The young guard

The modern Russian theatre is obsessed with the past. The post-memory and post-trauma generation has emerged onto the contemporary stage to reconstruct historical myths. The authors of THE YOUNG GUARD, staged by Grigory Kozlov’s Studio, divided the production into three parts that are radically different from each other. Physical affects inserted into totalitarian culture interest Maxim Didenko in the first part of the production, titled «Myth». In the actors’ movements we recognize the plastic formulas of the pathetic Soviet cinema and art of the 30s-50s. The second part, «Document», is staged by Dmitri Egorov on the basis of authentic material from the Krasnodon Museum, where the young members of the underground, to the citizens horror, resisted the fascists; this is different from what is written in the famous propaganda novel by Alexander Fadeev, whose part in the performance is played by Maxim Fomin, one of the best actors of the 30-year-old generation. In the third part, «Life», it is less the tragic story of Krasnodon and Fadeev’s novel than our current perception of the events that stands at the centre. The same Maxim Fomin acts as narrator: a kind of trickster between the past and the present he engages in a risky interactive dialogue with the audience, which for the most part, have never even heard about this event of the wartime.