Live Design Online: As 1999 became 2000, Russians were less preoccupied with Y2K worries than the rest of the world. They were riveted on a televised address: President Boris Yeltsin announced he was stepping down and passing the torch to a KGB operative.
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I don't know how I feel about this play. All the technical elements mentioned in this article are very cool, and I enjoy the simultaneous accuracy and creatively liberal take on Russian culture. While I think some of the elements are a little derivative, I understand the play is meant to be a satire. I struggle mostly with the timing and focus of the show, and I would have to see it to decide if I am excited about it, or disdainful of it. As a Ukrainian, I have spent my life watching bad characterizations of the Soviet Union that chock up to either blatant and misguided stereotypes of eastern europeans, or blatant soviet propaganda. I think, especially amid a war where Putin has proved himself a genocidal maniac, a lot of care should be taken, in any depiction, not to overly satirize a horrifically dangerous regime. I'll be interested to see the reviews of this show and how it fairs against fact checkers.
The article discusses a play called ‘Vladimir’, referencing Putin. It brings up pretty disheartening, but important political questions through the lens of an independent print journalist and an imagined Chechnyan woman. The play begins with President Boris Yeltsin’s resignation. I’ll admit I had forgotten a lot of this modern Russian history, so I brushed up after being prompted by this article. Yesltsin had a rollercoaster of a time politically for decades, and as did the Russian Federation alongside him economically. He succeeded Gorbachev after his resignation due to the coup attempt, with his own colorful history. I digress, Yeltsin’s resignation in the show is shown through the literal len of propaganda, the directorial focus on the tools that form visual rhetoric. The article interestingly outlines the logic behind the lighting design and engineering to make it feel very artificial, to remind the audience that they are watching a staging - both literally and within the play.
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