The Night Writer - Russia

'Is it silent and peaceful now?
After the carnage
and the tumult of the battlefield
after the battle
At this moment my body
is a quiet museum
You can find in here
or read out there
everything I have done
Even my life before my birth.'
- Jan Fabre | The Night Writer

The Night Writer - Russia is Troubleyn/Jan Fabre’s first repertoire work in Russia. The performance is played alternately by two talented actors: Alexander Molochnikov and Andrej Feskov. It’s a journey in strong colours, from the artist’s youth to today. The audience is engulfed in a flow of thoughts connecting day-time activities, bubbling with irresistible ideas and ambitious projects, and night-time existence, when creativity merges with fury and reflections on life, love and sex speak of the visceral energy of the body.

The text includes several pages of Fabre's personal journals and excerpts from Fabre's theatre text: The Reincarnation of God, I Am A Mistake, The Emperor of loss, The King of Plagiarism, Body, Body on the Wall, I Am Blood, History of Tears and Drugs Kept Me Alive.

It is a strong manifesto on art, performed with verve by the two actors.

PLYWOOD THEATER
In 2019, the renowned Bolshoi Drama Theater in Saint Petersburg celebrated its centenary. Artistic director Andrej Moguchi invited Jan Fabre to create a special performance for the PLYWOOD THEATER. In the famous Bolshoi Drama Theater on the Fontanka River in Saint Petersburg, ARCHATTACKA built an architectural plywood pavilion that brings the visitor back to 1919, the revolutionary era in which the Bolshoi Drama Theater was founded. The shape of the Plywood Theater refers to El Lissitzky’s 1919 visual work ‘Beat the Whites with the Red Edge, a lithography symbolizing the Russian Civil War.

Awards
Andrej Feskov was granted the Golden Sofit 2020, St. Petersburg for his role in The Night Writer - Russia

Award Nominations
The Golden Mask Theatre Awards - Best director: Jan Fabre / Best performance: The Night Writer / Best actor: Andrey Feskov

"The logic of form leads the artist and the audience inexorably to the final dance. But the entire production is a dance. The artist takes the glass to pour the water, not just for fun, but exactly to the beat of Stef Kamil Carlens' psychedelic-olive-jazz soundtrack. Strictly to the music, he corrects the pages on the table, the positioning of the water decanter, the skull decanter with something cognac-like, the ashtray, the cigarette packets - all lines must be perfectly straight. And they are as straight as the rails on which the play rides. From absurdly monstrous stories about relatives through literally bloody arguments about art (can't resist another quote: "I weep with art. I piss with art. I spit with art. I sweat art. Art is not created by art. Art is excreted by the body") to the foundation of these nocturnal revelations - insomnia." - Olga Komok | DP.RU

"I cry art, I spit art, I sweat art, I piss art", - writes Fabre in his Night Diary. This does not end the list: everything that the human body can secrete, including blood and other fluids - for Fabre, all this is a similar part of his art as the performer's body is. And that provides the authenticity and honesty of the art. All his guises exist to show the actor's total "physicality" and turn his body into a relaxed but technically ideal instrument for self-expression." - Fontanka.ru

"The most important thing here is the text. We find in it a healthy physicality and courage, disordered statements and true blood wounds, the artist's complete faith in his freedom and in everything he does. That is the powerful cocktail of energy that Fabre leaves for us..." - Fontanka.ru