May 6, 2023
I Remember
based on Alexei Arbuzov’s play “An Old-Fashioned Comedy”
The performance “I Remember” is based on Alexei Arbuzov’s play “An Old-Fashioned Comedy,” but in this stage version the story of two elderly people becomes more than a tale of a late encounter, loneliness, and hope. It grows into a reflection on memory — personal, family, and national.
The meeting of Rodion Nikolayevich and Lidia Vasilyevna gradually reveals, behind outward irony, arguments, and everyday barbs, the deep human experience of a generation that lived through war, loss, separation, and the difficult post-war years. Their memories are not a past that has vanished forever, but a living part of the present, a moral support without which it is impossible to understand either ourselves or those who came before us.
The final scene of the performance takes place at a cemetery. Here the private story of the characters joins the shared memory of the Great Patriotic War — of the soldiers who did not return from the front, and of those who endured, worked on the home front, waited, saved lives, raised children, and rebuilt the country from ruins.
In the finale, the words “we must remember” are spoken, and these words become the central meaning of the performance. To the song “Let Us Bow to Those Great Years,” the faces of soldiers of the Great Patriotic War appear on the screen — the faces of those to whom we owe our lives, our peace, and the very possibility to love, meet, laugh, argue, and hope.
“I Remember” is a performance about gratitude. About the memory of all participants in the Great Patriotic War and the workers of the home front. About the generation that carried a terrible time on its shoulders and left us its most important testament: to remember.
Photos from the performance
