Among the key directions in which the New Stage of Alexandrinsky Theatre works is cooperation with the leading young European artists who inherit and reinterpret the theatric traditions of the Old World in their performances.
The Macbeth is the Russian debut of Krzysztof Garbaczewski, a young leader of new Polish directorship. This staging by a student of Krystian Lupa, one of the top directors of our age, was a significant milestone for the New Stage of Alexandrinsky Theatre on its way towards the evolution of the scenic language and searching for a new theatric lexicon.
Krzysztof Garbaczewski has reached popularity in Europe thanks to his use of peculiar multimedia solutions in his performances. The Director himself often characterizes his performances balancing between cinematography and theatre “theatrical installations”. Garbaczewski started using live streaming technologies in 2010 when he was working on the staging of the Death Star play by his usual co-author Marcin Cecko (Jerzy Bielecki Drama Theatre, Walbrzych): the events take place in the different spaces of a cinema in front of dozens of cameras broadcasting the picture to a big screen presenting the events of the performance to the audience. The Director continued experimenting on the combination of live action and video broadcasting in the Ivonna, the Princess of Burgundia based on a play by Witold Gombrowicz (Jan Kochanowski Theatre, Opole, 2012). In this performance, the Director turned the stage into a film shooting area.
The first night took place on the 9th September 2012
Media about the
“Garbaczewski’s Macbeth is a psychedelic 2-hour-long performance that tortures the audience in a very special way – for most of the performance’s duration, they have to watch a big screen in which actors and Shakespeare’s characters sit, lie, strangle one another with pillows, and slit each other’s throats squashed up against one another”.
Alyona Karas
Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 2015
“Using multineda technologies, Garbaczewski manages to create an atmosphere of irrationality and surrealism. What are his performances about? For Garbaczewski, the space of tragedy is internal, illusory… He lets his Shakespeare be provocative and unclarified”.
Evgeny Avramenko, Hello, Macbeth!
Vechernii Peterburg, October 2015
