Yana Ross

Short interviews with mean men – 22 types of loneliness reviews 2022

“There is an express warning against this theater: «Verbal violence and live sex» occur here. The audience could leave the performance at any time. But first everyone wants to get in, to the premiere of «Short interviews with nasty men – 22 types of loneliness», based on a book by cult author David Foster Wallace. On Saturday evening, the guests in the shipbuilding department listened to the corona safety regulations with a slight impatience until they are finally channeled through the entrance and right through the stage.
It’s getting down to business before I’ve even found my seat. The porn actors have already positioned themselves in a glass box: Katie Pears (48) and Conny Dachs (57) are performing: in and out, from the front, from behind, from the side. Looking away is not possible! The two do it with stoic equanimity, toneless and listless. The term “getting down to business” takes on an oppressive reality – it shows the dehumanization in the most private sphere.
Personally, I consciously don’t watch porn because I don’t want these images of emotionless intimacy in my head cinema. Every day, porn is clicked millions of times on the Internet, what we see here is a fraction of it. Director Yana Ross (48) is holding up the mirror of our cultural psyche to us. For her, theater is a form of therapy, and pornography is on the couch this evening. “Sex is mild compared to what Wallace said!” She says. Incidentally, anyone who was happy to enjoy one sex performance after the other will be disappointed. Live sex is limited to the first ten minutes.
The texts of the American writer David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) are a collection of male voices; a lot is about sex and the fear of women, which leads to everyday sexism and sexualised violence. Wallace, who suffered from depression and committed suicide, also describes this male view on his own initiative, relentlessly, directly and yet with humor. The director stages the play as a journey through time with a group of cowboys in pastel colors – the ensemble also includes the Bernese actor Michael Neuenschwander (59), known from the SRF series «Wilder».
The interaction between the classic actors and the porn actors goes like clockwork. Katie Pears has her first appearance after a quarter of an hour – with text! If she resembles the cliché of an erotic actress with her smoothly ironed hair and tattoos, her presence, this clear voice and total self-confidence surprises. She teaches the cowboys a lesson in female pleasure. Everyone is given a peach to practice giving oral pleasure to a woman. And actor Conny Dachs also mingles with the ensemble, sings and plays like one of them – there are encounters at eye level.
A highlight is the parody of the show “Sternstunde”, which discusses “What women really want”: revealing and with absurd humor, the chauvinistic cowboys are finally “shot” by the presenter with a hairdryer – then they ride Women with relish on the back of a stuffed bison.
There is nothing more to laugh about than repeatedly reciting the text about the rape of a young woman. Wallace’s words are brutal, it feels like the whole hall is holding its breath. This is difficult to digest food. So difficult that now a spectator leaves the hall. Incidentally, my very personal enthusiasm belongs to Katie Pears. The erotic actress taught me a lesson too, in terms of prejudice: I want to see and, above all, hear more from her.”

