Man on stage in Green: Please give your impressions of what you saw and heard.
Audience member 1: Actually I got a lot of pleasure from hearing the play. On the one hand it’s a joke that Estonian hippies destroyed the Soviet Union, but on the other hand, it’s not a joke. To some extent they did destroy it. It can be seen, from one side, as a trip and easy life, but looking at it from another angle, it was a struggle and that struggle here exits. There is some drama to the actual event which helped make a real play, not a joke. It is really breaking the wall. We are laughing about it but it really works. I was sitting and thinking those Estonian guys sneaked out of the Soviet Union, but we didn’t. And you realize how cool they are. The play became bigger than just about Estonia, or just about their business. It is also about our business, and for me this is such an important and serious play that I will still be thinking about it. Thank you.
Audience member 2: Please tell us how you worked on this play; what was your process?
Mikhail Durnenkov: I already said somewhere that Estonians are people that are not always in a hurry. Therefore, four or five years before this project an Estonian theatre commissioned the play. I had a lot of books about the topic, and I was reading Vladimir Videmann’s books, whose nickname is Jazz Gussman. Most were of an esoteric nature with a lot of psychotropic elements. Except when reading about the daily lives of the Tallinn hippies. I also read about the giant eye that looks at the Soviet Union and around it there is a huge number of blind pilgrims who dance and all together under this2
eye they create this world that is the Soviet Union. This image became somehow important, as well as the thought that those hippies to some extent through their flowers, unicorns and ideas of free love somehow destabilized the Soviet Union. This was not momentarily or revolutionary, but they just did it by simply living. This seemed to me as something all of us should strive for. We cannot change some things right now that we do not agree with, but we can live in a way that this eventually ends one day.
Audience member 2: I was standing far from the stage and not hearing the play well, but I was trying to pull myself forward to hear better which is a sign that this play was rather interesting. Also, I want to mention that in the beginning I was biased when I found out that this play was written because it was commissioned. There is no shame in that, but when you find that out you have some bias. Also, I noticed this idea demonstrated in the end that when you grow up and go through a certain stage of life, you also notice that it left a mark on you and left a mark on life around you. Thank you.
Man in Green: I will also say a couple of words because a few facts from my life connect me to this play. How exactly did the idea came about? When I was young I was a hippy, and in Estonia I was thrown to jail because of it. Since I was in Estonia, and I was a hippy, and I had friends, the idea seemed good. There was this idea to let the old people divide land and power while we will divide love and happiness. We had a commune, in other words, a place to gather.
I thought that I will talk to Misha and tell him everything for the play, but the beauty in this story is that he came up with this world, of course based on documentary materials, and started this multi layered serious play. I read around 60-80 plays and chose this play because it is so well written. In the 3
same manner as the Estonian hippies destroyed the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union destroyed the Estonian hippies because those are the fates of broken people. There is a degree of drama in it too because in normal circumstances they could have led more normal lives. This sacrifice, the collapse and the suffering, are wonderfully conveyed. Also, this world of confrontation is conveyed in an excellent manner. On one hand everything is easy, funny and joyful and on the other hand it’s tragic and hopeless. Writing a play for a big stage and on big topics is a serious job. I think here this job is accomplished and it deserves attention not only in Estonia but also in Russia. I am very glad that we made this happen and you heard what you needed to hear. Now it is your turn. (Referring to the audience)
Audience member 3: This was very interesting and I liked it. I know that the era of hippies is associated with the use of certain substances, and I wanted to ask to what extant a person that did not use these substances can express this state of mind. As an actress once in Berlin I had to play the role of a bird and I did not like it. I remembered the time when I used substances and for example it helped me imagine how to move my jaw. I was just interested to what extant these substances are necessary for playwrights? Can fantasy be replaced by those practical things.
Mikhail Durnenkov: Any playwright here will tell you that they can imagine anything using their fantasy.
Audience member 4: Here’s one detail from real life. My classmate back in the mid-80s was trying to prove from newspaper headlines that the Soviet Union is falling apart. I was brushing it off – how 4
the hell is it falling apart? Nevertheless it was, it was happening for a long time and it was surprising how it entered your play. I mean not only during 90s but also before.
Mikhail Durnenkov: I used a lot of documentaries. One of them shocked me, the play didn’t exist yet when I read somewhere that they were throwing weights in the dark based on sound. Can you imagine if this happens in a theater, and if it falls next to you, and you feel the vibration from the ground. Can you imagine the feeling when in the dark a heavy weight is flying towards you. I thought that for me this is maximum expression of freedom from everything. They were doing it just for pleasure.
Audience member 5: I want to ask everyone, especially Yura, how this whole story, this play, is perceived in Estonia?
