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The Boys at Baryshnikov
Rendition of Brothers Karamazov begins Oct. 6
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The Theatre Art Studio in Moscow has for years been an international platform for eminent and emerging companies. It has successfully produced some of the world’s most complex repertoire including The Battle of Life by Charles Dickens and The Gamblers by Gogol. The Art Studio, one of Russia’s prestigious young companies, will be presenting the American premiere of The Boys at the Baryshnikov Arts Center from October 6-10.
The play, based on a portion of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, is directed by Sergey Zhenovach and performed in Russian with English titles. The production debuted in Russia in November 2004 and received excellent reviews for its outstanding depiction of Russia’s traditional psychological theater. In 2006, The Boys received two Golden Mask National Theatre Award nominations: Best Small-Scale Performance and Best Director. Sergey Zhenovach also received a Crystal Turandot Moscow Award for Best Direction.
Sergey Zhenovach was inspired to direct The Brothers Karamazov during a trip to Staraya, Russia, a town portrayed in Dostoevsky’s book as Skotoprigonievsk. The famed director remembers the exact moment of an imaginary light bulb turning on in his head. “I was walking around the town,” he said, “when it had just stopped raining and there were puddles on the roads. Suddenly I saw a bunch of 9-12 year-old boys walking towards me in a row, holding each others shoulders, going around the puddles without breaking the row or their boyish brotherhood. And I realized at once the way The Boys should be created: the boys should be on the stage all the time so that we can see the changes with our own eyes, as they evolve from hatred to love.”
The production does not consist of elaborate costumes, but what it lacks in the pageantry it makes up for in an in-depth adaptation of Dostoevsky’s literary wonder. The creative forces behind the play want us to focus on the cast’s young roster of talents. The book is filled with characters with complex cognition, partly due to the author’s depressing ordeal during the process of writing of it. His young son Alyosha died of epilepsy, an illness he inherited from his father. One of the main characters in this play, Aleksey Fyodorovich Karamazov, sometimes referred to as “Alyosha,” was named after his son. Zhenovach focuses on the story of the school boys in Book Ten of The Brothers Karamazov, in which Aleksey becomes friends with fellow school boys. Aleksey brings a new spectrum of morality to the group when Aleksey or Alyosha convinces them to stop playing pranks on Ilyusha Snegiryov, their dying friend.
The theater extravaganza will run at the Jerome Robbins Theatre located in the Barynshnikov Arts Center. For further information, please click here.