Blick

“Can a porn actor have cellulite on his buttocks? Is there a maximum breast weight that a sex worker can still carry? And, are you even allowed to ask yourself that? Because you don’t wallow these thoughts in a porn cinema, in some so-called dirty corner that would be easy to visit not far from the shipbuilding. You don’t brood about such things in one of the city’s “execution boxes”, around the corner, so to speak, where sex can be officially bought unofficially and boy shooting is the order of the day.
On the contrary, they bought a ticket for the noble high culture and want to see the work of the in-house director Yana Ross in the shipbuilding hall in Zurich: “Short interviews with nasty men”, based on the novel by David Foster Wallace. The theater had already warned its clientele before the premiere. Young people under the age of 18 were excluded from the premiere. As part of the staging, according to the organizers, a sex worker and a porn actor would not only perform “life sex”, but (if possible) carry it out in real life.
And for a simple reason: In the novel, Wallace describes fictional interviews with men about their tricks and games to lay women down. Because the worst, the most devastating, the most wretched dehumanization, according to the author – and no relevant empirical value and no related advice center will contradict this – takes place in private.
As a spectator, you sit in front of the copulating couple (with stage names Conny Dachs and Katie Pears) who do what they were supposed to do behind glass – and first register the imperfections of their bodies. It is not the nudity itself that seems to be the scandal here; it appears offensive and the act appears because it is performed by unadorned bodies.
As if we didn’t know, this is where you are reminded. Hollywood serves us the trained and operated, the perfectly made-up and perfectly illuminated naked, and even that is digitally post-processed. Here, however, the affront lies in watching everyday people doing everyday things. Nothing about it is radical, just banal. It is also interesting: the forced constellation turns the viewer into a voyeur – a participant and co-responsible for what is happening. Can contemporary theater make the role of the spectator clearer?
In any case, the couple who were arguing next to me about exactly where the male part is looking – at what is happening on the stage or at the mechanically copulating couple – without question saved themselves an hour with the marriage counselor.
Does sex belong on the stage? Do naked bodies belong on display? The debate is old. And that she is so old that she now has a beard, because she is a double-moral one, proved at the weekend with no ifs or buts. We live in a sexualized society, (historical) paintings of naked women are worth millions, and the Vatican can only afford advertising without sex. The theater as a laboratory for alternative schools of thought and attitudes, also as a shelter, is the ideal place to invite your (voluntary) audience to take a look. Especially when in the setting the executor is not the ensemble required by a director, but professionals in their field.
What Yana Ross and a dazzling ensemble with furor and playfulness and gender swap in their cowboy grotesque about male (violence) fantasies – not only concerning women – brought to the boards is simply convincing. It is devilishly intelligent and implemented in a heart-rending, human-loving way. And, in terms of content, it is brushed up with Swiss references (to court judgments and criminal justice processes). Every single one of these sad male monsters – played by women as well – is worth a date – as part of an escorted courtyard walk, of course.
Because they are all screwed up, misogynistic, damaged, just like a large part of humanity. Ilknur Bahadir as Virgin Mary with a knitting vagina, Urs Peter Halter as a divorce winner, Michael Neuenschwander as a senile misogynist who laughs at their parents’ abuse of power by infants, Lena Schwarz as a horny “Arena” presenter. Yana Ross managed acting theater from the brightest. She has converted the premonition of a scandal, which is carelessly decried as a blood and testicular theater, into a lesson in humanity. Those involved rightly deserved the standing ovations at the weekend. And note: an unclothed woman with silicone breasts can look more clothed than a clothed woman with natural breasts.”

TAGEBLATT

“The Schauspielhaus Zürich is showing an explosive new production of “Short Interviews with Nasty Men” based on David Foster Wallace. Director Yana Ross sees Wallace’s preoccupation with pornography in the book in good hands, especially in the theater.
In his book “Brief Interviews with Nasty Men”, the American writer David Foster Wallace had men tell in relentless clarity about their mostly toxic relationships with women, about sex fantasies and obsession with power, but also about loneliness, depression and self-disgust.
A new production of the material directed by Yana Ross can now be seen at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. The house clearly warns of verbal violence and live sex on stage and only allows people of legal age to enter. It is also possible to leave the performance at any time.
The book has accompanied her for a long time and simmered to herself, says director Yana Ross. “At the Schauspielhaus Zurich we now had the feeling that the material could be suitable to look at the tectonic shifts in our society through the dense language of a great thinker like David Foster Wallace.”
The core of the material is the human inability to communicate. “It’s about that feeling of paralysis when you have a great desire but you realize that something is broken and you can’t connect with another person because of it. There is great loneliness in it at a time when everything has become so incredibly loud and noisy, ”says Ross.
She sees no danger of simply reproducing toxic masculinity on stage in the explicit access to the topic – with verbal, emotional and sometimes also physical violence against women.
“On the level of art, I should have the ability to distance myself and the ability to critically examine. It gives us the chance to explore the taboos and dark sides of our society, but in a very safe and amicable way. “
Researching this piece led to the conclusion that Wallace’s book can also be read as a radical feminist perspective, according to Ross. “Nevertheless, we are very careful with this production to issue a content warning that is also openly communicated everywhere.” It is not about surprising or shocking someone, but about the agreement among adults that there is theater here.
Wallace writes very explicitly about intimacy, loneliness and the broken male psyche and sexuality. “It becomes a kind of literary porn for him. The experience of reading the book is similar to that of watching pornography. It’s fascinating and repulsive at the same time. And for me, live sex on stage was an honest way of preparing the audience for this literary porn, this ‘mind fuck’. Because it is actually much more disturbing than the sex itself. “
Ross sees pornography as a “phenomenal tool to describe our social presence”. Pornography almost mirrors society and there is a lot of overlap. “Think of the porn directors who are now making music videos or the rap stars who are now running their own adult entertainment channels. And it actually bothers me that we don’t want to look at it more analytically. “
The theater in particular is a suitable and safe place for this. “Our collaboration was strongly shaped by the work of our intimacy coach. With her, we always had someone in the background who knew how to de-sexualise our language and who could help us with it. At the same time, the relaxation and naturalness with which the two porn actors acted was very inspiring for us. They have a clear understanding of what they can do on stage and what we shouldn’t be doing. And vice versa.””

