WHAT IF THEY WENT TO MOSCOW? Marks Christiane Jatahy's BAM Debut
Brazilian writer and film/stage director Christiane Jatahy brings her acclaimed What if they went to Moscow? to BAM's Next Wave-the first season under Artistic Director David Binder, in which all artists are making BAM debuts.
Original in both concept and execution, What if they went to Moscow? transplants Chekhov's Three Sisters to contemporary Rio and condenses the story to three speaking characters over one evening: the younger sister Irina's birthday party. Their conversations deal with questions of change-on an existential, political, and very personal level. At each performance the play is enacted twice, while the audience (divided into two alternating groups) sees it in two different forms: Once as a theater piece in the intimate Fishman Space, the other as a film in Rose Cinemas edited in real time. The two versions seem identical yet are different. Each version conceals certain elements while revealing others. With this multimedia approach, which the Los Angeles Times said was executed with "ingenious effect," Jatahy not only re-examines these familiar characters, but also our way of perceiving reality and fiction, past and present.
Christiane Jatahy is multi-genre artist whose recent projects have created dialogues among different artistic fields and opened channels for imagination. Her theatrical trilogy Uma cadeira para solidão, duas para o dialogo e três para a sociedade tested the limits of reality and fiction, actor and character, theater and cinema. Jatahy's theater works and films have been played across Brazil and international festivals. Julia won the Shell Award for Best Director in 2011. She was the artistic director of Rio Occupation London in 2012, a residency project that gathered 30 artists from different disciplines to produce new works in London during their Cultural Olympics. During the Occupation, Jatahy created In the Comfort of your home, for which British citizens and immigrants turned their homes into temporary performance spaces. Jatahy is an associate artist of the Odéon Théâtre de l'Europe, CentQuatre, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, and Schauspielhaus Zürich.
