On Naked Soil at Theater for the New City

On Naked Soil - Imagining Anna Akhmatova, a new three-character play about the Russian poet. Schull will portray Akhmatova in a production directed by Susan Einhorn. Theater for the New City will present the work from 12 Apr - 4 May 2008 at the Cino Theater.

Born in 1889 in Odessa, Anna Akhmatova was a published poet at age 22. Her early poems, remarkable for the intimate tone with which they described love found and betrayed, were immediately popular, and she and her husband, the poet Nikolai Gumiliev, became the stars of the Russian literary scene in the early 1920's. As the political climate in Russia went from crisis to crisis, beginning with World War I, the October Revolution, the Civil War, through the years of terror under Lenin and then Stalin, and finally World War II, Akhmatova's poetry changed radically, reflecting the trauma of the Russian people. Her first husband was shot, her son was imprisoned and her closest friends were condemned to labor camps and death. But even as her own tragedies mirrored those of the Russian people, she created out of her personal experience a poetry that defined the anguish of the times in language and images that marked her as one of Russia's great poets.

The three-character play looks at Anna Akhmatova in two time frames and in the company of two other women: her contemporary Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the poet Osip Mandelstam, in the mid-1960's and Lydia Chukovskaya, a young writer who kept a journal of her meetings with Akhmatova, in the late thirties. Through scenes among the three women, and using documentary film footage and video projections, as well as extensive use of the poetry itself, the play illuminates the life of a literary figure who was, for many, the conscience of her time. Rebecca Schull will play Akhmatova, Lenore Loveman will play Nadezhda Mandelstam and Sue Cremin will play Lydia Chukovskaya.

The creative team comprises Ursula Belden (sets), Mimi Maxmen (costumes), Victor en yu Tan (lighting) and Megan Henninge (sound).

This is Rebecca Schull's second play. Her one-woman play, "Journey Into the Whirlwind," adapted from the memoirs of Eugenia Ginzburg, told the story of a woman caught in the Stalinist purges of the 1930's. The Irish Times wrote that it offered "something rare in theatrical, literary, and human terms: revelation." The play premiered in Dublin and was subsequently produced in Los Angeles and New York. She was also the founder and artistic director of Open World Theater Co., whose mission was to present the works of playwrights censored in their own countries.