Dominion or love – This is a story of one ruler, an absolutist, who has the entire power in his hands, over the world and the church. Living in those conditions, the people can’t raise their voice, nor think, nor express feelings and, when they don’t speak it has its own meaning. His absolute power, reflecting in the mirror of his beloved wife, scatters in thousands of tiny little part of vanity, envy, malice, jealousy. He is in a position to decide: whether to present himself dismantled like that, in front of his people and the whole world or to break the mirror that tears him into pieces. To put it in another way, whether to be a king or a human, to embrace the power or the love. Unfortunately, the thirst for power triumphs over the love. According to certain contemporary researches, that thirst is more powerful than the mother’s instinct. But this play is not only about the ruler – the absolutist. He cannot be born nor thrive if there isn’t fruitful soil i.e. conditions for that. This play is about those who create those conditions, that soil, who support everything in order to grab some tiny little crumbles fallen from the royal table. When there is no ruler existing, they survive, because they are everlasting and, they rush to create a new ruler for the same purpose.

Ljupcho Gjorgievski, director

Grigori Gorin (1940-2000) is one of the most important and renowned dramatists of Russia, playwright and author, classic of the satirical prose.

After finishing medical school, he worked as a doctor. There was a period of time when he couldn’t decide between the medicine and the dramaturgy, but then he chose the latter and later he discovered the film. Since his early beginnings as a dramatist and a screenwriter, he had collaborated with the eminent theatre “Lenkom”, where the well-known director Mark Zaharov stages Gorin’s plays: “Forget Herostratus”, “Til”, “The House That Swift Build”. The mutual creative collaboration of Gorin and Zaharov results in the most popular works in the Soviet Union, such as: “Formula of Love”, “That Very Munchausen”, “To Kill a Dragon”. He also had his own TV shows and became very famous with the TV program “Around Laughter”.

In most of his works, Grigori Gorin makes the viewer reassess his own perception of the world of the historical events and the intimacy, presenting his satire and ironical interpretation of history and everyday living with profound philosophical sense. As a result of that, his works are still popular today.

The play “Royal Games” was inspired by the historic play of the renowned American dramatist and theorist Maxwell Anderson, “Anne of the Thousand Days”. Based on the chronicles of the reign of the brutal and wicked Henry VIII, this play served as a good base for the dramatist Grigori Gorin to create one rich stage fantasy themed: love and violent game with passion.