Geschlossene Gesellschaft

In the organizer's words:

Inès, Estelle and Garcin are dead and in hell, at least that's what they know. But why is this hell so different from what they expected? No torturer and no instrument of torture, just this meaningless room whose exit seems closed. No windows, no mirror, a doorbell that doesn't work and this heat. The question of why these three are stuck together looms over everything. They have never met in life and couldn't be more different. Is this really coincidence?

Jean-Paul Sartre's most famous drama takes the basic ideas of existentialism to the extreme in a kind of parable. Condemned to be free, man is responsible for his own actions at every moment. Every moment is unique and cannot be changed afterwards. The three characters in the drama have lived their lives, they can no longer change their decisions. They can only be what they have made themselves to be, in the ever-watchful presence of others who see everything and ignore nothing.

Director Evgeny Kulagin and choreographer Ivan Estegneev turn this story into a dark choreography, a physical theater that transfers the agony of being at each other's mercy into the body.

Evgeny Kulagin and Ivan Estegneev have been working together in dance and theater for many years. In 2002, they founded the Dialogue Dance Company in Kostroma (RU), which soon developed into an important center of contemporary dance. They also founded the physical theater laboratory "Dialog-Lab" and the independent platform for contemporary art STANTSIA. Both Evgeny and Ivan were engaged at the Gogol Center in Moscow until it closed in 2022. They continue to work with Kirill Serebrennikov, including "The Black Monk", "The Vij" and "Barocco" at Thalia Theater.

Premiere February 23, 2024, Thalia Gauss (Workshop)