Yura: Tomorrow I am flying there (to Estonia), because the two main actresses of a play that I am working on are about to give birth at the same time, and when I get there, I need to introduce the two new actresses to the play. This play is within the frame of a large project. It’s the 100th anniversary of the Estonian Republic, and the Estonian Ministry of Culture created this project where they divided the 100 years of history of the Estonian Republic into 10 year periods and gave each 10 year period to one theatre to stage a play about each 10 year period. Now they are gathering all the 10 projects in Tartu where they will be showcased. Regarding my perception of theatre in Estonia, from the very first reading of the play I realized that 80% of the acting cast has no personal connection to the time period they are working on. I was thinking of some training for them and the most effective one happened a week before the start of the play – out of desperation. We turned off the light and played the game with the weights. This helped and things started to move along.5
The city in which the premiere took place was very small but had a big theatre with 1000 seats. On the night of the premiere we had a lot of hippies gathered in the room. On a daily basis you wouldn’t notice them in the city but the hall was full of them and it was rather an immersive experience.
Mikhail Durnenkov: After the play I was taken to the side by them and they were telling me how it really happened.
Yura: My own feeling is that it is hard for them to analyze their relationship with the Soviet Union. Many of them voiced everything they wanted to voice back in the 90s. For me and Misha the topic seemed more heated than for the actors and maybe for the audience. I can say more about the actors since I closely worked with them, but I am not so confident about every audience member since I didn’t get to know them so well.
Man in Green: The town had a population of around 50,000 people and the theatre had 1,000 seats. This happened because during the Soviet period they first built the theatre and were supposed to build three large factories around it. They built the theatre with the expectation that the factories would bring workers and their town’s population would grow to up to 300,000 inhabitants. However, the Soviet Union fell and the factories were never built. Now it is a small village with a large beautiful theatre in the middle of it which can accommodate a 1,000 people.
Yura: I need to say that I was in that town, Viljandi, twice for events, and both times I sat next to the President of Estonia. Those were official events: one was Day of the Police and the other was the Theatre’s Opening Day. I never saw my favorite president of Russia, but I saw the Estonian President twice. 6
Man in Green: This play traveled around Estonia a lot. It is successful and its opening in Tartu will be a big event. We are staging two plays; the other is called “Bones and the Giant,” which tells a story about the 1st Estonian president. Half of the Estonian people believe he is a national traitor and the other half think he is a national hero. During the rule of this president the Soviet army entered Estonia without firing a single bullet. Regarding the president’s fate, he was promised to be left untouched but he died in a camp near Tver, Russia. And the whole Estonian Generals’ class and the diplomatic service is buried in Narilsk. There is a huge mass grave, so called “Narilskya Galbofa.” It is a scary place. The peculiarity of this place is that it has a layer of permafrost. When, during Soviet times, it was decided to build a factory at this place where thousands of people were previously buried, corpses and faces were revealed since the permafrost did not allow them to fully decompose. I met a taxi driver who previously worked on the construction of this factory and he told me that after this incident he resigned from his job and never came close to that place. It is indeed a very scary place. In January of this year, on the 100th anniversary of the Estonian Republic, I went to this mass grave with a group of other Estonian people who had adopted the children of the people who died in Norilsk. These children are already around 80 years old. They are the ones who were able to escape to Sweden and to other places in Europe. One person whom we took there was the general manager of Abba, who is Estonian and was also able to escape to Sweden. His father however did not escape and is buried in Norilsk.
Audience member 6: In light of this story and the historical context, how do Estonians feel about
Russian producers and playwrights executing this national historical project?7
Man in Green: Everything has changed. First, this is now some European country that very often invites Russian producers to Estonia for collaboration. Second, Estonia is a small country; there a million Estonian people, and there are a million and a hundred visits to th theater in Estonia each year. Estonians very often go to the theater and they really love their national theater. There are people like the Estonian president who purposefully look for foreign producers who offer a different perspective. Foreign producers not only from Russia, but also from Iran, Germany and so on. So this is a normal thing for them.
Mikhail Durnenkov: Also before the premiere of the play I had a conversation with Estonians who said that this is our shared history. The USSR is our shared history; that’s why we invite a Russian playwright and a Russian producer. We are telling a story about Estonians, but the country is shared.
Man in Green: One of the best plays in Estonia, the most important national play, called “Werewolf,” was staged by a producer from Yakutia. He was able to convey in absolute precision the Estonian character. This play is wonderful and now travels around the world. Attempting to see your history and your literature from the outside is a very interesting experience.
Audience member 8: I have a short comment. As Misha was speaking about the training with the weights I was feeling some Tolyatti spirit. I thought that probably every family worries the same way. I think that especially in Tolyatti weights are not even a big deal.
Mikhail Durnenkov: I also think that in every home something similar and relatable happens. In fact, this is a belief that all playwrights take advantage of. 8
Audience member 1: I wanted to say that I got hooked on the prose about family. I sat and thought that this play rhymed for me with your previous play “Utopia.” I will say why. For me the two families rhymed, both of whom in very strange and difficult circumstances unite to break the circle of samsara. In “Utopia” this does not work, but here they succeed. That’s all.
Audience member 9: I want to say very briefly that I was absolutely in tears when there were on the stage the great grandmother, the grandmother, the daughter, the grand-daughter, the chair and the bag. That’s all. Can’t say anything else.