On June 26 — 27, the Platonov Festival will stage the performance A Gentle Creature by the City Theatre Company (Brazil) in collaboration with Valle University (Colombia). The play was directed by two graduates of the GITIS university, Alejandro González Puche
(Colombia) and Ma Zhenhong (China), who have always been truly passionate about Russian literature. On the eve of the performance, they told us why they chose this very material for the production and who their main characters were.
Alejandro González Puche, director:
‘When I was a student of GITIS, our Russian literature teacher noticed A Gentle Creature, and I suddenly came up with the idea of staging it. I suggested it to a friend from Colombia, but he didn’t understand it or maybe simply didn’t want to do it. It’s only now, 30 years later, that I’ve taken on the project… We have a very talented team from Colombia, Brazil, China, and our costume designer, for example, is from Syria. We wanted to stage this play for the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky. But then the pandemic started, and we rehearsed for a long time on the internet… Our ‘Gentle Creature’ is actually not so gentle, she is a very strong woman who already knows and values relationships at the age of 16.’
Ma Zhenhong, director:
‘This play is about the impossibility of relationships and feelings. At first, the main character neither understands his wife nor wants to love her, but when he finally starts to desire their closer connection, she realizes that she cannot reciprocate. They’re both good people, they’re both innocent, but in their mutual life, it’s impossible to love.’
Marco Antonio Barreto, the lead actor (role of the usurer):
‘My character is a tyrant on the surface but on a deeper level, he’s just a wounded, traumatized person who is actually very humane… Audiences in Brazil don’t like him, they see him as a negative character but in Russia they understand everything and feel sorry for him.’ The performance will take place as part of the Regional Programme of the Chekhov International Theatre Festival with the assistance of the Chekhov Regional Public Fund for Support of the International Theatre Festival.
Photos by Andrey Parfyonov.