Event

Kharmful Charms of Daniil Kharms

Kharmful Charms returns!

Ladies and gentlemen, don your moustaches, throw on your dandy garb for an evening of not-so-innocent pranks and antics, vignettes and dreamlike incidents, as the St. Petersburg eccentric Daniil Kharms meets ARTEL's unique brand of clownpunk. KCDK is a Russian absurdist comedy at its most illogical, violent, sad and hilarious. Experience why audiences are still talking about this show 4 years later! Your moustachioed presence will be rewarded with a cup of homemade soup (moustachioed ladies shall receive two servings).

For those new to Mr. Daniil Kharms (1905-1942), a bit of info to quicken your inquisitiveness: Kharms was an early Soviet-era surrealist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist, a post-modern artist before the term had any cultural currency. He exploded the conception of theatre as a literary representative, defining the rules of theatre not as dramatic but scenic. By the late 1920s, his anti-rational verse, nonlinear theatrical performances, and public displays of iniquitous and irrational behavior earned Kharms who always dressed like an English dandy with a calabash pipe the reputation of being a talented but highly eccentric "fool" or "crazy-man" in Leningrad cultural circles. Exiled briefly during the "relatively vegetarian" days of the early 1930s, ten years later he was imprisoned in the psychiatric ward of Leningrad Prison No. 1. Kharms died in his cell most likely from starvation in February 1942 as the Nazi blockade of Leningrad was well underway. His writings (a vast assortment of stories, miniatures, plays, poems, and pseudo-scientific/philosophical investigations) were virtually unknown until the 1970s, and not published officially in Russia until the late-1980s period of "glasnost".

Learn More at www.arteltheatre.org
Show Length: 1 hour
Themed Attire: 1930s, Dandy, Moustaches on everyone!