Charms of Harms

The production, which is staged entirely online, is based on the principle of collective theatre inspired by Nikolai Evreinov's theatre therapy (1879–1953) and L. Moreno's theatre of spontaneity and psychodrama (1989–1974). It highlights the importance of the creative processes used by Russian avant-garde artists in the past, which have led to a global response comparable to the Renaissance. Thematically the project will reflect the themes of »hope«, »despair«, »god« and »the art of the real«, and seek to re-establish the link between art and religion based on work and lifestory of the world famous Russian avant-garde writer and artist from Sankt Peterburg Daniil Kharms and his avant-garde group Oberiu. (One of his pseudonyms was Charms.) The project as an online staging, the theatricalization of life in documentary theatre, seeks its aesthetic expression in the tragicomic genre of creative nonsense. The spectator who follows both two evenings can, together with the creators, pass over all the mentioned phases, from despair to hope and faith, trying to establish a collective theatre in the Goriška region and help to revitalize the role of the individual in the community, raise awareness of resistance to given topics and transform them through creative artistic gestures; analyze the phenomenon of self-isolation of individuals in the society of the Western world and the growth of this phenomenon as a consequence of the epidemic and establish socially useful collective theatre; and combine various artistic practices unrelated to the needs of repertoire theatre and other branches of staging activities.

The online staging in four sequels, which line up in two consecutive evenings, has emerged entirely as an online theatre that is the only one possible at this time. It tackles a new way of theatrical performance and is partly filmed as a mockumentary theatre, partly as fiction, partly live as interactive conversation between creators and viewers on the zoom app. Originally, the staging was intended as a live staging on several different locations, but given the two quarantines that interrupted the study and the theme itself, it is even more appropriate to be produced entirely on the web.