Deutschlandfunk Radio

“When the man’s soul is fermenting, it releases toxic fantasies. In contrast, pornographic contortions seem harmless
Live sex in the Zurich Schauspielhaus may provoke some irritation. But in “Interview with nasty men – 22 types of loneliness” he only forms the backdrop for the dull monologues of instinct-driven contemporaries.
To get straight to the point: This production is also about pornography. Porn becomes fleshly concrete here, even before the piece has even started. The way to the stands leads across the stage. As a viewer, you don’t feel welcome here per se, and the scenery also has the impression of an uncomfortable crime scene. Cowboys are lying around, dead or asleep. A naked person and a naked person move in a glass compartment. You blink in – aha, they really do – and move on.
If you then look down on the stage from the stands, you can see simple architecture including the pool and roof terrace. There is still copulation in the glazed cabin, business-like, professional, so to speak. It is uncomfortable to be absorbed as a viewer of the scene. But in the theater, porn probably automatically turns into art?

Watch out, sex!

The program for “Interview with nasty men – 22 types of loneliness” warns against live sex. It is expressly stated that you can leave the performance again. Isn’t that always the case? One could almost think that the theater is excited about the potential scandal.
However, Yana Ross, who staged “Interview with Nasty Men” based on texts by the American writer David Foster Wallace, will be aware of the callousness and serenity of the contemporary theater audience. The fact that she integrates a porn couple into the playhouse production serves as a provocation and promotion. But this also creates a lush, dirty atmosphere in which the “nasty men” actually fit in perfectly.
David Foster Wallace only recorded the answers in his «interviews», the questions have to be reconstructed in retrospect. As a result, monologues are also interpreted on stage. In the long, sometimes manic recitatives of the seven cowboys and cowgirls, you get to know the suffering of men who are no longer capable of love and passion. Drive-controlled and phallically directed, they are fixated on copulating, which cannot really succeed without feeling. Their speeches become all the more absurd and aggressive. And sometimes the frustration is dissipated in aggression.”

Ueli Bernays, NZZ

“BZ plus Yana Ross directs David Foster Wallace’s “Short Interviews with Nasty Men” at the Schauspielhaus Zürich – not entirely suitable for young people. Cowboys alone with their manhood.

As far as we could see, nobody went straight home. The audience, only admitted from the age of 18, has to pass a copulating couple in Zurich’s Schiffbau in order to get to their seats. You can’t not look. Out in, out in, legs apart, the woman on a chair, the man standing in front of it – like in a porn show. But we’re not on a porn show. We are in the theater, in a premiere by the American-Lithuanian director Yana Ross. The couple who perform the sexual act with the greatest objectivity, however, come from the industry. Katie Pears and Conny Dachs have been active as porn actors for decades. What are you doing there in high culture?

This question leads to the core of Yana Ross’ staging of “Short Interviews with Nasty Men” by David Foster Wallace, the genius of American literature of the 90s and 2000s, author of the cult novel “Infinite Fun”, on which the translator Ulrich Blumbach takes ten Tennis player and author who – as the program booklet puts it, not without (involuntary) cynicism – “succeeded” in suicide in 2008, at the age of 48. Wallace, an intellectual genius, had to fight the most severe depression throughout his life. His stories “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” were published in the USA in 1999, and in 2002 in German translation.

