Джордан написал домашку по Пьяным Вырыпаева. Австралийцы тоже могут почувствовать Вырыпаева!
Book Report, Jordan West
Material: Pyanye (Drunk) by Ivan Vyrypaev (translated by Stanislav Salnikov)
Drunk (or The Drunks) is a play about several different groups of drunk characters, speaking their uninhibited minds about life, death, truth, lies, love, sex, and god. The original play is written in Russian. Some scenes feature groups of friends, some scenes introduce the characters as strangers. All of them seem to have some strong opinions about life, let loose by the alcohol running through their systems.
My initial reaction to this play was indifference, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me at first and I couldn’t understand what was the point the play was trying to make (although, does it need to make a point?). Later in the play, moreso in the second act, I think I opened my mind a bit more to the unorthodox nature of the play, at the same time the characters became a lot more interesting and opened up their deeper thoughts.
The repetition of the characters stood out as an unusual feature of this play, though it is something Ivan Vyrypaev is known for using in his plays. It certainly makes parts of the play memorable, and it tends to be used in sections where characters are trying to make their point about something they believe.
In the third scene of the first act, Gustav spends nearly half the scene trying to convince his friend Karl that he is God. As a non religious person myself, I found this scene particularly interesting as I found myself sympathizing with Karl, who was rightly rejecting the idea that he was God. But slowly Gustav makes the point that he is also God, that actually everyone is God, that God is just all of us, or that we are all God. Again not being religious myself, I found this a pretty compelling idea, particularly in the way it was explained to Karl - the way that
Gustav convinces Karl through both repetitive, passionate belief, and correcting Karl’s misunderstandings.
One thing that struck is me is how uninhibited the characters are, how they are so sure of their opinions on things despite how stupid or wrong they might be. This kind of attitude gives them an element of believability, of genuineness even if what they’re saying is complete crap. Personally I find this hard to achieve — this sense of freedom to say what you believe without censorship — I tend to censor myself.
Some parts of the play I found a bit crass and distasteful, I think that was also the intention of the playwright. A few scenes involved unwanted advances and some pretty sexist insults which were a bit shocking. Other parts of the play just made no sense at all. The central theme is that the characters are all drunken idiots, so perhaps it makes sense that it doesn’t make sense.
There is however a suggestion by one of the characters in the play that God speaks through those who are drunk (“Lord God speaks through me because the Lord always speaks to the world through those who are drunk”). I could help but feel that perhaps that the playwright is speaking his truth — his beliefs about love and god — through the characters in the play.
Overall this play was unlike any format of play or film I’ve seen before. Even though a lot of the original language was likely lost in translation, in many ways (the repetition, the symbolism) the play read like a form of poetry. It reminded me that there are no rules in art, that something can still be enjoyable when it follows an unexpected format.