© 2021 ГАУК НСО НДТ «Старый дом»
630009, г.Новосибирск, Большевистская, 45
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About the Festival
Chaos is a new international theatre festival that was first held in 2019 in the city of Novosibirsk, right in the centre of Siberia. The festival features actual art performances. We at the Chaos team want to introduce the audience to the theatres which operate in various art and organisation systems, both governmental and independent, and which share contemporary art ideas. We are also focused on integrating the urban environment into the theatrical play to the maximum extent possible, so prior to the festival we arranged a series of preview projects that were intended to offer a different perspective to the regular aspects of everyday life of a modern human being.

The Stary Dom (Old House) Novosibirsk Drama Theatre became the initial site for the Chaos Festival for a good reason. The theatre has been the scene for various artistic endeavours for more than ten years before that and allowed the discovery of new texts and alternative methods for performance creation.

Why CHAOS?

In modern performance formulas we see a significant initial value of the concept of chaos: real-life theatre is a living, fast-moving entity which promptly reacts to everything that is going on in the world and which brings new ideas and narratives to the stage. Chaos in the theatre is not only something that is difficult to fit in the usual ideas and perceptions. It is also something that will help one look at one's life from a new perspective, from the perspective of a unique author's vision.

What is today's theatre like?

Over the twenty years of the new century we see references to actuality and urgency. Site-specific, immersive and documentary theatre becomes an integral part of the repertoire. The language of computer and multimedia technologies is the trend one cannot ignore when talking about the new theatre reality. Real life has proven these technologies to be the most appropriate instruments for artists to ponder modern consciousness without any restraints, in any forms that exist now. And the results will be unpredictable and honest. They help rediscover the authenticity of the actor, they make us leave the usual theatre seats, they mix the roles of the author and the spectator, they involve gadgets and the internet in the artistic communication process. This is the experience that Chaos will bring you.

How does one understand today's theatre?

We will immerse you into the "dark matter" of a theatre experiment, but we will not leave you facing it alone (unless you want to!). The concept of Chaos prompts viewers to reflect together on the art and its place in our everyday life. The festival program always includes preview projects, art residency, public talks, conferences for audiences and professionals and open discussions. The festival accumulates the opinions of professional critics, the online community and the audience.


The Season of Movement (special program) // 2022
The main program of the next festival is scheduled for 2023. We chose "The Season of Movement" as its theme and tagline.


However, the preprogram of the festival has begun in autumn. It was intended to rent physical theatre performances in Novosibirsk. The idea of attempting to enter the lands unknown to the Novosibirsk audience so far was based not only on the desire to help change the direction that was still in the rental and information and communication vacuum but also on the very philosophy of the movement. There were teams here that are able and willing to work in the field of modern dance and theatre of movement, there were local choreographers who were well known to the Russian theatrical community, there were ideas that were waiting for implementation, but the audience was not yet fully established.


The "Season of Movement" team (art director Oksana Efremenko, curator Andrey Korolenko and ect) invited spectators to look at a dancing person because when a person is dancing, centuries of human history and social conventions all disappear. When a person is dancing, they only need the sky, the sea and a kindred soul. When a person is dancing, they are telling the truth about themselves and the world. When a person is dancing, the wise universe continues to exist.


The goals of the "Season of Movement'' were encoded as always in the visual image of the festival which was modified for the preprogram. The multidirectional lines of the minimalistic black and white scenery created by the St. Petersburg designer Nino Chagalidze look almost like drawn and suggest a scheme of an invisible dance of someone invisible. And it is the body of this invisible dancer which is fully capable to draw the contours of beautiful forms of the future world in its emptiness and chaos.


The preprogram was intended to warm up the curiosity and hint at the possibilities of the future festival. It lasted for three months. From October to December, the Season of Movement curators introduced viewers to theatre companies which were capable of telling stories using body language. The project announced a total of nine performances by dance groups from Novosibirsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Kazan.



FESTIVAL // 2021
PHILOSOPHICAL AND AESTHETIC STUDY OF A MODERN HUMAN BEING

In 2021, the festival grew even bigger. The list of performances is important but it's not the main goal. The theatre and the festival can and should become a means for philosophical understanding of today's world.

We were inspired by the works of the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, by the tagline that he reimagined in his works "Be realistic, demand the impossible!" and his reflections on the challenges facing humans today. Our presence in the world is mostly evident in environment, ethics, information, and body. These were the topics that we wanted to research at the festival.

During the art residence at CHAOS - 2021 our invited curators along with the residents explored the topics of environment, ethics, body and information, prepared their own projects that we presented in various non-theatrical spaces in Novosibirsk along with the lectures of the renowned experts in respective fields: philosophers Mikhail Nemtsov and Alexander Sekatsky, cultural journalist Mikhail Saprykin, art critic Anna Velenskaya, and others.

The preview projects at the festival allowed the spectators to visit one mobile exhibition (environment), one installation opera (information), three dance performances (body), one reflection exhibition (body), and one Telegram play, to observe one marathon on Instagram (ethics), to attend four lectures and three concerts as well as to take part in recording of three public podcasts. A total of 30 participants took part in the art residency.

It is no coincidence that the chromosomes on the logo designed by Nino Chagalidze became a metaphor for the second wave of CHAOS. The theatre gives us an optical tool which allows us to see that people are very "delicate structures that occupy separate territories and are not noticeable individually. Every day, leaving the house, they are transformed into densely packed elements that can resist external influences, maintain their integrity and shape." One only needs to see that alienation does not exist.

