PQ2023 ETERNITY

The basis of the Estonian exposition is experiencing Tartu New Theatre’s open-air performance “Serafirma+Bodgan” from various perspectives. The protagonist of this staged world is the scrubland, growing onto the flowerbed as well as the bloody battlefield.

The performance was staged on the overgrown onion beds on a vacant lot in the Russian Old Believers’ village near Lake Peipus. The audience sat on both sides of the scrubland and the actors simultaneously played different scenes and acts on one and the other side. So those, who watched the tale in the first act from the perspective of Serafima, saw the narrative from the viewpoint of Bodgan in the second act, and vice versa. The sound reached the audience via headphones, and both sides of the audience (that is, different acts) had a separate channel, thus the performance was very quiet and did not disturb the village life. The actors changed their roles and costumes inside the scrubland, which also acted as an upstage for both sectors. Therefor inside the scrubland the first and second acts took place at the same time.

The visitors of the exposition have the chance to experience the staged world from different points of view – both from the perspective of the audience sectors as well as the area between stages inside the scrubland, in the simultaneity of the two performances.

The title of the exposition is ironically “Eternity”. It is a memorial to evanescence. People come and go, houses are built and fall apart, garden beds are made and forgotten, scrubland grows all over it. Similarly, the set design, which was built on the overgrown onion beds on the vacant lot in the middle of the village and entertained an audience of 30 performances and the experiences of characters throughout the two summers, turns to nature again after the last performance, the scrubland continues to grow. The leaves cover the props left behind, then comes the snow and, in the spring, grass grows all over it, like nothing ever happened. And the village goes on with their lives.

This memorial box gives the opportunity to experience how the set design established in the nature becomes nature once again after the end of the performances – in the following three seasons.

In Kolkja village, the local village architecture was taken into consideration when building the set design, so the audience didn’t know what was built for the performance and what was already there. PQ2023 exposition does not reflect the details of the village near Lake Peipus but blends the quadrennial’s venue with the former meat market milieu. Let this memorial be not only a monument for all suffering theatre heroes but also for all tragically dead and eaten animals.