The field

This radically constructed production by Dmitri Volkostrelov, the leading figure of the generation of young Russian directors, is based on the play by Belorussian playwright Pavel Pryazhko, a no less important name for contemporary theatre. The play is devoted to quantum physics and is a construct of non-linear or static «plots» based on well-captured everyday speech and taking place in the country’s vast agricultural lands somewhere not far from the border of the European Union, obviously in Belarus. Combine operators and their girlfriends work in the field, which belongs either to Norwegians or Poles. They buy golden decorations from each other, go dancing, download films on torrents, talk on mobile phones, and at the end come together in a beautiful pagan-like love-making finale right under the nocturnal skies next to the fire. Volkostrelov and his actors and co-creators have integrated the text into a mathematical algorithm of the stage and turned the audience into co-communicators: each one has an «explication plan», which can be followed to witness the different twists and turns of «Field». The performers’ authenticity, both on the acting and human side, nurtures the director’s idea: we perceive characters as people who are close and known to us, our compatriots sharing the Russian language, whose reduced forms Pryazhko scrutinizes.