So now, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 – she witnessed the attack up close – the fearless Yana Ross dared to bring the “nasty” – today they are called toxic – men on stage. Men who give information in fictional interviews about their sexual experiences, about their helplessness towards women, which turns into violence, men who swarm so as not to have to admit to themselves how lonely they are. Ross’ costume designer Zane Philstrom has the men in pastel colored cowboy costumes – pink and light turquoise! – Tucked in huge hats and pointed boots: they are the most ridiculous parodies of Western myth that one can imagine. And when they slip into coarse-checked shirts, Swiss manhood peeps out of them at the same time. Fits to,

Foster Wallace’s texts are heterogeneous, chattered, crystal clear, astute and direct without taboos. You burst with wit and suddenly plunge into the abyss of unrealistic knowledge. They are not considerate. Yana Ross makes them speak, which works without any problems because they are designed to be dialogical. The glazed white bungalow with a roof play area and a rising semicircular spectator stand, which Karolien De Schepper and Christophe Engels have placed in the middle of the shipbuilding, holds the “short interviews” together: the episodes play sometimes above, sometimes below, sometimes the webcam follows them In a closed room, sometimes you can see what is going on in the glazed booth in which the porn people do their job.

Katie Pears occasionally mingles with the fabulous ensemble of four (Ilknur Bahadir, Urs Peter Halter, Michael Neuenschwander, Lena Schwarz) and gives tips for improved sexual practice – the perfect coitus, the perfect kiss – but the two groups of actors don’t really grow together . This is best shown towards the end, when Katie Pears strips down in front of two uptight Swiss people.

You never know whether to laugh or be concerned

Scandal? Nope. Rather, there is a certain perplexity. Sure: In pornography, body and feeling are decoupled, sex is traded as a commodity. And of course: The men at David Foster Wallace are unable to relate and treat women as objects – also out of ignorance of what women want. There is a great terrible silence between the sexes in these texts, which is only delivered with psychoanalytic discourses – as in the wonderful scene in which three men are extremely elaborate about feminism, while Lena Schwarz writhes in erotic flushes.

In the course of the two non-stop entertaining hours, you never know whether you should laugh or be concerned, whether it is a grotesque or a tragedy. The seriousness of the situation of toxic masculinity comes to a head towards the end – in that scene in which the Holocaust is short-circuited with gang rape. Neuenschwander dances and bobs with his cowboy boots, probably to take the weight off the sentences. The core method of fascist rule is being negotiated: taking people away from being human, making them an object with which one can do anything, including torturing and killing them.

David Foster Wallace refers to the experiences of the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in the concentration camp. How can a person manage to evade becoming material? And can there be any benefit for his personality from this? Who knows hell can grow from it? Can this apply to a woman who is a victim of mass rape? At that point one feels quite uncomfortable. This feeling persists when Neuenschwander finally appears as a helpless, diapered old man: here as a bundle of misery, as something reduced to the excretions. Is that what remains of the human being? So Yana Ross’ playful staging ends in absolute blues. Perhaps it can best be understood as an offer for discussion; In three accompanying events, the Schauspielhaus Zürich offers the opportunity to reflect on toxic masculinity, empathy with the victims of sexual violence, the design of other role models and non-violent communication. But art cannot be reduced to socio-political discourses.”

Bettina Schulte

“Sex sells. Even in the theater. And now in Zwinglian Zurich. In shipbuilding, which is used as a second theater by the Zurich Schauspielhaus. The productions here often have an experimental character, while the main building “Pfauen” offers more classic, less provocative theater.

But who else does sex provoke? Yana Ross, director of the short story collection “Short interviews with nasty men. 22 Kinds of Solitude ”according to David Foster Wallace, sends professional porn stars onto the stage. Katie Pears and Conny Dachs then do what they usually do in front of the camera: sex. Live sex. In Zurich for 25 seconds according to the script. Or short. An average quickie, that is, spontaneous, quick sex, lasts three long minutes. This is what it says in the sex column of a respected Süddeutsche Zeitung.

