«White White Black Stork» Elkin Tuichiev, Mark Weil

Drama After the stories by Abdulla Kadyri.
(The events take place at the beginning of the XX century.)

Artistic director of the staging Mark Weil
Director Bakhodyr Kamolov
Set designer Shukhrat Abdumalikov
Composer Aziza Sadykova
Costume designer Nodira Uldasheva

In Tashkent - in that part of it which was called by city dwellers the Old one since days of old, because that city was situated here always, as long that they have remembered it themselves, and their fathers and also fathers' fathers - so in the Old City two families lived nearby. One day a boy and a girl were born in those families - Makhzum and Makhichekhra.

Fifteen springs have passed and they have grown up. They seemed to be very happy, because they loved the world a lot and the world loved them as well.
The boy had his favourite lawn, which was called by his name - «Makhzum's lawn». There were living Storks on the lawn - they were his Storks. Of course, they were nobody's Storks, but he believed them to be his Storks as well as he was their boy. The boy was a poet, only nobody knew about that.

And the girl… For some time the girl was troubled an inexplicable feeling, she was attracted by the sonorous voice of a young man, who was a fabric trader. When the fifteenth spring came the boy's parents got worried, because their son «wasn't like everyone». He can't defend himself in a fight, he always has a bleeding nose, he doesn't have any friends and he spends his time dreaming on his lawn. They decided to send him to the Madrasah, where his father was working as a teacher. They wanted him to be an educated man like his father and also to make him to think about his future.

At the Madrasah he saw another boy… He liked his frank and handsome face, his sociable personality, there were always many guys around him and there was something else… For the first time in his life he wanted to have a friend. Such friend to whom he would be able to tell about his lawn, about his favourite tree on the lawn, about the Storks and about...poetry. They became friends, but the guy was poor and Makhzum was ready to give him everything he had - his new robe, money and everything, everything, everything.

Once at Sacred Night when all Madrasah gathered for prayer Makhum didn't find his friend among the praying, he came to his room and found him sleeping. The sight of the sleeping boy bewitched Makhzum, he wanted to stop that moment and keep that on the paper. At that moment he forgot it was a sin for Moslems to draw a human being.

Sin… From that night that word would haunt him constantly. The rumor about a boy found with another boy at the Madrasah would quickly spread all over the town. In order to shut hostile people up, Makhzum's father decided to marry his son. Makhzum was married to the girl who was dreaming only of the one young man- the fabric trader.

It seemed that everybody should have been very happy: the boy's parents, because their son would now be «like everyone», the girl's parents, because they got an enormous «kalym»- ransom and children themselves…

The millstones of the life having seized children would rapidly start to drag them into the crater of hopelessness; the girl having lost her head from grief would call the boy with a swearword «hezalak» - gay; the boy would beat her up. In the morning maids would spread that news all over the city, angry girl's father would demand «justice» implying money. Not having «understanding» at the Local Court he would call for help of the Regional Court of the Russienan Empire and he would be complied with a request, although, while parents were sorting things out between themselves, they practically forgot about their children.

And the children had to be separated barely having found the way to each other during that «black» marriage night.

But one day they would meet each other on Makhzum's lawn burned by that time by angry boy's father. The storks flew away, the notebook with poems was burned, nothing remained from Makhzum's lawn except for a small scrap of paper with a stanza on it, the stanza about black stork that flew away, who in spite of its color is still white white. It was remained only broken fates of the dreamy girl, of the boy, who «wasn't like everyone» and of the guy who was thrown out of the Madrasah.

Accident - A knife - And the death of the dreamy girl and the boy, who «wasn't like everyone», who lived a long and as people would say after many years, a very happy life.

The Premiere of the production 17.09.1998
Duration of the performance 1 h 45 m.

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