LETTER TO ACTORS

This letter had been written by Andriy Zholdak during rehearsals of his new production Cherry Orchard in Turku City Theare (Finland) for ensemble of the actors mentioned production in May 2012
I understand ... we do not have an ensemble, do not have a group, there is only an illusion ... The question is open .. The first variant is if we get an ensemble. If we do not have or do not get the ensemble than it will not be a performance. And the time will come when you need to think only of themselves. It takes time to give birth to an ensemble. Today, the ensemble does not exist. And then on every rehearsal and from every actor should be removed. But there are problems with each actor. The problem of absence of the ensemble associated with your indifference to the mission of the theater, with a different understanding of the theater, with the difference between desires. Drown in deafness. How can I convey the secrets, do you need these secrets. I would not want to give you only the mise en scenes and how to play. This is clear. I must convey you the secrets, but you have to understand them. But I do not know how to convey to you the secrets. I do not know how. These secrets you transmit to the spectators. And I do not know do you need these secrets. Your desire of the material and text, they are minimal. Your psyche on the rehearsal matches to two standards: do one thing, think another, say the third. Your untruth and ... reticence are intensive. You are very closed. Your eyes can not see, the heart does not feel, your lips are dry. Your hands are solid, you're strong, you are the function. You fulfillment of desires and the will of the director. You do not have a joy, wonder. From this point that you are here and now. You do not wonder at all, you have not life. You can not breathe by complete lungs. Your control, logic control covers all, and paralyzes everything. First of all it paralyze you.

You do not have on the rehearsal such as feeling of sorrow, sympathy, compassion. You do not have soulful, immediate reaction. Where are your impulses. You are in a tight corset. Corsets and stamps. You do not undress, and do not give me a chance that I ripped off, ripped off from you this heavy corset. You just stupidly primitive learns mise en scenes, action and text, as if could be a role. You look at me reproachfully. But each new rehearsal - this is a rejection of yesterday's rehearsal, yesterdays conditions. Today's rehearsal - is an opportunity to tell yourself that I do not know. Today I do not know. You lose relation with life on the stage. You lose the unpredictable, you do not know how to change of rhythm and spirit. As you do not have any surprises as you are logical and consistent. You are stay in so-called realism. Your eyes are not surprised, it do not have any reaction for things that you see now - this stage, set design, partner, all of this are very habitually for you. Practically you do not know how to connect to the director. How to interact and go into deep contact with me. How to be able to be in the contact without non-logical explanation. Your third and fourth and fifth and sixth eyes do not open. Third - here, the fourth - here, the fifth and the sixth are here. They do not work. You do not know at all or you have forgotten about their existence. Your vision is limited. It does not have the girth around and inside yourself. You inert. Inertia means that I move like everybody, like all. You inert and passive. You wait these orders and subconsciously crave to get the instructions: how to exist, what to do. You have in your veins the cold blood, icy blood. And I must hit your hands every rehearsal, to warm your veins, to warm your blood. I need that you have an incisions on the hands, on the veins, that you were frightened and startled, and felt how hot is your blood. The blood which will begin to pour from your incised veins. You do not have any excitability at all. Your instincts of the beautiful wild animals have been blunted. You are well fed, prosperous, you are stay in the balance and comfort. You clung fearfully to this balance and comfort. You are stay in the conditions of normal people, as ordinary people. Your do not have on your hands and feet the claws like has a cat when she has a desire to jumping for prey. Your instinct of the attack is weakened. Your instinct of pleasure have been weakened as well, your instinct of sexuality and sexual desires have a weak. You re very civilized and normal.