In-house director Ross felt she had to open the play with the physicality of a sexual act in order to prepare the audience for whatever comes after. How concerned. “The performance contains content for adults and is only permitted for viewers aged 18 and over,” says the theater. No photos may be taken during the performance. And if you are fed up with the action after 25 seconds, you can leave the hall.

To ensure that everything really goes right – during sex in the glass cage, Dachs stands visibly, but joyless his husband – the theater had hired an “intimacy coach”. In this function, Karin Sbestow accompanied the production, which is a novelty within the Swiss theater landscape. Yes, the German-speaking theater is changing: questions about power and abuse of power reach the public beyond the borders of theTheater bubble out.

But what comes after the supposed-

a quickie? Verbal eroticism. And nothing that you haven’t seen or heard on ARD or ZDF after 10 p.m. “This is how you lick a pussy,” explains Katie, wearing a cowboy look and holding a peach, smiling at the audience. In another scene she lectures on the best practice in anal sex, wishes “have fun trying it out”, in a third she strips. Well, she tries.

Verbal violence that has been warned about? It can get worse. When one of the guys (Michael Neuenschwander) prances to monologue about the consequences of mass rape; if in the act of violence with Viktor Frankl, who survived the Holocaust, he finds beginnings that such an experience could have an interesting downside, namely an existential experience of the most extreme kind; if he intensifies this thinking in the sentence: “What does not kill you makes you stronger”, then it becomes in the shipbuilding style. The hard-breathing dancer knows what it’s all about, power. And reasoned: “If you manage to see someone else merely as an object, then you can do anything with them, all barriers are lifted.” Eichmann would have agreed.

Later a woman (Lena Schwarz) quotes from a court judgment,

which caused protests in Switzerland. A sexual offender was certified as having “medium fault” because the victim had sent the wrong signals. The victim is not even in therapy. Switzerland is (almost) everywhere.

The verdict is not in the Wallace interviews, but it fits into this collage. Ross uses the collection as a quarry, takes what she needs. Gentler stories also come into play. A woman (Ilknur Bahadir) talks about her father, who worked as a toilet man in a luxury hotel, then there is laconic talk of the moaning of prostate symptoms, poetic of hissing washbasins. Elsewhere, however, from the sexual abuse of the child by grandpa. Grotesque is the “pool boy” who reports about fear of failure in bed and at the climax obsessively exclaims “Victory for the forces of direct democracy”. Finally, the “nasty man” as an old man, helplessly wrapped in diapers, with the word “bitch” in his mouth, is questionable. Embarrassing, disgusting.

While Wallace develops actions in his novels, in his protocols of underhanded egos actions essentially take place as speech acts. That poses problems for the director. Ross delivers action-packed images that are accompanied by music, but they sometimes seem forced. This includes the wild west scenery including bison as a sex object. A bungalow with a pool (stage Karolien De Schepper / Christophe Engels) is less suitable. In contrast to the original, Ross grants women and miscellaneous people an appearance, which lets the image of the “nasty”, “lonely” man and his toxic relationship with the opposite sex appear in a (still) different light. The evening – a game with an open end and great actors (Urs Peter Halter is still mentioned). Nobody took photos or disrupted the performance; only one elderly lady left the performance prematurely. Much applause at the end.”

Sudkurier

“In «Short interviews with nasty men – 22 types of loneliness» by David Foster Wallace, the toxic sexuality of men is discussed. In his book, the American author Wallace let men tell in relentless clarity about their mostly toxic relationships with women, about sex fantasies and obsession with power, but also about loneliness, depression and self-disgust.
In-house director Yana Ross used the material to create a theatrical montage without a linear narrative. The Schauspielhaus warns clearly against verbal violence and live sex on stage and only allows admission of adults. It is also possible to leave the performance at any time, which only a few did on the evening of the premiere.
Ross sees pornography as a “phenomenal tool to describe our social presence”. In her staging she does this with cowboys chatting about their sexual fantasies and being lost in a Bauhaus bungalow with a passage, swimming pool and terrace on the roof. There are also two real porn actors who practice the announced live sex in a glass-enclosed room. The sex tips that the porn woman teaches to the audience placed in the semicircle are amusing. Otherwise a gloomy mood dominates, traumatized characters act who tell their stories without emotion. It gets lighter when the cowboys are armed with angry masks and talk nasty stuff. We refrain from describing individual narrative threads.
The six actors, above all Michael Neuenschwander and Lena Schwarz, strive for a fun and fast-paced game, act with a lot of irony, sometimes biting, sometimes bored. Overall, a two-hour performance is offered, which offers quite a few highlights, but is mostly rather perplexing.”

