New York Nightlife Impresario VARDA Returns To Experimental Theatre With ALL ROADS LEAD TO THE KURSKI STATION

All Roads Lead to the Kurski Station, a play based on the postmodern Russian novel Moscow Circles by Vienya Efofeev, is set to play the East Village Playhouse (340 East 6th Street). Adapted and directed by Varda, the play stars Elliott Morse, Mia Vallet, and Rivers Duggan. Beginning Thursday, May 10, 2018, performances will be Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 9pm, and Sundays at 3pm. Opening night is set for Thursday, May 17 at 9pm, the final performance is slated for Sunday, June 24. Tickets are $40 and available through OvationTix.com. There are also a select number of $30 under 30 and student tickets for $20.

"All Roads Leads to the Kurski Station is a Russian odyssey, in which, unlike Homer's tale, Ithaca does not exist, because Russia lives by the past and the future only. By myth and dreams," said Varda. "After many years, I feel compelled to return to art, because I can no longer see another way forward. I am deeply troubled by the direction of our world, and the degradation of our discourse by the agendas of corrupt, populist politicians, and a corporatized intellectual and artistic elite. I hope to revisit the radical potential of twentieth century European avant-garde theatre because I believe it allows for complex and wide-ranging forms of artistic and intellectual expression, challenging conventional forms of representation and consciousness without surrendering to sentimentality or postmodern nihilism."

All Roads Lead to the Kurski Station, a loose adaptation of the postmodern Russian novel Moscow Circles by Vienya Efofeev, follows a poet-drunkard called Vienya as he traverses Soviet Moscow in an attempt to catch a train to visit his beloved in the distant suburb of Petuskhi. Along the way, he is haunted by fantastic visions, and two mysterious women, seemingly determined to frustrate his plans.

In the tradition of anti-theater more popular in New York City in the 70s and 80s, and the works of artists such as The Living Theater, Bread and Puppet, Grotowski, Kantor, etc., All Roads Lead to the Kurski Station rejects naturalistic forms of narrativization and storytelling. Instead, a sequence of maniacal fever dreams explore Soviet life through the lens of Vienya's troubled mind. Experience and emotion fuse with references from religion, art, history, and more in a psychotic chorus, creating poetic and surreal images and hallucinatory episodes reminiscent of the strange logic of the unconscious. In these times of revived Cold War tensions, widespread alienation, and looming threats of authoritarianism emerging across the globe, All Roads Lead to the Kurski Station is an urgent warning, and bitter prophecy. The stylistic fusion of European avant-garde theatre, performance art, Dadaist aesthetics, satire, and montage invites the viewer to experiment with interpretation within the intellectual and emotional opulence of Vienya's phantasmagoria.