Yperite
A solo performance in poetry and music created by director-performer Sergey Chernykh with composer, musician and Playback Theatre musician Maria Krasilova.
At a glance
The performance premiered in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok in late 2016. A university archive announced the premiere on 26 October, while a report published on 8 December described the Akadempark performance; the exact premiere date is not stated in the surviving public sources. It explored the cultural rupture of World War I through Russian and European poetry, early twentieth-century music and live stage composition.
Archive photographs
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Maria Krasilova’s role
Maria was the musical performer and music editor. She shaped a historical sound world around 1914–1918, bringing works by Debussy, Schoenberg, Bartók, Prokofiev, Webern, Vertinsky and others into dialogue with poetry by Blok, Mayakovsky, Rilke, Gumilev, Owen, Kharms and Vvedensky.
For the festival version in Moldova, the ending included Maria’s original composition for voice and a plastic bag. Maria recalls that it was described during the festival discussion as “a requiem for war” — a listener’s response, not the work’s official title.
Premiere and recognition
- Late 2016, Novosibirsk Akademgorodok: premiere; further local performances included Akadempark, the City Centre of Fine Arts and the Integral Museum-Apartment.
- December 2017, Chișinău: laureate of the international chamber theatre festival Moldfest.Rampa.Ru.
- February 2018, Novosibirsk: special jury prize and diploma at the Russian chamber and solo-performance festival One. Two. Three.
- July 2018, Moscow: performance at the Marina Tsvetaeva House Museum.
- October 2018, Yekaterinburg: off-programme performance at the first Svoy Open Theatre Festival.
- 14 October 2023, Haifa — cancelled: Sergey Chernykh had travelled from Siberia to Israel, but after the events of 7 October and the outbreak of war, Maria and Sergey decided not to perform the production. During the preceding days Sergey held workshops for Playback Theatre practitioners on different Playback forms.
The documented geography of performances that actually took place therefore includes Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, Chișinău, Moscow and Yekaterinburg. Haifa remains part of the project’s history as a scheduled performance cancelled on 14 October 2023. Possible additional performances are not listed without public documentation.
Historical context
The artistic material refers specifically to World War I and the years 1914–1918. The project predates the war that began in 2022; its subject is the way war breaks a cultural order and changes language, listening and human presence.