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Bunin condemned it; Mayakovsky praised it; Dostoyevsky
foreshadowed it, and John Reed reported on it. What is it?
The

1917

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

HERE and NOW

What are the causes of the Russian Revolution of 1917, or any revolution for that matter? A few generations of Soviet schoolchildren would gleefully (mis)quote Lenin’s definition of a revolutionary situation when those on top can’t do it, and those at the bottom don’t want to.

The crude humour ensured that the notion of a revolutionary crisis was not lost even on the dullest of minds, yet, sexual innuendos aside, little has been understood about those “on top,” “at the bottom” or in the middle – the real concerns and representations of the ruling class, middle class or the oppressed. As we are busy falling in and out of love, writing poetry, paying off our mortgage, saving animals and people we don’t know, how can we tell when Revolution is imminent? Why should it matter to us 100 years later?

ARCC presents a UK-Russian multimedia bilingual production that marks the centennial of the Russian Revolution and attempts to answer these questions. The director Mikhail Umanets compares the 1917 Revolution to a big asteroid that still affects us from afar:

a century later, it is difficult to grasp the
meaning of dispossession or loss of titles, yet
reverberations of those events still haunt us.

A unique cast of prominent British and Russian-speaking actors and musicians explore the effects of the revolution on artistic imagination across different genres: folklore, literary texts by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Demons), Vladimir Mayakovsky (“Lilichka etc.”), John Reed (Ten Days That Shook the World), and by Ivan Bunin (Cursed Days); music, dance, pieces of documentary and stage play. Will those disjoint voices of villains, tormented lovers and humanity-savers and ever come together to create a spirit of revolution?

The 1917 Russian Revolution. Here & Now will run in the Brunel Museum tunnel entrance, just by Rotherhithe Station. 30 September and 2 October – 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

Places are limited – RSVP to avoid disappointment.

£20 / £15 conc. You can order your tickets here.

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