Anastasia Patlay

 
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Kantgrad


documentary performance
director
Moscow, Theatre.doc, 2016–now

Director — Anastasia Patlay
Playwright — Nana Greenstein
Research — Mikhail Kolchin
Artist — Lesha Lobanov
Performers — Olga Lapshina, Maria Surova, Nikolay Mulakov/
Yuri Mezhevich, Alexander Topuria

Tours: Kaliningrad (2019), Saint-Petersburg (2019)
Festivals: Vabalava (Narva, 2021)

Languages: Russian and German, translated into English and Polish After the Second World War, Königsberg was renamed into Kaliningrad. Thus, further history of the city of Immanuel Kant, the city where the ideas of Perpetual Peace were born and later inspired the vision of a united Europe, was shaped by war. The city changed its name, and new Soviet citizens were to settle here. From 1945 to 1951, Soviet and German citizens of Kaliningrad-Koenigsberg lived side by side. In 1947, the organized deportation of the German civilian population to Germany began. In 1951 the last indigenous inhabitants of Königsberg left Kaliningrad.
Fifty years later, the voices of Soviet settlers and the few remaining Germans in Kaliningrad were recorded by researchers, students, and volunteers. Kantgrad gives voice to these people by sharing their stories with today’s audiences.

Settlers from the Soviet “mainland” arrived as conquerors, but at the same time appeared as victims — hostages of the state policy. This created an anthropologically unique situation: those who had just been enemies—the victors of the Great Patriotic War and the defeated —were now forced to live, or merely survive, side by side amidst postwar devastation and hunger.

The creators of the project believe it is essential to explore the Kaliningrad theme not only in a local, but in a broader historical context, in order to reflect on the postwar history of the entire country.


Photo: Alexey Domrachev, Elena Sycheva, Maxim Lee
Alyona Karas, theatre critic, theatre historian: 
‘I am absolutely amazed by the level of emotionality that allows us to get through this rather dry text — especially in the story of a German woman who exists in a completely different world. And vice versa — the story of a very emotional Russian woman who is looking for her understanding of people who are different to her, their children.’ 

Galina Shmatova, culturologist, theatre historian: 
‘For me, the main word in talking about this play is intonation. The intonation with which the story is told. The intonation with which the actors address the audience. It's a very pure intonation. It's musically pure. It's not fake. It's a situation where the source is given a voice.’




PartnersTeatr.doc
Heinrich Böll Foundation

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