After the motives of „Vera“ by Anton Pavlovich Chekov
„THE FEELINGS“

Story - LINAS ZAIKAUSKAS
Dialogues: ANTON ČEHOV
Director – LINAS ZAIKAUSKAS
Set Designer – MARGARITA MISYUKOVA
Music – ANDREY KROTOV
Ballet Master – MARGARITA YANVAREVA

Cast:
Olga Aleksandrovna – OLGA NOVITSKAYA
Ilya Viktorovich – ILYA POLYAKOV
First girl– DARIA DOLMATOVA
Second girl – POLINA SHABAEVA
Third girl – MARINA KARTSEVA
Organ-Grinder – SERGEY CHINENOV
Bear – IVAN SERGEEV

Linas Zaikauskas has offered to the audience an unexpected in-
terpretation of the Chekhov’s short story «Vera». The performance
is impressive, first of all because of its radiant, animated and ironic
character. Everything is somehow «frivolous». There is no magic of
theatre in it. It is just an amusing vaudeville, so popular on the Russian stage outside the capital in the Chekhov’s time
«A little thing, the actor says ironically in passing, making it
known to the spectators what they can expect from the start. We play
the Chekhov’s words».

A chamber performance has been created: the minimum of de-
cor, costumes, actors, text. In essence, the performance has two main characters, and the others are – the girls, organ grinder and the Bear.

Actually, this «choir» takes the role of a fully-fledged character, which
helps the lead characters develop the main story. And here we have a clumsy tiny country orchestra!

And, of course, love is in the essence of the story. Zaikauskas starts
talking about something that makes us all nervous, about something that always brings excitement. She is in love, he is not, he comes to solve the destiny of the world, and she wants to keep him by her side.

The director additionally likes this idea, because it is understandable even without words…
…We could say that the choreographer-director has created so-
mething impossible: the dramatic story of the performance is told by
dancing. Almost absolute absence of text, dialogues in the common
theatrical sense, has made the director and actors express their emotions using dance techniques.

In «The Feelings» the dance takes the characteristics of the uni-
versal sign system, which is able to express much more than words.
The director «strings up» the scenes, replicas and dialogues on the
dancing, as the basic structure for creation of the form. However, the
dancing does not suppress the acting. You do not get the impression that a sequence of dancing numbers is going on before your eyes …

Larisa Reshetko