body which was being displayed naked,'' she said.
And, on being told that a 16-year-old theater-goer had not been allowed to watch the show, the French actress just laughed.
TOGETHER SINCE '92
Dreville first worked with Vasilyev when he staged 19th-Century Russian poet and playwright Mikhail Lermontov's play The Masked Ball at Paris' Comedie Francaise theater in 1992.
She has since repeatedly played under the direction of Vasilyev, who devotes particular interest to staging pieces depicting classical myths and rituals, and says she is particularly attracted by the ``meditative aspect'' that working with him involves.
The play will be staged in France for a single performance Dec. 9, but Dreville does not expect as much enthusiasm from critics and audiences there as in Russia.
``The fact that the Russians do not understand what I say means they have to react directly to what is going on,'' she said.
The actress added: ``I am not sure this will work as well with a French audience.''
Although if it is unerotic, what on earth is the point?
Did it occur to you that if JimRob doesn't mind something, he leaves it????
I bet you spend all day over at Word For the Day too, whining that people are behaving inappropriately.
You'd better start filling out those abuse forms now, it could take a while to get all these threads killed.
(BTW Stone and Bella, what does "SPG" stand for?)
Could you let me know when you hit the abuse button, so I can hit it on you for abusing the abuse button.
Good question, I don't know the answer.
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