Murat Abulkatinov’s play «Ten Visits to My Beloved» is based on the novel of the same name by Vasily Aksyonov, one of the prominent representatives of «rural prose.» The plot centres on a high school student, Oleg, who experiences his first passionate love for Tanya, a girl from a neighbouring village. His meetings with his beloved alternate with scenes from teenage life: a friend’s suicide, vague feelings for another girl, betrayal…
The director defines the genre of the production as «scenes from yesterday’s youth.» «The novel tells a very simple and sensual story of first love. And the main character constantly utters the phrase: ‘It was yesterday,’» says Murat Abulkatinov. «I tried to preserve in the performance the sense of nostalgia for youth, for a raw perception of the world, and for absolute sincerity that is characteristic of Vasily Aksyonov’s prose. Like Aksyonov, I find it interesting to examine feelings in their extreme form.» Therefore, for me, the novel «Ten Visits to My Beloved» is a story about a lost paradise, the mistakes of youth, and the blindness of love."
The play intertwines details of village life in the 1970s, Old Testament images that mix in the mind of a Soviet high school student with Pushkin’s poems, and the language of the local residents, accurately conveyed by the writer, with its characteristic turns of phrase and sound.
