«Raging Bull»
About the Performance
A chamber piece, cinematic in tone, deeply authorial… Where else in Almaty will you find a production inspired by Martin Scorsese’s legendary film, yet telling a completely different story - not about an American boxer, but about a Kazakh one, and, more precisely, about an entire era on the brink of Perestroika?
The action unfolds in the final decade of Soviet Kazakhstan, a time when Serik Konakbayev’s victory at the 1980 Moscow Olympics sparked a genuine boxing boom across the republic.
The life of the main character, Aydyn Zhakupov - a boxer with a «granite jaw» - is a tangle of passion, love, friendship, ideals, resentments and old wounds.
To prove he is the best in the world, Aydyn, the city champion, must earn a place in the Olympic reserve. The problem is simple and brutal: an independent personality, and far too many enemies.
Galina Pyanova, director of «Raging Bull»:
«In boxing there’s a familiar moment: after the fight, the athlete shouts to the coach, ‘Ice!!!’. Thankfully, there’s plenty of ice outside these days. And yes, our ‘Raging Bull’ is full of grotesque existence! Exaggerated grievances, intrigues, gossip, betrayals and disappointments - all of it blown out of proportion. And against all this excess, we place one thing only: a real, authentic fight in the ring. Just three minutes long. But in those three minutes, the meaning of everything becomes clear.
The thrill of a genuine, open, honest feeling. And suddenly all that domestic drama turns distant, unimportant, even amusing. Theatre works in exactly this way.
I’m grateful this performance exists. Grateful to the actors. Grateful to the designer. And grateful to myself, the director) because after each show we laugh a lot, we don’t rush home, and for a moment we are both beautiful and happy.
And, of course, thank you to our audience. It’s wonderful when people who share nothing - age, nationality, religion (and in a small Almaty venue this is especially obvious) - stand together, smiling, raising a thumbs-up and shouting: «You’re great!» We all are, when fighting remains sport, and hatred remains only theatre.»
