Synopsis
The play The lady of the sea (Fruen fra havet) was written in 1888 in Germany and had its world premiere at the Christiania Theatre on 12 February 1889. Threatened by a complicated love affair, Ellida, the central character, is incredulous that mankind was destined to live on land. She is in love with the ocean, fascinated by its boundlessness and the demonic energy in which she senses an expression of the forces of life. This character of the sea is externalised in her former lover, the Stranger, who exerts a remarkable hypnotic power over her.
"Andriy Zholdak staged Rosmersholm, another Ibsen play, where symbolism and realism also come together. Now he confronts The Woman of the Sea and the insatiable appetite for immensity of this heroine raised on a lighthouse in the middle of the water and stranded on the shore of a mediocre fjord. Zholdak mobilises the resources of theatre to materialise the "need for elsewhere". The vital need... and, for him, the need for theatre."
(George Banu, The woman of the seaor... The need for somewhere else, / extracted from the show's program booklet)
"My Ellida is alive today, I often meet her in different cities and countries I travel to. (...) This Ellida is in a state of titanic change, from the 'herself' of today to the 'not-self' of tomorrow. Like the reflection of a figure in water, when the wind blows the water away, the reflection shudders and changes its proportions, it is no longer the same as the original. (...) This Ellida knows about Kolima and Auschwitz, she knows that God "has left" and is preparing for the "journey", the "flight", the "emigration", the "flight" from us all to that somewhere, about which Sonia in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" said that "you see the angels, you see heaven shining like a jewel".
(Andriy Zholdak, My Ellida Lives in the 21st Century! / excerpt from the programme of the performance)
Andriy Zholdak, a Ukrainian-born theater and opera director born in Kyiv, studied theater directing in Moscow in the class of Professor Anatoly Vasilyev. He has staged theater and opera performances in Ukraine, France, Russia, Romania, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Macedonia, Belgium, Poland, Montenegro. His lectures on "The Actor of the Future" and "Quantum Theater" as well as special workshops dissecting the Art of Acting were held in Brazil, Japan, Italy, Spain. She received the UNESCO Award for Performing Arts in 2004, and the Golden Mask Award for Best Opera and Directing for her staging with Evgheni Oneghin by Tchaikovsky at the Mikhailovsky Theater in St. Petersburg (2014) and Best Ensemble for Three Sisters by Chekhov at the Alexandrinski Theater (2016). Her staging of Tchaikovsky's Witch at the Lyon Opera was declared the Best Performance of 2019 at the German OPER Awards and nominated for Best Production at the 2020 OPER World Awards. on stage was the opera Castle of Prince Beard-Blue-Blue by Bartok at the Lyon Opera , in the spring of 2021.