You do not know and you have forgotten what is the tremors, convulsions, stabbing pain, the wild impulsiveness. You have forgotten how and when the real feelings come and born. You are closed from the feelings, you are afraid of these feelings, you run away from these feelings. You run away from the truth in yourself. You are very far away. You lose yourself. You do not have the desire to rebel. You are secretive and culturally friendly, but at the same time, as much as possible you are covered by the mask and distance between us. You are predictable. Your hands and eyes expressed false sincerity. You are empty. You are tired. You are afraid. You are as satisfied neutered cats and dogs whose have lost their instincts and desires. You have not disturbances in the psyche. You are not stay in the boundary condition of human being and animal. You are infected with the tranquility, correctness and want to do and repeat with big diligently the things that you did early. When I'm stay a long time between you, with you, than I obrushivaets your calm, your weakness, softness, they penetrate inside me. Your poison the air around youself, you dirty another actors around you, actors who are feeling. You make them normal, these actors by your poisonous breath. Your eradiation is minimal. The word hypnosis is unknown to you, and illegal. At the moment of your lack of talent, you unite very quickly and become like stone pillars. These pillars, of which I hit; you are impenetrable substances. You lost femininity, masculinity. Your words of the texts are empty. You try to give these words ... you're trying to give these words of your own, as it is your word. But it's poisonous lies, coming from you, this untruth covers, hides your comfort and conformity and indifference. Your texts are empty. They remind me the rock caves of ancient people that do not fire. You are sticky. You are fearful. And false. You are working of inertia, forced, as if somebody forced you to work. You work as people who hard work hard in the quarries. And you are waiting for the whistle for lunch and break. Did you forget that the first actor on the Earth was Prometheus, who challenged the Gods and who stole the light from the feast of the Gods. He stole the light for the people. He took out his eyes, put there the fire, dressed back the eyes again,

and moved to big distance on the Earth in the darkness. It's been a long journey to the Earth where people lived in the dark. And he gave them this light, this fire. The actor is a creature, whose gives, ignites and supports the lights inside the people in the world, supporting the light inside the people, gives them the hope for life. Actors tell people the news about how to live better. And I certainly rebel against you. I appeal on the help Prometheus. You forgot about your pedigree. When I see you, and when I stay near you, I feel that you extinguish the fire within me. You pour, and pour water on the flames. You do not have the feeling of salvation and foresight. Your perspective is absolutely distorted. You do not see that you are on a ship and that this ship throws from side to side. We are in a stormy sea. But your hands are sluggish, the actions incomprehensible. You have lost a feeling of discoverers. You are like the sailors of Columbus, tired to swim. You want at least some coast and rest. But there is not breathing space. Here is a struggle for survival, the struggle between true and untruth. The struggle between life and death. And these outbreaks, flashes of lightning, which fall down on this ship from a dark night sky, these flashes of the mad Artaud, its illuminate for me, its highlight for me your confused faces and indifferent eyes. Wounded Van Gogh or deaf Beethoven do not come to you in your dreams. I knock at your petrified, calm hearts. I appeal to your understanding. I have to rehearse with you every day as it is the last day in my life. I have to accelerate and jump and fight against the wall. Againts your great wall. Because to prove and discover to you that we can get off the earth, we are flying ants and birds. You are Demigods, as write in the ancient books. That you not only do your work as fine and craft workers as do their job in such as business institution as Deutschebank. You are not like them, not like them, how I can to remind you of this. You have been chosen, you have been marked, you are special, you are oracles and preachers. You are substance whose have honest and wild, open and hungry creatures. You are loving and loved. You are not made of plastic, but the live streaming red blood stays inside you, and gives you thue real life instincts. How to remind you that you are kind and generous, that your hearts beat and sick from all the small injustices and ugliness. You are the defenders of beauty within a human being, you - predictors. As you are hidden and preserved the ideals and

your desires are very strong. You are in the middle of the struggle between good and evil, between clean and dirty. Now depends from you, now, depends from you so many things, ans so much. You are connected directly with the spirits, the spirits of the dead. You work also with hallucinations and phantoms of the personages. You are in the contact with the shadows and the emission of the brain of the author . You are part of the impulse and the continuation of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Shakespeare. You are not jackals, eating all that other would give you. You must to refuse to bad rehearsals. You should not eat the decaying carcasses of bad. You have inside yourself every minute, every second moral selection between the good and evil. You are responsible for all what is happening today with the human being. You are a part of this human being. Today human being is able to fall. He is a falling man. And we, all of us can not stand outside and pretend that nothing is happening. That this is does not concern us. You are not chatterbox, but seers. Your game should be a modern, immediate, passionate, intense and honest, strong and rigid, like real life. You are tired. You lose connection with the Time. You are sick. You are in danger. You are in danger. Andriy Zholdak