Tšernobylin rukous

(engl. THE CHERNOBYL PRAYER)

TŠERNOBYLIN RUKOUS is a collection of interviews of people that have experienced the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The performance consists of three elements: music, 13 monologues of the interviewees and Vallisaari nature. Performance is based on a documentary novel of Svetlana Aleksijevits.

Audience enters an old log home, where a band is playing and working group hanging around the space – in hammock, on old gasoline barrels, on chairs. When audience is seated, music changes and we see a name, Nadezda Vygovskaja, projected on the back wall. An actor walks to the center of the stage, very close to the audience, and starts to act an interview situation alone. She tries to memorize how did the explosion look like. Few more similar minimalistic scenes follow, all of which performed by the same 3 actors. Later a writer Svetlana Aleksijevits walks in and introduces herself and her work to the audience. Svetlana takes part in all of the interview situations after this. Svetlana has a little story within the montage of monologues. She starts as an outsider, afraid of food, water and nature of the area the interviewees live in, and as the performance goes along, she gets cosy and starts live in the space as all the other actors, hanging around, drinking tea and eating apples.

Vallisaari has been closed from public for decades and so it has a very unique blossoming nature. Walls of the performance space have holes in them and during the performance all surrounding elements – wind, sun, rain, autumns leafs, all surrounding sounds – come in the space. At the end of the performance all six windows and doors of the space are opened. A long period is given to only looking out.

The performance is produced by The Forest Ministry of Finland and The University of the Arts Helsinki. The original novel is Svetlana Aleksijevits: Chernobyl prayer – Chronicle for the future (transl. Anna Gunin and Arch Trait).