JANUARY 29 + 30, 2010 - The Theatre Centre presents WHITE CABIN. AKHE (Russia).

Hailing from St. Petersburg, internationally acclaimed physical theatre company AKHE brings to Toronto White Cabin…" a show about death – the death of culture, the death of a country, the death of a soul. It assaults the eye and worries away at the mind with Beckett-like stillness and clownishly macabre sense of humour." - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

DATES of run January 29 + 30, 2010
TIMES of show 8pm
TICKET PRICES (lowest to highest) $20
VENUE (with exact street address) The Theatre Centre 1087 Queen St. West (south/east corner of Queen & Dovercourt)
BOX OFFICE number 416-538-0988
WEB PAGE address (if available) www.theatrecentre.org / www.akhe.ru
CONTACT PERSON and PHONE NUMBER Cathy Gordon 416-534-9261

Hailing from St. Petersburg, internationally acclaimed physical theatre company AKHE brings to Toronto White Cabin…" a show about death – the death of culture, the death of a country, the death of a soul. It assaults the eye and worries away at the mind with Beckett-like stillness and clownishly macabre sense of humour." - Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

White Cabin marks the second year that The Theatre Centre has presented an international touring show within the context of a Canadian Tour. White Cabin will also be presented at PuSh Festival in Vancouver, High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, and Mois Multi in Quebec.
 
ABOUT THE COMPANY
The group was founded by three members of Boris Ponizovski theatre "Yes - No" (Maksim Isaev, Pavel Semtchenko, Vadim Vasiliev) in 1989.

Immediately the group announced itself as independent (in term of styles and forms) and started their activity in performance, cinema, and fine art's fields. From that time the group consists from two to seven members, but the permanent body consists of two people - Maksim Isaev and Pavel Semtchenko.
 
From 1996 they count themselves more like theatre collective, created for the normal (in classical means) stage. Since that time the group is permanent participant of theatre festivals in Russia and abroad. The members of the group take part in different theatre projects with other groups and theatres: Derevo (Russ- Germ.), Lantaaren (Nederl.), Toihaus (Austr.), Slava Polunin (Russ.). They work as artists, stage designers, and film directors. But they still use their education, working as the painters and designers for artistic and public places.

WHAT THE INTERNATIONAL PRESS HAVE SAID
 
From Russia with three battered suitcases
“No theatre, no office, no money for props - yet absurdist St Petersburg troupe Akhe is the hottest ticket around,” says John O'Mahony - The Guardian, Saturday 11 August 2001
 
