CANNON FODDER / PLAY BY PAVEL PRYAZHKO, DIRECTOR PHILIPP GRIGORYAN
ABOUT PERFORMANCE
Duration: 60 minutes With english subtitles
There are three characters in the play by Pavel Pryazhko, three young women. Photo artist Alina, “exhibition curator” Marina and their common friend Olya exist in the gallery space. They are surrounded only with memories, feelings and emotions. In Philipp Grigoryan’s performance, story told from the point of view of three women is complemented and emphasized by the appearance of “men characters” that are both fictional characters and agents of the same everyday reality, which is diligently ignored by the inhabitants of the art gallery.
“There are five characters in the performance, three women and two men. We increase number of people on stage so that imaginary characters and events could also have not only verbal but also theatrical form.” Philipp Grigoryan
"Cannon Fodder" performance is not the first time Grigoryan works with Pryazhko’s texts. Director and playwright met more than 10 years ago. At that time Grigoryan was creating spectacular multigenre projects, and Pryazhko’s texts demanded unusual direction that would have allowed staging suitable for the minimalism of the “new drama”. Philipp Grigoryan moved beyond conventions and anesthetized Pryazhko’s texts using costumes, set design and movement. Especially for the director, the playwright wrote the play Third Period (2008), which was staged in the Joseph Beuys Theater. Later Philipp Grigoryan staged two more texts by Pavel Pryazhko: "The Chukchi" in Perm theatre Stage-Molot (2009) and "The Field" in Moscow Theatre "School of Contemporary Play" (2010). Cannon Fodder play was first presented at the Festival of the Young Dramaturgy Lyubimovka in 2015, as a reading staged by Dmitry Volkostrelov.
Fourth-year students of the Moscow Art Theatre School (master of the course – Dmitry Brusnikin) are involved in the performance: Eva Milgram, Maria Lapshina, Yasmina Omerovich, Nikita Kovtunov and Kirill Odoevskiy. "Cannon Fodder" become their diploma performance created for the professional stage.
TEAM
Staging — Philipp Grigoryan
Set design — Philipp Grigoryan and Vlada Pomirkovanaya