Happy finalprime

Studio 711

Old Stage, Green Hall

“Happy final” is a chamber drama based on the play “Happy Ending” by Alexander Remez about young adults who are looking for themselves in late-night conversations. For the Soviet theater, the playwright's works seemed too personal and existential — and his plays were practically not staged. Half a century later, the timeless story, whose genre is defined as “an experience in two acts,” finally comes to the stage in an independent production by director Vera Kamyshnikova with Studio 711.

The heroes of the play are a guy and a girl, He and She. He is studying to be an actor and lives alone in an apartment he inherited among the theatrical props that preserve his father's presence. She meets a guy at a literary evening and goes to his house. The action takes place in the space of a labyrinth apartment, where the characters can hide or accidentally get lost (the performance designer is Yuliana Laikova). In conversations, silence and provocations, they try to understand each other or, conversely, finally become convinced that this is impossible.

In the production, the external recedes into the background, and the focus is on the inner existence of the characters, their fears, doubts, attempts to understand themselves and each other in a verbal game. In the process, the characters change masks so often that the line between the real and the contrived is blurred. The game becomes a way to bring internal processes out, to act out and live through exciting issues through the theater.

Director of the play Vera Kamyshnikova:“Despite the fact that the play was written in the 70s, it is not outdated at all. This is a living story of young people, recognizable in its typicality: they get to know each other and open up to each other. These characters are internally wounded and do not have a stable, whole sense of self. As often happens at an age when everything is just beginning and you need to learn to hear not only your desires and fears, but also understand another person.”

Alexander Remez (1954-2001) is a Soviet and Russian playwright whose main creative activity occurred in the 1970s. The son of theater director and GITIS professor Oscar Yakovlevich Remez. In the plays, the author addressed internal, existential conflicts; such dramaturgy was atypical for the Soviet stage. In 2019, a collection of plays by the playwright was published, which also included the play “Happy Ending”, on which the play is based.

“Happy Ending” is a production of Studio 711, a non-profit organization supporting culture and education. Since 2015, with the support of Studio 711, 25 projects have been implemented, each of which is created by young creative teams with the direct participation of students from production departments of theater universities in Moscow.