The Mobile Art Theater

June 28, 2019

Would you like to combine a walk around Moscow while «viewing» the story of The Master and Margarita? The Studio Future History of writer Mikhail Zygar [*] and journalist Karen Shahinyan launched the Mobile Art Theater application.

This Mobile Art Theater allows you to «view» performances online. It's simple, it’s an application for your smartphone with a collection of audio plays. Each of them is immersive: you need to walk along a given route and listen to the production. In fact, the whole action takes place in your head, there are only the voices of the heroes while the city is your scenery. The viewing algorithm is simple: buy a play, come to the right place at any convenient time and listen. In fact, you can turn on the recording at home, but this is not so impressive - it’s better to wander around the places where the events take place. For example, with The Master and Margarita play, which lasts about 85 minutes, you will walk about three kilometers through the streets and back streets in the neighbourhood of the Patriarch's Ponds.

The director transfered the story to today's Moscow. Ivan Bezdomny is not locked in the clinic - he goes there voluntarily - and Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy became an unscrupulous developer of an elite complex. The episodes are not always tied to locations from the novel, with exception of the Patriarch's Ponds and the Bulgakov House, but they are ingeniously inscribed in the urban environment. When Azazello offers his cream to Margarita, for instance, a mirror comes around the corner. And when the heroine is flying over Moscow, in reality, she just swings on a swing in front of the monument to Mayakovsky, but viewers can experience the same thing - if there is an empty seat available, of course.

Some famous Russian actors, journalists and TV-presenters participated in the production, like Ingeborg Dapkunayte (Woland), Leonid Parfenov (Berlioz), Ksenia Sobchak (Georges Bengalsky), Alexandra Rebenok (Margarita), Yuri Kolokolnikov (the master) and Alexey Venediktov (Pontius Pilate).

Mobile Art Theater

After the premiere of The Master and Margarita, the plans are to produce one new performance per month.

[*] Mikhail Zygar is a former editor-in-chief of Дождь [Dozhd], the only independent TV channel in Moscow, and the author of the bestseller All the Kremlin's Men.

Practical information

Download on the Apple Store
Download on Google Play

Price per play: 379 rubles (5,29 euro)

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