I'm Here

I'm Here

A genre-blending collaboration by the director Yegor Trukhin and the actor Anatolii Bely combines a stellar performance of poetry masterfully woven into the monologue, gripping dramaturgy, audience participation, and physical comedy reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin's legendary Tramp.

At a pivotal moment in the play, we see the actor become an open nerve, giving the audience all he's got. As boundaries begin to blur, we are unsure whether we hear the character speaking, or the actor, or whether it is our own thoughts that have somehow entered the shared acoustic space. The protagonist seems to build a new self from shards and debris, playing with words and intonations, switching between narratives, gaining a voice and thus making a choice.

When life is a collage of multicoloured fragments, to choose life is to to re-assemble oneself from the shards. The selection of poems featured in the play merits a special mention. All the poems were written after February 24, 2022, in different parts of the world, but with the same enduring pain. Through an interplay of meanings, intonations and images, all poems are imbued with different moods and show different facets of the Human soul: some are the whispering of angels healing all wounds, and others are inhuman screams in the pitch-black darkness of human grief.

Still, the play is about love, strength of spirit, longing for light and the great force of life which in the end triumphs over all evil. I'm here, we say to you; we are alive no matter what.

This performance will be in Russian

Produced by Maria Semushkina CultLab, London

Running time: 1h 30min
Age rating 14+

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