«Imitations of the Koran» Alexander Pushkin

Directed by Mark WEIL,
Composer Artyom KIM,
Story-Teller Theme by Ravshan NAMAZOV,
Video Art by Dmitry KOROBKIN,
Stage designer Vasily URIEV ,
Choreographer Olimjon BEKNAZAROV(The Netherlands),
Costumes designer Taras VOLIKOV.
Assienstant to director Maxim TUMENEV

Imitations of the Koran in the The Ilkhom Theatre is a free perusal of «The Prophet» and «Imitations of the Koran» by Pushkin. The performance is an alloy of several common grounds: Mark Weil as the director, the young talented composer Artyom Kim and the drama actors as well. Artyom Kim contributed the pulse of contemporary minimalist music to the perusal of Pushkin's works. And his co-author Ravshan Namazov contributed the intonations of the eastern ritual Muslim songs, the melodic of Koran's reading that is echoed by the young artists Shavkat Matiyakubov and Mirazim Mirdjalilov in the performance. The Pushkin's stories are full of tense and significant human dialogues between the young prophet and God. The dialogues contain the thoughts about woman, lie and sin, about the right of one to make people die in faith sake, and the ways to afflict the truth.

The last verses of Imitations of the Koran by Pushkin is a parable about a Traveller , that fall asleep in a desert once woke up as an old blind man. The appeared God gave him the second youth in spite of the Traveller lost the faith and opened the real world to the Traveller as well. And the Traveller «blessed…» kept his way on.

The performance is appeared to be a synthesis of theatre, music, choreography and video art. That is how the significant image of the world and thoughts and the philosophy of the Koran itself that inspired Pushkin to write one of the most unique work is appeared to be.

*****
It is quite possible the Imitations of the Koran by Alexander Pushkin was predetermined to be included in the The Ilkhom Theatre's repertoire. In fact, the idea understands the phenomena of The Ilkhom Theatre. That is a mixture of the usage of Russian language mostly, named with an Arabian word «Ilkhom» - and the same name is understands as «…the inspiration given by God to the one who creates in the world we all live».

There was a time my friends kept me asking a question why did I choose the name for the theatre. Nevertheless they got used as to the fact we always keep the conception to mix eastern and Slovene types of faces.

I had no need to follow the Brook's experience to travel from Paris to Asia or Africa to get some different nature and culture actors, somebody of different skin color as I could find any right on the streets of Tashkent.

Once the beloved child of the Great Empire - «Tashkent - the eastern star» - mixed us all up, born the «Russian» generation, the indigenous of are Uzbek, Tajic, Kyrgyz and many others mixed up together due to the great Silk Road.

On one hand, one of the etalon variant (they are 5 only) of Koran (The Saint Mushaf) that is written on the leather pages in the very beginning of the Islam history (14 ages before) saved in Tashkent. On the other hand, most part of the city could not read the Koran in the original; what's more, they took Russian language as native one. That's why Imitations of the Koran by Pushkin is just up to the time.

The poetical spirit of Pushkin - the Russian poet with African roots - is just ABOVE everything, including nationalism and the religious pettiness as well. That is quite possible to be the main reason the Russian poet wrote the Imitations of the Koran.

We took our time trying to find the right way to understand and express the text - we showed some sketches to the spectators 2 years ago. We were working over the final variant of, when the 11th of September in New York shocked the world - the terrorists tried to approve the action as if the Koran made them to. Also we do understand those who directed that devil's performance in New-York would never take in the

The Premiere of the production - February 22, 2002
Duration of the performance 1 h 25 m.

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