Álomgyár /Dreamworks/ | Madách Nemzetközi Színházi Találkozó

Ivan Viripajev

Álomgyár /Dreamworks/ 16

National Theatre, Budapest, Hungary

Director: Viktor Ryzhakov

2 hours 10 minutes, without breaks.

The new and utterly unbelieveable story of Ivan Vyrypaev is about eternal and simple human values – marriage, love, family – using the language of the Hollywood movies of today. The dreams are our jobs, which we have to fulfill at all costs – says Victor Ryzhakov director apropos of Dreamwork. Viktor Ryzhakov has already directed several plays of Vyrypaev, like Drunks in the Hungarian National Theatre. Similarly to previous plays of the contemporary Russian playwright, Dreamworks (written in 2011) is also about unfulfilled human dreams, about longing for love, but in this case, in the style of a Hollywood movie, using playful irony to discuss these serious questions people are still deeply affected by.

The characters of the play are elegant – appearing in tuxedos and in full dresses, or dressed according to the newest style. We meet the stereotypes of American movies – a Friday evening party where wisky, drugs and friends define your feelings. They are all those kinds of people we can meet in American movies, and with whom everything is always OK. The characters in Vyrypaev’s play are seeking the meaning of life, looking for possibilities of love – in a world where the absurdly artificial milieu of the Dreamworks has already defeated our mundane reality.

„Us and our children, we already exist in a virtual reality, wandering among false values and rambling about all kind of things; about Buddhism, money, weed, and forgetting the essentials: our most basic relationships. Maybe this performance can take us closer to these important things” – Ryzhakov promises.

The author, Ivan Vyrypaev was born in Irkutsk in 1974. He is a cult figure in contemporary Russian theatrical life, a dramatist and director, and a central figure of the New Drama movement. Together with Viktor Ryzhakov, Vyrypaev has launched an art group, “Oxygen” (Kislorod), which endeavours to create a new theatrical language with a fresh tone and mentality. Ryzhakov’s directing is characterized by this new, unusual, original theatrical language.

Translated by:
ANDRÁS KOZMA

David - Editor-in-chief of Science and Society magazine

Zsolt Trill

Maryl - David's wife, journalist

Kinga Katona

Teddy - publisher

József Rácz

Frank - a businessman

Attila Kristán

Sally - Frank’s wife, editor in chief of a women’s magazine

Nelli Szűcs

Betty - Frank's lover

Judit Gigi Vas m.v.

Maximilian - rich patrol of American Buddhists

László Tóth

Elizabeth

Viktória Tarpai m.v.

John Lama - American origin Buddhist lama

Roland Bordás

Policewoman

Judit Ligeti-Kovács m.v.

Set and costume designer

Alexey Tregubov

Video designer

Vladimir Gusev

Coreographer

Sergey Medvedev

Sound designer

Jan Kuzmicsev

Dramaturge

András Kozma

Thanks to Lékó Zsanett

Stage manager

Márta Kabai

Prompter

Gabi Kónya

Assistant director

Ágota Kolics

Director

Viktor Ryzhakov

Main Stage

Viktor Ryzhakov

Viktor Ryzhakov was born in the city of Khabarovsk in 1960. He studied at the Far Eastern College for the Arts, the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute, and the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, where he completed his doctorate. In 1995-2001, he served as the artistic director of the Kamchatka Drama and Comedy Theatre. In 2001, he began to work as a director and instructor at the academy of the Moscow Art Theatre (MKhAT), and in 2012 he was made head of department and recognized director of MKhAT. Together with playwright and director Ivan Vyrypaev, Rizakov launched the Oxygen (“Kislorod”) theatre movement, which exerted a strong influence on contemporary Russian theatre. He is the founder and director of the Five Evenings Theatre Festival in Memory of Alexander Volodin, which was launched in 2002 in Saint Petersburg. Since 2012, he has served as the artistic director of the Meyerhold Centre in Moscow. He has held courses on the art of the theatre in Germany, Poland, the United States, and Hungary. He has directed many award-winning productions in theatres in Russia and Europe. He has also won numerous awards at prominent European theatre festivals (the Grand Prize at the Kontakt International Theatre Festival in Toruń, the Golden Mask Award, the New Drama Festival Grand Prize, and the prize for best performance for his production of The Hairdresser at the National Theatre Meeting in Pécs, or POSZT). In 2011, he was awarded a Stanislavsky Award for his work as a theatre pedagogue, and in 2014 he was named one of Russia’s Artists of Merit.

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