TAD premiere

Last night, we went to a sold-out premiere of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's play An Angel Comes to Babylon (in Rusyn: Anhel Prychodyť do Babilonu) at the Teatr Alexandra Duchnovyča.   First off, here's (one, two) really good synopses of the play. 

 

The actor Ľubomír Lindoš as the angel.

 

Secondly, since I couldn't catch too too much of the dialogue, I'll comment on the exceptional staging, costuming and high quality acting of our Rusyn theatre.  Amazingly good.  The play is rather avant-garde, existentialist comedy -- and so for all of the wierd little conservative annoyingnesses that I sometimes complain about in what I see here in the Rusyn community, this theater is an excellent bright, bright light of cultural development and artistic expression.  On the other hand, the audience was full of the Prešov Rusyn intelligentsia, a mildly insular group.  On the third hand, it was sold out, and there was a healthy amount of young people in the audience, which is a great sign.

And most importantly: we haven't got meaningful Rusyn-language television (one satellite channel in Ukraine), we haven't got meaningful Rusyn-language radio (what, an hour a week at wierd times in Slovakia and two music-heavy English language programs in America) -- and how often do we hear that people learn languages by watching television and/or listening to the radio in the target language?  So in our case, the way to hear Rusyn language so as to learn it and let it become a sort of standard is via this amazingly high-quality, cultured theatre.  Viva!