At a recent theatre festival in the northern French town of Lille, the experimental Russian troupe Akhe (pronounced ak-ye) arrived at their appointed venue just as the previous company on the bill - a bunch of Americans called the Wooster Group - were packing away their own show, called House/Lights. A hi-tech multi- media reworking of Gertrude Stein's Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, it had enough hardware to fill three huge container trucks: gigantic monitors, banks of synthesizers, specialist lighting gear.
In the starkest possible contrast, not lost on the sniggering backstage crew or on Akhe themselves, the Russians had managed to fit everything needed for both their shows into three battered suitcases. "It was quite funny," says Akhe member Yana Tumina. "They seemed to have enough equipment to build a spaceship, whereas ours was sitting in a pile in the corner. But when you have nothing, you really test your creativity. When all you have is an old bottle, a knife and a length of rope you found on a rubbish tip, theatre is pushed to the limit."
Her statement was resoundingly proved true the following evening, when three lone, shambolic figures, with a minimum of props and lighting, filled the stage as completely and explosively as America's finest. Hailing from St Petersburg, Akhe is one of alternative theatre's best-kept secrets. Entirely untainted by the western media's saturated clichés of the genre, the group instead taps into the deep vein of the Russian absurdist tradition, as pioneered by Gogol and Daniil Kharms.
Akhe's two best-known pieces - White Cabin (which was seen in Lille) and Pookh i Prakh (which translates as Fluff and Feathers, but will be presented as part of the Aurora Nova season at Komedia St Stephens under the curious
transliterated title of Pooh-Prah) - are in constant, unruly flux, sometimes changing completely from night to night. "Over the years, we must have fed 10 shows through the guts of these two," says founder member Maxim Isaev. While there is no discernible narrative, the works are held together by images of power and violence - a man slashing at bags of water tied about his body, another man magically washing away his clothes, another man bleeding sawdust from a stab wound. These are offset by vivid, quirky vignettes, moments of wrenching, poignant humour, such as the tabletop storm scene of Pookh & Prakh, or the "dancing man" that closes White Cabin, a tiny, sporadically jiggling figure that held an audience of 2,000 spellbound in Lille for a five-minute eternity.
The group was formed in the late 1980s when Maxim Isaev and Pavel Semchenko, both of whom came from a visual art background, broke away from Boris Ponizovsky's innovative Yes/No theatre group, creating a collective that specialized in eccentric "happenings", staged in city parks and apartment stairwells. The current line-up was born when this bearded, deadpan duo, who look like they might have walked straight out of the pages of Dostoyevsky's The Devils, were joined by slight, striking actress Yana Tumina in 1996.
… "For me, it is important that the stage be a place of collision, happening in real time," says Semchenko. "We want to do extreme things with the body, to test both its beauty and its boundaries." There is a tangible sense of danger in scenes such as the opening of White Cabin, where the 100kg Isaev hurls himself at Tumina, only to be restrained at the last moment by a rope tied about his waist.  "We want to be honest," Semchenko continues. "If glass is breaking on stage it's really breaking; if the fire is burning then it's hot and painful. We don't want to rely on tricks."
Honesty is a prominent feature in Akhe's work: White Cabin is "about repetition and poetry", Pookh i Prakh "about love". "Our work is hard and cynical and we do have trouble taking anything seriously," says Tumina. "But it is a cynicism of the mind only. The heart stays pure. Otherwise we wouldn't be making theatre."
The group is not sure what to expect of its UK debut, its first visit to an English-speaking country. "There will be 13 performances with barely a day off and very little time to put up the set," Tumina says. "But it will be an experiment, which is exactly what we thrive on." 

RUSSIAN ENGINEERING THEATRE   Miracles of visual poetry
Absurdist theatre group Akhe from St. Petersburg pushes theatre to its limits. Challenging theatrical creativity with extremely minimal props and funding; this avant-garde troupe explodes on stage. Their shows are in a constant state of flux and sometimes change from performance to performance. The constant variable in their work is honesty; which makes for dynamic ritual and mesmerizing visual theatre.
Akhe was founded in St. Petersburg in 1989 by Maxim Isaev and Pavel Semchenko both from a visual art background and former members of Boris Ponizovski´s Yes- No theatre group. Isaev and Semchemko created a theatre collective that specialized in explosive “happenings” - often staged in parks or other public settings. The ritual like performances commenced in the area of fine arts and film and quickly gained fame in the art society of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Isaev and Semchenko were joined in 1999 by the actress Yana Tumina and The Russian Engineering Theatre Akhe was born.
While Isaev and Semchenko , still active in the art-world, participate in exhibitions and work as painters and designers ; the Akhe group take part in various theatre projects in Russia and abroad. In Russia Akhe has collaborated with groups such as Slava Polunin , Derevo and Formal Theatre as well as Dutch Lantaaren , Austrian Toihaus and Project Teatr from Germany.
Akhe’s theatre works with text as an object and creates performances that are true ritual which offers an image of the world where everything is connected and separate. Substances, elements, people, space and surface all cohabit and coexist.
One of their more performed pieces is White Cabin which creates a climate of contrasts. The actors present a series of imaginative episodes and use the artistic tools of silent cinema and avant-garde. The performance casts the audience in a perplexed emotional state, confronted with the alienation and solitude of mankind Akhe’s theatre has been describes as a theatre that creates souls for objects and interchanges cause and effect. The artistic and unmistakable Russian chaos of Akhe is a force major of the theatre world.
Author: Annika Salomonsson