Join us for a screening of Yury Butusov's avant-garde staging of Chekhov's first great play, and academic Michael Earley speaks to "Masha".
Pushkin House and Stage Russia are proud to present a screening of Yury Butusov's staging, for the Satirikon Theatre, of Chekhov's The Seagull. You'll be able to watch the filmed stage production from the comfort of your home from 4th-6th March. Then, on Saturday 6th at 2pm, we'll be joined by Maryana Spivak, actress in the role of Masha, for a Q&A, hosted by academic Michael Earley.
Anton Chekhov’s first of four major plays dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts between its four main characters: Boris Trigorin, a well-known writer, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the would-be playwright Konstantin Tréplev.
Yury Butusov's frenetic production abounds in an incredible freedom and openness, delving deep into the throes of artistic creation and the anguish of the artist who struggles to find a language of his own. This is not only a performance about the theatre, it is an anthology of the theatre that devours its children like monsters. With the shuffling of actors' roles, you begin to sense something of a quadraphonic portrait of the creative personality, which demonstrates that greatness is precariously close to mediocrity while suggesting that the opposite is also true. Chekhov's characters are in the process of creating their lives or watching them fall apart, which, according to Butusov, may be a closely related activity.
Maryana Spivak is a Russian film, television and theatre actress who has been featured in two Stage Russia filmed performances, as Masha in Yury Butusov’s The Seagull and as Cordelia in Butusov’s take on Shakespeare’s King Lear, both from Moscow’s renowned Satyricon Theatre. She is the granddaughter of actress Zhanna Prokhorenko and daughter of Timofey Spivak. and studied at the Moscow Art Theatre School. Maryana received worldwide recognition as Zhenya in Andrei Zvyagnintsev's Oscar & Golden Globe nominated film Loveless. Other notable roles include as Pana Rudenko in The Sky is Measured in Miles, as Vasilyeva in the TV series Vasiliy Stalin, and as Samara in the critically-acclaimed French political drama series Le Bureau des Legendes. Her most recent work includes the role of Alexa in Danny Boyle’s feature film Yesterday, and in the hit Netflix series To The Lake directed by Pavel Kostomarov.
Michael Earley is Academic Adviser for Stage Russia. He is writing a new book about the relationship between Russian theatre directors and revolutionary innovators Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Currently, Michael is Dean of Performing Arts and Professor of Drama and Theatre at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. He was previously Professor of Drama, Principal and Chief Executive Officer of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in Sidcup. An American by birth, Michael had an extensive career in the United States where he was Assistant Professor and Director of the undergraduate Theatre Studies Program at Yale University and on the faculty of the Drama Department at the Juilliard School and also at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. As Chief Producer of Plays for BBC Radio Drama he directed over 50 productions for broadcast over Radio 3 and Radio 4.