Audition

 Alexander Galin is one of the leading Russian dramaturges; he is also a director, playwright and actor. His dramaturgy is sharp, emotionally insatiable and exciting. His pieces are characterized by firmly based storyline, dynamic dialogues, vivid characters and the subject matter in his works is timeless and modern. He has subtle sense for the time and the characteristic features that mark out that period; he understands the language of the people, his contemporaries and the pace of their lifestyle. His plays Retro, Stars in the Morning Sky, The Clown and the Bandit, The Anomaly, Audition, The Patient etc. are popular not only in Russia, but worldwide, as well. They have been performed in The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Odeon Theatre in Paris, and Schiller Theatre in Berlin. Galin has been called one-man-orchestra for he is often director of his own plays in Russia, USA, Italy and an actor, too. He is the director of the two renowned films Casanova’s Cloak and Photography.

Audition, similar to all other Galin’s plays, builds its dramatic structure based on a common life story, this time taking the period of the 90s, the start of the crucial social changes in the post socialistic countries, the period of the final collision between the “old” and the “new”, between the personal perception of life and the reality, between the individual interest fighting for bare existence and the empathy for the other. In that world of lost set of values and lost criteria, a world where there is no room for illusions and yet people want to live a decent life, the author creates one powerful play depicting the present man who trying to achieve something (not only to meet the ends) has turned his life into a constant competition.

The storyline is simple, yet amusingly absurd. Or grieving. Depends on how one considers the human failures to understand themselves. All subject matters twist around the announcement of interview in the local newspaper in a small province town. The announcement: “Renowned Japanese company offers prestigious job in an elite night show”, offered a real chance for the women from the small town to escape the hard reality and the monotonous everyday living and start, according to them, one brand new and prosperous life. Being unaware, firstly of their own life goals and capabilities, and then of the reality they live in, the characters of the play inevitably interpret tragicomic situations, ending up in absurd and grotesque.

Now, how can that interpretation make us laugh or hurt, will see. Let the Audition start!

Olivera Pavlovikj, dramaturge