«One Hundred Years of Solitude»
About the Performance
One of the greatest literary works of the 20th century comes alive on the Main Stage of ARTiSHOK Theatre, unfolding like enormous painted canvases of magical realism - the very style in which García Márquez wrote.
This is a strange, poetic, whimsical and haunting tale of the town of Macondo and the Buendía family - from creation to decline.
Here, saints collide with sinners, revolutionaries with heroes, traitors with dreamers, and, of course, women who are far too extraordinary for ordinary life.
The novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is retold not through spoken text, but through objects, materials, light, sound, bodies and music.
«Artist’s Theatre» is a genre built primarily on the laws of visual storytelling. The performance contains almost no verbal text or linear narrative, yet it is rich with imagery. Each detail forms its own dialogue with the audience, telling a familiar story in a completely new language.
«When you read the novel, true imaginative freedom begins - the images arise instantly. Artist’s Theatre allows you to rely on the visual picture supported by dramatic content, rather than the other way round. You do not need to justify every detail with logic…»
Esquire.kz, December 2020
«The beginning of the performance - when Colonel Aureliano Buendía was led out to be executed and the audience were handed raw eggs with the instruction to throw them on command - was shocking. I shrank in horror, not knowing what would happen next…»
Nomadmgz.kz, April 2021
About the Director
Anton Bolkunov is a director and visual artist of ARTiSHOK Theatre. He is a graduate of Gogol Almaty Art College, the Zhurgenov Kazakh National Academy of Arts, and the advanced directing programme (I. Kvirikadze’s studio).
He is a laureate of the Arlekin Award (2021), the Golden Mask Award (2023) and others. He is also a tutor of the actor-director course. Anton develops a unique direction within Kazakhstani theatre - «artist’s theatre», a genre where the visual, performative and artistic language drives the entire production.
Anton’s artwork can be seen in the foyer of the Main Stage at the Bolkunov Electric Gallery. During the theatre’s 25th anniversary season, a new exhibition of his original paintings will be presented.
About the Author
Gabriel García Márquez is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, a Nobel Prize laureate, and the author of such world-renowned novels as No One Writes to the Colonel, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The Autumn of the Patriarch.
The production of One Hundred Years of Solitude at ARTiSHOK Theatre is the first staging of this work in Kazakhstan.