Seniorweb.ch

Premiere September 11, 2021

Wild Duck reviews 2018

I don’t want to give away the deeply shocking and disturbing finale, but it must be said that director takes a radical step turing sacrificial ending into merciless revenge fantasy. Ross is staying true to Ibsen’s irony, she sets the tongue-in-chic ending to gorgeous operatic aria, “a prayer for peace” from Bellini’s opera Norma. It has been debated endlessly who has the right to twist the original writer’s intentions, but with the birth of director’s theater over a 100 years ago, those questions are still rise up once in a while, and artistic freedom sometimes raises too many eyebrows. But to me it is valid if the adaptation opens ups new important inights.

The live-video feed of the gorry and extra bloody finally is bringing associations of American shooting dramas and our very own Breivik tragedy. I think one of the messages director is sending to us is that the cause and effect of bad parenting can be truely horrifying: there are many injured villains and many neglected children around the world – here you see why they take revenge on their own.

The second, bold approach is that the director has chosen a person with Down’s syndrome to play Hedvig, who in Ibsen’s version is becoming blind. Does this function? The answer is: yes, absolutely brilliantly. Some years ago, Marte Wexelsen Goksøyr did an excellent performance in the play I answered a dream. Now Anne So e Kvalvik succeeds in interpreting 14-year-old Hedvig. In a conversation with Gregers – which we now understand is Hedvig’s half-brother – Kvalvik manages to mediate the grief that his father is not fond of her anymore because she is not his daughter. It’s a heartbreaking scene.

Much in Ross’s performance follows Ibsen faithfully. It starts as festive dinner party welcoming home a progidous son, pickled herring and dessert wine, but ends in a rage that can remind of the Danish clasic Festen. Gregers himself is an injured child who thinks his father Håkon is digusting- “you with your whores” – you drove my mother to suicide.” It’s hard for him to accept and forgive his father’s new found happiness with Berta.

Ross also lives up to the mix of tragedy and comedy Ibsen put in, and the actors do a brilliant job. The scene where old Werle and his new bride will take wedding photos in Ekdal’s photo studio, is precious and wide-ranging with irony against the happiness of the new marriage.

Then Ross builds up to the errifying reinterpretation – that it is not Hedvig, but the adults around her who are punished with death for their neglect and sins. Animal faces are projected on the side walls – owls, tiger, rabbits and bears- which then morphs into the faces of the actors on stage. In this way we get an unpleasant reminder of the wild animal inside a civilized man.

Harry Potter birthday party for Hedvig is hillarious. The down-syndrome Hedvig is unwhilingly humilated with a Voldemort rubber mask, which Hedvig really enjoys but looks like a little monster. All these extra layers and elements work well in the performance. One of the gifts she gets is a magic wand. I wondered if this magic wand had a meaning, a layer— and, it really was a stunning surprise after the masacre, Hedvig faces the audience with her magic wand, whipping away the horrors of her reality, she dances full of radience and joy. Director masterfully gives the audience a realease, room to breathe and ponder and process, while a brave actress dances her heart away. Ross creates an alternative, a dream that parents and children can reconcile with each other and wipe away the evil betrayed – as if with a magic wand!

Kristin Aalen, The Bergen Times

Premiere September 12, 2018

Yana Ross

The militarization of Imperial Russia at the start of the 20th century when Chekhov was writing Three Sisters is uncanny parallel to our current frantic mobilization of NATO forces in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the Russian Imperial phantom pains on the border with Ukraine and the Baltics.

Chekhov was looking at the violent intrusion of the military force into civilian routine. He was anticipating World War I and the anxious mood across every class of a modern society.

