The Today. 2016 - ... premiere was the key event of the Ten Valery Fokin Performances festival, created to celebrate the 70th birthday of the Alexandrinsky Theatre Artistic Director Valery Vladimirovich Fokin. The performance is based on Kirill Fokin’s science fiction story Fire.
Today. 2016 - ... is Valery Fokin’s first performance on the New Stage, so one of his goals was to make its unique high tech potential serve his artistic goals.
The performance premiered on February 25, 2016
Media about the
Today. 2016 turns out to be a psychological experiment for the viewers. The conclusions about the future of the humanity, and whether it should be able to solve its problems without the help of extraterrestrial intelligence, are theirs to make. There’s also one universal conclusion which comes from the backstage characters of the tale: ‘You find it hard but it’s no harder than it goes for the rest of us… The time will come when you will think that it’s all over. This is exactly when things will begin…’
Irina Korneeva. Aliens in the Alexandrinsky Theatre
Rossiyskaya gazeta, March 2016
Valery Fokin is the master of space in each of his performances. Today. 2016 is a triumph in that respect. A union of unique high tech potential on one side, and genius, good taste and a sense of proportion on the other.
Sergey Bondarenko. The Meiningens in the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
Peterburgsky Teatralny Zhurnal, February 2016
On the Alexandrinsky Theatre New Stage, Fokin creates a high tech miracle, which is closer to 5-D cinema than to a usual theatre play. With a 3-D screen and physical effects (the seats vibrate, and the whole seating area, protected for safety reasons by a special grate, sinks to the very bottom of the bunker and then rises back again), there are also the actor’s authentic emotions that don’t need 3-D screens to reach the viewer directly, and the colossal effort of Pyotr Semak who makes the whole show possible.
Zhanna Zaretskaya. 5-D Birthday Apocalypse
Fontanka.ru, February 2016
