DONKA - A letter to Chekhov
Written and directed by
Daniele Finzi Pasca.
I am a collector of moments, of details, of small particulars. My theatre is made of images which overlap, which you can’t always talk about in a straight line. It is a continual state of alluding, and of pretending that certain things really did happen. I love the silences, the pauses, the suspended moments, perhaps because basically for years I’ve been looking for light heartedness on stage. I decided to discover Chekhov in the same way, looking for particulars and details, both in his life and in the pages of his writings, and not only that. I thought of giving shape to the silences contained in the notes of his diaries and of creating images from his annotations.
I come from a theatre deeply impregnated with the language of clowns, of jugglers, from the delicate and magical world of acrobats. That is how I will recall Chekhov and to do it I will surround myself with the same accomplices as always, creators with whom I have worked for years and with whom I share not only the same sense of aesthetics and way of thinking of the theatre, but also the passionate way of defending our imaginary world.
In this show there will be objects suspended in a tragic fragility which will slowly thaw like ice in the sun, like melting wax. There will be precarious balances danced by our actors; there will be clowns, poetic and decadent, but elegantly decadent. There will be live musicians as well as a symphony orchestra and a lovely choir. There will be a lot of white, perhaps some blue, and then specks of blood, small and hidden, like the traces of that illness which slowly consumed the writer with fits of coughing. There will be beds from a country hospital, ravens and other birds, the wind between the branches, a child with a fever that burns in his chest, the sound of a church bell, men hidden under the bed-sheets, actors who talk like actors talk, perhaps a fire, a bit of solitude, a garden, a lake, and a little bell whose ringing indicates that a fish has at last taken the bait.
Written and Directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca
A production of Finzi Pasca Company and Chekhov International Theatre Festival
In co-production with Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
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