We look at Central Europe political and ideological landscape and the shift to the intellectual apathy, so similar to Chekhov’s mood at the time of the play.  Our Sisters are stuck in 2017 town of Vilnius and dreaming of Moscow or Bruxelles — and the army marching away towards Poland at the end of the play.

Three Sisters reviews 2017

“…Adaptation moves the play to our time: three sisters and a brother Prozorov are ethnic Russians who were forced to move to Lithuanian Socialist Republic in 1984 because of their father’s military service in Soviet Union. These sisters are much older than originals, they are between forty-five and fifty (actress Monica Bičiūnaitė, Vitaly Mockevičiūtė, Rimantė Valiukaitė) and are still connected to military – mingling with deployed NATO troops battalion. Stage design is a huge aircraft hangar, including impressive moving baggage belt, which carries many objects including weapons. A young scenographer Simon Biekšaitė, successfully continues to collaborate with Yana Ross, (Wunschkonzert, TR Warszawa); she moves the action from private Prozorov home into a kind of transit zone, area with a pool and dining tables, festive lights and fireworks. Hangar’s backwall’s live-media is designed by Algirdas Gradauskas feeds an omni-present eye of six surveillance cameras which switch from multi- to a single camera close-ups in moments of tension. When video goes black and white, it reminds us that all images once and forall will become historical and potential long-distance perspective is born: what is happening now, will soon be reviewed as historical evidence. Along those close-ups of military men celebrating New Year, awakens memories of a past world wars.

The final monologue shifts a conceptual focus from the sisters to a new character, Agnieszka Wersynska (in this adaptation a wife of lieutenant colonel wife)  (actress Miglė Polikevičiūtė). The play about Versinina wife only hinted at, and the play it becomes an important character, which not only embodies the widespread society of Tipaza (called the man to the arts, popular spiritual theories and practices clichés suffused thinking and manners, is not sought dividing the left and right pseudofilosofinius tips) but also is a kind of the socium seismometer: mentally unstable, irrational, fragile Agnieszka his “spiritual I caught during (where any pseudo approaches and becomes difficult to be separated from archetipiškos god Silly assertions) near the many platitudes expresses the performance of important insights, and featured in the New year night bandaged wrists, ghost make-up and somnambuliška posture creates our aggressive, militant public offerings image. Actress Miglė Polikevičiūtė exactly feels and conveys his character’s duality, without losing (intervals macabre) humor distance.”

Alma Braskyte, Menufaktura

”In this performance, Ross radically deconstructs and reassembles the play, pushing it to the edge of the 21-st century and the edge is not only geographical, the edge of Europe or the world, the borderline is also symbolic and full of linguistic tension. There are none of the usual “Chekhovian” tones or cliches— everything is adjusted to reflect the moment in time. Ross is considering the responsibility of parents for the fate of their children and vise versa but it yields no sympathy or blame from director, objective, pragmatic and critical stance. […] The military here is multi-national, representing NATO forces and able to communicate among themselves in broken English, German and even Polish, but what unites them most is the constant games (literally and figuratively, the theater of war) which they perpetually play. Games are the substitute and hide latent aggression and readiness, mobility. The sisters are not young or naive— these women, in their late forties, are capable of reconciling with their fears and mistakes, hopes and failures.  Masha is drinking herself to death, Irina slaves away in the kitchen, and Olga is most likely responsible of pushing her younger brother into hastened marriage, just to get away from this triple “mothering.” […] Instead of the long final soliloquy about hope and salvation through labor, director once again (as with her earlier Chekhov productions) turns to the theme o self-destruction. Baron von Tusenbach does not lose his life in a duel, he does use the pistol, facing the trigger himself. Suicide is a brutal ending, but nonetheless Chekhovian to the core.”

Nina Karpova, Theater Journal

[…] one has to remember that Chekhov rote this play while spending his summer in Crimea, part of the Russian Empire at the time. It is crucial for Ross to reflect upon political implication of Russian expansion, specially since Crimea has been annexed by Russia, once again. Not many directors (except for a few in Germany, perhaps) who turn to dangerous and volatile political context, but for Ross it has become inseparable context for most of her performances.”

