THE OLD WOMAN@GREECE

Pioneering theatre director Robert Wilson (The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, MIF11) returned to Manchester with his brand new theatrical production, The Old Woman, a few days ago. Tonight Thursday 18 July and from Friday to Sunday this specific performance will be showed at Onassis Cultural Center, Athens-Greece. Developed with and starring legendary dancer and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, and co-starring world-renowned actor Willem Dafoe, The Old Woman is an adaptation of the work of the same name by Russian author Daniil Kharms.

Born in St Petersburg in 1905, Kharms suffered through Stalinist rule for much of his life. Eventually he was arrested, imprisoned and killed by Soviet soldiers in the Gulags aged just 36. The shortness of Kharms’ life parallels the brevity of his absurdist writings, some of which stretch to little more than a paragraph. One exception is The Old Woman, an obscure, brilliant and slyly political novella written in the 1930s.

Carrying echoes of Beckett and Ionesco in its deadpan narrative, which follows the story of a struggling writer who cannot find peace with himself, The Old Woman is perhaps the finest work by one of the great avant-garde Russian authors.

An old lady is standing in the courtyard and holding a wall clock in her hands. I walk past the old woman, stop and ask her, ‘What time is it?’

‘You look,’ the old woman says to me. I look and see that the clock has no hands.

‘There are no hands,’ I say.

The old woman looks at the face of the clock and says to me, ‘It’s a quarter to three.’

THE OLD WOMAN, DANIIL KHARMS

DIRECTION, SET DESIGN, LIGHTING CONCEPT

Robert Wilson with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe

AUTHORED BY

Daniil Kharms ADAPTED BY Darryl Pinckney

COSTUMES

Jacques Reynaud

ASSOCIATE SET DESIGN

Annick Lavalle-Benny

LIGHT DESIGN

A.J. Weissbard

MUSIC SUPERVISOR

Hal Willner

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR

Lynsey Peisinger / Tilman Hecker

SOUND DESIGN

Marco Olivieri

STAGE MANAGER

Jane Rosenbaum

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

Reinhard Bichsel

LIGHTING SUPERVISOR

Marcello Lumaca

ASSISTANT COSTUME DESIGN

Micol Notarianni

COMPANY MANAGER

Simona Fremde

CREDIT

A Baryshnikov Productions, Change Performing Arts and The Watermill Center project.

Commissioned and produced by Manchester International Festival, Spoleto Festival dei 2Mondi, Théâtre de la Ville-Paris/Festival d’Automne à Paris and deSingel, Antwerp.

DETAILS: http://www.mif.co.uk/event/the-old-woman

SOURCE: http://www.mif.co.uk/