We used the prisms of environment, ethics, information, and body to watch and discuss the performances at the 2021 festival.

Besides, it was a unique year for our team because the National Theatre Award and the Golden Mask Festival became our partners which allowed us to show in Novosibirsk the performances in different formats and styles from various locations.

In 2021, over 156 thousand people took part in the festival as spectators online and 5 thousand participated offline. There were 400 participants in the main program.

The program included 14 plays in the main program and 7 showcase plays:

ZANOS / Praktika Theatre / Moscow
DEMONS OF DOSTOYEVSKY / Theater on Bronnaya / Moscow /
ARTYOM TOMILOV / Fifth Theater / Omsk
BOTTOM FISHERS / Youth Theatre. A.A. Bryantsev / St. Petersburg
ARTYOM TOMILOV / Fifth Theater / Omsk
CHERNOBYL PRAYER / Nikitinsky Theater / Voronezh
LE TARTUF. COMEDY /Taganka Theater / Moscow
DAD WILL MEET ME IN L.A. / Youth Theater / Arkhangelsk
NEXT / Tomsk Youth Theater
COMMITTEE OF THE SAD DEITY / theater post / St. Petersburg
DEAR MR. SMITH / Theatre PRIYUT KOMEDIANTA / St. Petersburg
HORRIBLE DANCES /TRU Theater / St. Petersburg
TIME OUT / Red Torch Theater / Novosibirsk
REDUCTION OF THE WORLD / theater stage MOÑ / Kazan
ANNA KARENIN / STARY DOM (Old house) theatre / Novosibirsk

During the festival we held one research conference, one meetup of independent theatres and various theatre institutions over brunch, and five lectures by renowned theatre critics, including Marina Davydova, Alyonа Karas, Nika Parkhomovskaya etc.

FESTIVAL // 2019
ARTICULATING THE IDEA OF CONTEMPORARY THEATRE

In 2019 over 6 thousand people took part in the festival as spectators or participants.

The program included 13 performances:

IDIOT / Theatre Stary Dom (Old House) / Novosibirsk / Director Andrey Prikotenko
CHAPAEV AND VOID / Theatre PRAKTIKA / Moscow / Director Maxim Didenko
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT / Theatre PRIYUT KOMEDIANTA / Saint-Petersburg / Director Konstantin Bogomolov
YOUTH ALIVE / Theatre TRU / Moscow / Director Alexander Artyomov
RUSSIAN A. ABC / Theatre TRU / Moscow / Director Alexander Artyomov
INDIVIDUAL AND ATOMIC PROPOSITIONS by the mathematical formula of a British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell / Creative Laboratory UGOL / Kazan / Director Vsevolod Lisovsky
ZOSHCHENKO ZOSHCHENKO ZOSHCHENKO ZOSHCHENKO / Theatre-festival BALTIISKY DOM / Saint-Petersburg / Director Andrey Prikotenko
I AM 30 YEARS OLD / GOGOL-CENTRE / Moscow / Director Vasily Zorky
WELL TEMPERED LETTERS / Theatre post / Saint-Petersburg / Director Dmitry Volkostrelov
DJ PAVEL / Theatre post / Saint-Petersburg / Team: Kseniya Volkova, Dmitry Volkostrelov, Dmitry Korobkov, Ivan Nikolaev, Maksim Petrov, Dmitry Renansky, Alyona Starostina, Aleksey Platunov
MISS JULIE / Theatre LUDOWY / Poland / Director Radosław Stępień
THE INSULTED AND INJURED / Staatsschauspiel Theatre / Dresden / Director Sebastian Hartmann
MARAT/SADE / Klockriketeatern, Sirius Teatern, Teater Mestola / Finland - Sweden / Director Juha Hurme

The program included five public talks, two public lectures and eleven open discussions of the performances with the audience. Sixteen critics and experts engaged in various educational formats, including Marina Davydova, Oksana Kushlyaeva, Anton Alekseev, Katya Kostrikova, Olga Nikiforova, Kristina Matvienko, Eric Soderblom, Hunter Wei Gao, Elena Malchevskaya, Zhanna Zaretskaya, and others.

We established the spectators' club which helped people communicate at the festival. When the project came to an end, the participants prepared their reports they delivered at the final conference and jointly created the "Manifesto of the Modern Spectator".

One of the important components of the festival was the art residence, where choreographers, screenwriters, performers, and artists studied. Under the guidance of director Mikhail Patlasov and playwright Alina Shklyarskaya, they created independent final projects which shared the idea of "The Evolution of Beauty". The projects were presented and discussed with the audience in the local IKEA and on the stage of Theatre STARY DOM (Old house).

Contemporary theatre is much closer than we think: it is everywhere, it is around us every day. It is in our commute, in the corporate culture of our offices, in the shopping malls and parks, in casual conversations in restaurants and cafes, in fitness fashion, in any of our daily gestures. That is why every month during half a year before the festival, the CHAOS team offered the audience to find a theatrical gene in a variety of social spaces familiar to present-day people and presented five independent preview projects, one mobile installation and one street art object which connected theatre, science, contemporary visual arts, digital technologies, fitness, music and everyday culture.