. Sep village: Day 2 – performance

“ The day of the performance of Ilya Komarov and Trixa Arnold with the project shame on you! became the pre-culminating day of our workshop – and perhaps the culminating one. Because everyone finally saw, heard, understood and even participated in a general conversation about shame and about the role shame plays in our lives, hinders or helps our actions. But it has already become clear – this is not a performance, and not a performance-verbatim, and not a show, and not even a melodic declamation.

In fact, everything is much simpler – but in some ways, perhaps more complicated. Because in those stories that Ilya and the audience read, deep feelings of people are hidden behind the outward lightness and sometimes amusingness of many situations. Shame for your weakness, cowardice, shame for your parents, for cheating on your wife, for your own poverty, for a non-standard breast size ... About your own and others' "wrong" deeds, about injustice, about guilt and atonement for this guilt, the inability to change the past. Well, there is at least the opportunity to speak out and thus take off some of this shameful burden that falls from the shoulders like leaflets with printed stories fly to the floor.

The real stories of shame by Ilya and Trixa were collected in Switzerland, Pakistan and Russia, where friends of the independent traveling theater and the organizers of the tour around Russia – Microterritory Gorod Ustinov – made a "shame-phone" into which you can tell your story, and this story is transferred to a virtual cloud, getting to the project archive. Now there are more than 250 such stories, and it is they, in an edited form, that become the basis of such meetings, conversations, reflections with viewers and listeners.

It must be said that Ilya and Trixa, preparing for the performance, select these stories, roughly representing the audience, with whom they will have to think about the topic of shame. For several days, during the sound workshop, a “shame-o-mate” similar to the "shame-phone" – like a cloud of shame – will hang in the Sepsky TsSDK, and everyone will be able to retire and talk about when and why they experienced burning or not very shame.

This is the fifth performance of Ilya and Trixa in Russia – the previous ones took place in Yekaterinburg and Perm. And the audience of Sep, according to them, was radically different from the previous ones – the main part of it was older, and in the overwhelming majority women came to talk about shame (in general, this is not surprising! :)). The curators of our workshop won the sympathy and trust of the audience quickly. And not only because Ilya addressed the audience “Dzechburesch!” (“hello” in Udmurt) and thanked for the applause “tau” (thank you). Simply and openly, Trixa and Ilya answered questions, including about their shameful actions and feelings, and talked about themselves. And there was also music – Ilya's songs and Trixa's unusual musical accompaniment.

It is difficult to tell in a short diary entry about everything – about the origin of the shame on you! project and how and why Ilya and Trixa after the production of the musical Capital (yes, based on the immortal work of Karl Marx, which Ilya read from cover to cover! ) came to a more chamber and interactive theater. About the fact that the idea of a tour around Russia was largely due to… Sep (and Gorod Ustinov, of course!) And that it seems that Ilya and Trixa are already becoming good friends and like-minded people of the Sep Community.

And there are three exciting days ahead – the creation of a noise orchestra from household items that will be played by children and ... the choir of Sep veterans (this was a proposal from the Sepsky club, and the curators liked it), searching for and recording the sounds of the village on Sep streets, recording the radio show shame on you!, where stories will be read (and maybe told their own!) by everyone. And again, it’s terribly interesting: how will all this happen and what will happen? ..

And, as a result of the second day, a few impressions about the meeting with Ilya and Trixa. Let these impressions be anonymous, as in the shame on you! project.

– Suddenly it turns out that these stories, which have always been intimate, secret, come out, and we can listen to them. And this, in my opinion, is a completely unique and fantastic experience, because even when we laugh at stories and smile, we decide something for ourselves inside. And this decision changes us.

– And I feel ashamed for some children! No shame, no conscience! Teenagers behave in such a way that they do not know what shame is.

– This is the feeling of shame, it seems to me that every person has it. And I have a sense of shame ... yes, I feel it all the time, every day. Both for yourself and for the other person. And even if a stranger just walks by, and he did something awkward, I feel a sense of shame at the same time. And if I get on a tram with a child and I somehow need to sit down with him, I am ashamed that I am sitting while others are standing. But at the same time, if I get up and I have to hold the child in my arms, everyone will look, and again I will be ashamed. That is, it seems to me, a topical issue in the 21st century. Because the feeling of shame oppresses other feelings and absorbs them. Therefore, you need to loosen up a little and work with this feeling. In this cloud, in these booths. Therefore, the project is very interesting.

… Yes! And in the evening we had a fascinating walk around the outskirts of Sep (and even with a little adventure), accompanied by conversations about music, about Udmurtia and Switzerland, about travel and just about life. ”