ARZAMAS

Ivana Dimic

A word from the author

Arzamas is a novel about happiness and death, which collide with each other through the everyday life of a mother who departs and a daughter who stays behind. For dramatic purposes, the character of Death is introduced into the adaptation of the novel, as an all-powerful master of ceremonies who intervenes directly with events. Death takes away the mother while dancing a tango with the daughter, but love prevails, because love is mightier than death. Zvezdara Theatre’s production of the play is an act of creativity born out of gifts that are independent of the author. So, all I can do is wait for it with trust, trepidation and love and wish it a quality encounter with the audience and a long stage life.

Ljiljana Todorovic

A word from the stage director

Sad and funny at the same time, this is a story about three solitudes: the solitude of an elderly parent, the solitude of a grown-up child that cares for the parent, and their collision with the loneliness of death. Yes, death, which makes everyone turn their head and run away in panic… A story about love between a mother, a daughter and – the one and only – Death. Is it possible – and if it is, then how – to accept a union of Eros and Thanatos, a coexistence between life and death? Can we imagine a loving cohabitation between them? And, in the end, can death, which is proverbially assigned the most horrible of epithets, through its need for love, be FUNNY as well? When we shed a light on this story from a different angle, we can see a collision between life, which is perfectly known, and death, which is absolutely unknown. Namely, the situation this story draws us into is almost prosaic, so perfectly known to all of us… Everyone was born of a mother. Everyone is somebody’s child. And, likewise, many of the children already have, or will have, their own children.

Everyone has a mother, and many daughters have become mothers themselves, or will become mothers. And yet! Even though made up of known, familiar and recognisable life material, the experience of the LOSS of a parent is new, unknown and horrifying to any of us. No one is ever ready for it. There’s so much of the new and unfamiliar – in the known! And, on the opposite side, there is the infinite amount of the unfamiliar, unknown and unfathomable in the queen of secrets that death is. For death is a secret, not a riddle. So, can love conquer death? And rescue both from solitude as well? Does Death have a worthier adversary than love? “Happiness and death, that’s the Arzamas horror,” Ivana Dimić reminds us. “Can we, dare we, are we able to – and how – accept death as an integral part of life? Are there among us those who are in love with death? Well, in our story there is an… Irukandji. I give up. Words are failing me. You’ll have to see the play.”