"In Moscow in 1953, a few weeks before the death of Stalin, the director of the Central Mental Hospital came up with an unusual experiment: he invited a writer to stay with the patients and asked him to re-write a history of Communism and of the October Revolution so that it could be understood by the patients at their different degrees of mental affliction. The director believes that this “therapy” could cure some mental illnesses. This play encourages us to think about the relationship between human kind and utopia. One of the great dramas of the 20thcentury is that communism was not a success. Utopia, which at the outset was supposed to resolve all the problems faced by humanity, when it arrived, left a scarred landscape littered with more than one hundred million dead. It seems that the human being finds itself in a paradoxical situation whereby it cannot live without dreaming up utopian projects, and yet sinks into horror each time these utopias are put into practice. The question is how to get out of this painful existential condition."
Matéi Visniec
Distribution
Reading by : the author
With the support of : Christine Gagnieux
Programme elaborated by : Jean Larriaga, Président de la commission radio de la Sacd
Production
Coproduction :SACD, Festival d'Avignon
Lecture enregistrée par : France Culture
Texte publié aux: éditions Lansman