10th Madách International Theatre Meeting

Szinopszis / Plot

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

(Erich Maria Remarque: "The Black Obelisk")

"I am interested in human life with its searching, its hopes, futility, pain, love and weakness. I am interested in living reality with all its indecipherable diversity."

(Olzhas Zhanaidarov)

The plays of the young Kazakh playwright Olzhas Zhanaidarov, who became a cult figure at age 35, have been staged in many theatres in Russia and abroad. Of the six plays the author has written so far, especially "Dzhut" (2013) has attracted the attention of Kazakh theatres. This is understandable, since Dzhut deals with the famine of the 1930s in Kazakhstan. The author said he had long wanted to address this tragic period for the Kazakh people, since the subject hardly ever appears in contemporary literature. 

The documentary play "Dzhut" has two parallel storylines. The first is set in present-day Moscow and centres on the dialogue between Yerbol, the granddaughter of famine victims in Kazakhstan, and Yelena, a journalist in the capital. The second storyline takes us back to the 1930s, when the country was in the grip of famine and Akhmet and Saule's family were suffering a terrible tragedy. "The Kazakh part is in Bashkir, the Moscow part is in Russian," says Ayrat Abushakhmanov, director of the play and Principal Director of the theatre.