Saratov Kiselev Youth Theater presents the opening-night of the performance “Saint Johanna” based on the play by Bertolt Brecht that will take place on the Big stage of the theater on the 10th of April, 2013 at 18-00. Director – Andreas Merz (Germany).

The project is held by Goethe-Institute and Kiselev Youth Theater in cooperation with the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations and with support of the Russian-German Chamber of Commerce in frames of the Year of Germany in Russia in 2012/2013.

Saratov Kiselev Youth Theater presents the opening-night of the performance “Saint Johanna” based on the play by Bertolt Brecht that will take place on the Big stage of the theater on the 10th of April, 2013 at 18-00. Director – Andreas Merz (Germany), production-designer – Elena Stepanova (Moscow).

Saratov Youth Theater turns to Brecht’s works for the first time. The play chosen by the German director Andreas Merz is not so well-known in Russia as “Mother Courage”, “The Good Person of Szechwan” or “The Threepenny Opera”. Full title of the play is “Saint Johanna of the Stockyards”, it was written in 1931. The action of the play takes place in Chicago in the beginning of the 20th century, on the stockyards that were closed because of the manipulations on the stock market and crisis of overproduction. Hundreds of thousands fired workers come out on the strike. A mission of saving the workers thrown out on the streets from the outrage of the frost, hunger and stock-exchange gamblers and also from the arousing calls to violent actions was taken up by a girl named Johanna Dark. She is a lieutenant of the Black Straw Hats, the Salvation Army-like missionary and charitable organization, where military discipline and ranking system is combined with ideas of non-violence and beneficence. Johanna tries to find understanding of worker’s dire situation and help in their misery from one of biggest meat bosses Pierpont Mauler. He dreams of quitting the “bloody business” and is ready to hear Johanna out. Will the ideas of mercy and sacrifice reach the hearts of the high and mighties and defrost the souls of those standing on the stockyards?

At present “Sain Joan of the Stockyards” in Europe is being staged more often than any other Brecht’s plays and always causes the great interest among the audience. This happens not only because of the timely economic crisis topics but also because of the interesting poetical form of the play. As Sergey Tretiakov, a translator of the play and a futurist-poet, once said: Brecht “made stockbrokers speak using Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, but the iambs themselves are staggering like drunkards”.

This project is born from the many years of cooperation with the Goethe-Institute (Moscow) and is held in the frames of the Year of Germany in Russia 2012-2013. The first meeting of the theater with the young director Andreas Merz took place in autumn 2011, when he came to Saratov Youth Theater to participate in the “Shakespeare Festival” (the seventh creative laboratory “The Forth Height”). During the laboratory he presented the sketch-performance of one of the most controversial plays by the classical English playwright — “Titus Andronicus”, that was highly praised both by the critics and by the audience participating in the traditional voting after the show.

“Saint Joan” staged by Andreas Merz is a performance that talks to the young audience about such important questions as the responsibility extent and understanding of the consequences of your own actions. However it does so using the new and unusual for the Russian stage language of post dramatic theater. It’s a theater of thoughts that calls to the mutual creativity more than to the compassion; it’s oriented to those who are waiting for an honest and straight dialogue between the actors and the audience.

Actors participating in the performance: RF Merit actor Valery Emelyanov, Alexandra Karelskih, Evfeniy Safonov, Alexey Karabanov, Tatiana Chupikova, Alexey Chernyishev, Victoe Storozhenko, Tamara Tzihan, Ruslam Divlyatshin and also young theater’s actors Anna Bogradona, Andrey Gudim, Iilya Zyzin, Marina Klimova, Andrey Korenev, Maria Luchkova, Yulia Mesheryakova, Alexander Tremasov.