The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was founded in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre on 30 December 1922. 100 years later, the critic, curator and theatre maker Marina Davydova has conceptualised the Museum of Uncounted Voices. Her objective is to impart knowledge on how the borders of the national republics within the USSR came into being, on why those borders today have proved to be time bombs, and the extent to which the cultures of the countries that once made up the Soviet Union have always differed.
Visitors enter a space stylised as a museum that then comes to life before their eyes, transforming itself and offering an expedition through complex contexts. In five episodes, the Soviet Union is considered from various perspectives.
The itinerary itself proceeds from a general, ‘true’ historiography to the contradictory and the existentially biographical. The Russian opposition activist Marina Davydova was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, to an Armenian father and has now become a displaced person for the second time.
Podcast
Concept, Text, Direction Marina Davydova Set design Zinovy Margolin With Marina Weis With the voices of Odin Biron (Episode I EMPIRE), Jamal Ali, Luka Kalandadze, Igor Shugaleev, Gurgen Tsaturyan, Oleksandr Yatsenko (Episode II NATIONS), Jamal Ali, Odin Biron, Marina Davydova, Boris Falikov, Luka Kalandadze, Alexey Kokhanov, Elizaveta Petrova, Farrukh Pirov, Natalia Pschenitschnikova, Igor Shugaleev, Gurgen Tsaturyan, Oleksandr Yatsenko (Episode IV PEOPLE) With music by Vladimir Rannev Video Oleg Mikhailov Light design Iurii Galkin Assistance choreography Sonya Levin Research collaboration Mikhail Kaluzhsky Set construction SC ART DECO SRL Props Daria Artemova Assistence props Vera Liulko Design Jürgen Fehrmann, Gea Gosse Costumes Marcus Barros Cardoso, Vera Liulko, Aleix Llusa Lopez Production management Ekaterina Voronova Stage technicians Bodo Hermann, César Martins Translation Sergei Ostrovsky, Sonia Ostrovsky (English), Yvonne Griesel (German) Production management, Tour management Elisabeth Knauf (HAU Hebbel am Ufer)
A commission by HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) Production Wiener Festwochen, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) Coproduction Theater Freiburg
Premiere May 2023, Wiener Festwochen
