detheatermaker

The poetic universe of Oxana Sankova is often populated by figures on the fringe, between the tiles of the pavement, between reality and fiction. She draws inspiration from personal life experiences and literature, both from her home country Russia and the rest of the world. For this show she seeks inspiration in people who chose weakness as a form of resistance, such as the ‘alcohologist’ Venichka from Yerofeyev’s novel Moscow-Petushki or the seemingly self-destructive characters of Platonov.

What if a person decides to weaken himself on purpose? Destabilizing himself physically and mentally by consuming enormous amounts of alcohol for instance? Will he lose all solid ground under his feet, become as indifferent as the world itself? Or will this detachment enlighten him, make him float above himself, install a fragility which makes him more open to the world? If his weakness becomes a strength, is it still a weakness? Will the world care? And where will all the empty bottles go?

Oxana Sankova: ‘Since childhood, you grow up with the idea that you have to be strong. That you have to fight for a place in the sun. And if you don’t, then this life will consume you. You’ve lost. And you are very afraid of losing. To stay behind. Down below. 

One day I heard this text – as it turns out, from the Taoist work Tao Te Ching: 

The main thing is to let them believe in themselves and become helpless like children. Because weakness is great and strength is negligible. When a person is born, he is weak and malleable, and when he dies, he is strong and callous. Hardness and strength are the companions of death. Weakness and flexibility express the freshness of being. Therefore, what has hardened will not win.

To me these words sounded fascinatingly beautiful and frightening at once.

What happens if you really try to follow these thougths in life?’