Animal
2nd December 2012
Animal is a verbatim play written by BFT’s long-standing ensemble member, Yulia Shevchuk, drawn directly from real life experiences. The story focuses on a family of young alcoholics – Seriozha and an unnamed woman – to explore the idea of everyday heroism and the extraordinary ordinary.
Sometimes those closest to us – our neighbours, our friends and our families – are the people we notice the least. Animal redirects our attention towards the rediscovery of the known in a celebration of compassion and understanding.
“In the verbatim “animal” love as the highest value is called into question. Glorified as the highest feeling, it turns out, albeit in an anomalous form, to be accessible, including to animals. And the person, it turns out, is something else. Yulia Shevchuk with the actors of the Free Theater discovers this different: it becomes visible and obvious when a person, regardless of his social status, loses it, turning into – an animal.”
Tania Arcimovich (theatre critic), 7 June 2013