Ivan Viripaev OXYGEN

Кислород, 2003

Drama
First Slovenian Staging
Translated by Miha Javornik

Directed by Primož Ekart

Premiere: October 2011

 

The text of Oxygen is written in ten scenes, and each of them has a form of musical composition, including verses and refrain. Each scene reinterprets one of the Ten Commandments, which are simultaneously destroyed, created anew and placed in the present time by means of smart and lucid dialogues.  

Sasha, who comes from a Russian provincial town, falls in love with the Moscow girl Sasha. When he sees her sitting in front of the monument to Alexander Griboyedov, dressed in her linen dress from Amsterdam and smoking pot, he kisses her, drives back home to Serpukhovo, kills his wife with a shovel and buries her in the garden.  Sasha, who is cheating on her husband with many men, falls in love with Sasha, although she knows that they are worlds apart.  Sasha and Sasha love each other, drink excessively, quarrel and beat each other up. When they find themselves stuck in a hopeless situation, the only thing they can do is to move away.  Retreat to the countryside, where there is only dancing, to the countryside, where you can get to only with a smallest marry-go-round of death in the world.

Everything they did was done just in order to get some oxygen. Oxygen can be anything. There are women who are oxygen and women who are not. Oxygen is the love between a man and a woman. Oxygen is the freedom that we have or we do not. Our lungs dance, when they have oxygen and stop, when they are without it. The fireman in the New York's WTC building needs oxygen in order not to get suffocated, the pilot crashed the plane into it, in order not to get suffocated from the wrongs that are happening in the world.  
Ivan Viripaev (1974) is a representative of the youngest established generation of the Russian theatre stage directors.    

 

Oxygen begins with the DJ's announcement: Thank you for coming. Tonight you are going to hear the ten songs from our new album Oxygen – the Ten Commandments. And here it comes, our first song, titled - Dance!

 

 

Co-producer: Imaginary