ARCHIVES 2001 / Boris Godounov

Boris Godounov, brother-in-law to Czar Feodor is unofficially accused of having ordered the assassination of Czsarevich Dimitri in 1591, the legitimate heir to the throne. After the death of pious Czar Feodor, in 1598, the Russian people beg Boris Godounov to accept the crown. At first he refuses, then he accepts. In 1603, an old monk tells young Grigori that the Czarevich who was murdered would be the same age as himself today. Grigori hatches a plan to pretend he is Dimitri, and to take the throne. He flees the monastery and manages to build an army to fight Boris' troops. The result is a war between the two imposters. Pushkin wrote Boris Godounov in 1825, Musorgski made a famous opera out of it in 1874. With a view to providing Russia with its first national drama, Pushkin cast aside classicial rules: unity of time and place. The action takes place from 20^th February 1598 to 10^th June 1605, over a period of just over seven years. The drama is divided into 23 tableaux and the different scenes are set in many places; in Moscow, Poland and on the Russian Steppes.
Declan Donnellan has wanted to stage one of Pushkin's masterpieces for many years. This play is the natural result of a two-way exchange between Donnellan and Russia, with most of the works of his company Cheek by Jowl being performed in Moscow, as well as his directing A Winter's Tale by Shakespeare with actors from the Maly Theatre of Saint Petersburg in 1997. With this play he became the first foreigner to receive the Golden Mask for best director at the Russian Theatre awards in 1999. There is a similar joint cooperation between Declan Donnellan and Festival d'Avignon, which produced his version of Le Cid, in 1998, with French actors. Declan Donnellan presents this play in a bi-frontal space, centring his work on the acting and the energy of eighteen Russian actors, selected from different repertory theatres in Moscow, like Evgeny Mironov, Alexander Feklistov, Avangard Leontiev, Igor Iassulovich, Mikhaïl Jigalov and Alexander Lenkov. Boris Godounov was presented for the first time in Moscow in June 2000, then ran at the Olympiades in Moscow in April 2001, in Britain and the Netherlands in May and June, on the way to Avignon . This play is scheduled at other venues in France in Autumn 2001.