Learn
On a bleak autumn morning in 1991, the Ukrainian poet Otto von F. wakes up with a crazy hangover on the top floor of the Moscow Institute dormitory – a temporary home for the literary crème de la crème of writers’ unions. In search of some hair of the dog, he sets out on a phantasmagorical journey through the capital of a collapsing empire. Descending from the heights of his ivory tower, he visits an infamous pub on Fonvizin Street, takes a hot bath in the flat of his snake-hunting Russian lover, witnesses a terrorist attack and finds the gate to the underworld in the Children’s World shopping centre.
As he wanders a Soviet metropolis full of generals, secretaries, strangers, patriots, drunks and psychics, he finds time to write letters to His Royal Highness Olelko the Second (Dolgorukiy-Rurikid), a fictional heir to the throne of the Kievan Rus’ – the first known reference to Moscow dates from the time of this empire. On his way, Otto von F. is tested and tempted; sometimes he responds with mockery, sometimes he resists and sometimes he yields. Otto von F., Ukrainian poet, gambles with his soul.
About the company
Divadlo X10 is an open platform for contemporary theatre and other types of live art. A collective of creative personalities, it seeks to create independent, critical ways of thinking that reflect the world in which we live. Divadlo X10 does not work only with existing dramatic texts but also initiates the creation of entirely new plays with an authentic and unique point of view that respond to current events in society and the universal questions of human existence.
Awards
Nominated for Production of the Year, second place (World and Theatre)