Thomas Irmer, Berliner Freitag

Premiere March 17, 2017

Yana Ross 

The play is a casual daily apocalypse of the Eastern European middle class. This work leaves you stunned and thinking about the responsibility of our passive-aggressive, disengaged society. Durnenkov managed to grasp the casual despair, escalating violence and panic of a disappearing ghost of Europe.

The Lake is clearly in dialogue with Chekhov’s oeuvre. People eat, drink and talk over a weekend on the lake, seemingly nothing happens but you feel the world is spiraling into an abyss at a supersonic speed. Our morals and ethics are tested. Hypocrisy and complacency, pseudo-intellectual superiority and fear of the muscle in the lower classes.

On the surface three couples battle daily issues of betrayal, child rearing and soul searching. Underneath the murky waters of their psyche lie enormous breach of ethics, guilt and fear of a neighboring war.

“Where are you now? And where would you like to be during the apocalypse? I wouldn’t want to be caught in the shopping center, or while eating, on the toilet, dreaming, riding an escalator or sneezing. I wouldn’t want to miss the end of the world while entering a tunnel, diving or making a wish. I wouldn’t want to be brushing my teeth either, to stand in front of the mirror just a second before starting to kiss.”

The Lake reviews March 2016

“….In Ross’s performance, key character played by Dawid Ogrodnik is always present on stage and he is baring all his naked skin all the time. Ogrodnik has a double status: he is reflecting Pawel Pawlensky’s presence with his famous actions in the public space, and also torments six characters in their flashbacks and retrospectives as a manifestation of a subconscious nightmare.

Even though his body is completely exposed, no one can really see his nudity. It is a perfect form of questioning tester and sign of the character’s lucid meta-presence. This nudity seems to be different than one by brutalists and also different  from that of the hippies. It is not a symbol of violence or humiliation, nor a manifesto of liberation, an innocent or sincere gesture. Ogrodnik’s body is suppose to be transparent. Ross succeeds to represent a humanity, this act is not a provocation, nor an artistic sign, it is just pure body.”

Lukasz Drewniak

Yana Ross

Bulgakov’s parabale about eugenics experiment gone wrong presents a great hybrid of animal and human gaining momento in the current political arena. Or is it a new messija? Does he promise salvation or distruction and who will take responcibility for bringing him into this world?

Performance shifts focus in a modern adaptation from bloshevik opportunism to the rise of right wing governments in Europe. Dealing with a refugee cricis current government faces a problem of finding housing for all newcommers to Sweden. A housing committee aproaches a famous plastic surgeon to take in a few refugees from Syria until the government decides what to do with them.  Professor keeps his eyes on science and is not interested in either politics or humanitarian relief.

Production questions current values of Western society and our attitude towards the “other”- a question of nature vs. nurture is at the core of performance. Who is responcible for bringing up a human being, does society have a better influence or a private circle of immediate family? What happens when family neglets and ideology imbraces? Is there a chance for reabilitation or is the process of forming personality an irreversible catastrophe?

Heart of a Dog reviews 2016

“…To take on a subject of refugee crisis BEFORE the crisis unravels — one must have a “dog’s nose” to smell the danger before it spreads to the streets full of rallies, the impasse at the boarders and pictures of the dead Aylan Kurdie all over the news. The intuition is not enough to shine a new light on current European politics, one must also have a cunning intelligence to present a new vision. Yana Ross, the director of “Heart of a Dog” produced at Uppsala Stadsteater, Sweden succeeds in this complex maneuver when she turns her predominant discourse on refugees. To expose a camouflage of racism and complacent European policies we are faced with a parable of a dog transformed into a human via medical experiment.  […} Walking home after performance I couldn’t decide where exactly the fury was rising from– I was suddenly angry with all the ignorant fellow social media bourgeois helping spread the photograph of a dead boy washed by waves and his fate hared by the next wave of dead kids or the whole of the mankind in a mad race of ideologies legitimizing animal cruelty.”

Pola Sobaś-Mikołajczyk, Didaskalia Journal #131, 2016