Demerung (Chekhov's Garden of Secrets)

Narrative

Demerung is a cinematic term for the few minutes at sunrise or sunset when the lighting conditions change rapidly and dramatically.

At this time it is possible to capture night shots while there is still some light.

This time of day has a particular significance in the story:

The subconscious and the supernatural come together here. The boundaries between imagination and reality are blurred, followed by darkness or blinding light.

The darkness we so childishly fear, and the light in which facing each other and ourselves as adults is even more frightening than the dark.

Narrative Collective's theatre project collides Chekhov's most intimate work with our present.

By understanding individual fates and nervous systems, an abstract problem becomes accessible: how can intellectuals become vulnerable and helpless in our present? Who takes its place, what does it do with its responsibility?

Following Lyuba's bad decisions and a personal trauma, he flees from responsibility all the way to Paris. There he collapses and gives up his life. His family brings him home at the last moment, but home is not just a place of comfort: he must face the stubborn impermanence of his country and his environment. In the emerging new world order, those unable to change are doomed to disintegration.

A tornado is approaching the characters with unmistakable force, while most of them are preoccupied with their habits even in the calm before the storm. Which is otherwise damned humorous, liberating, passionate.

It's all so human.