In the Solitude of Cotton Fields | John Malkovich - Ingeborga Dapkunaite

Poised and plain-spoken, a peerless Valmont in the Oscar-winning film “Dangerous Liaisons” (playing alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close in 1988), a leading light of the historic Steppenwolf experimental theater company in Chicago (from 1976 to 2020), and the only Hollywood actor to have let us to take a deep dive into their mind (in “Being John Malkovich”, the cult art-house movie written by Charlie Kaufman) is appearing at Onassis Stegi for the first time, performing the role of the darkest client in the world theater repertoire.

“If you are out walking at this hour and in this place, you must want something, and that something I’m sure I may help you with.” This work by Bernard-Marie Koltès, written in the style of an 18th-century philosophical dialogue, has two characters: the Dealer and the Client. We never learn the true purpose of their meeting, what the object of desire is, or the nature of their deal. Neither character says things as they really are. Everything lies hidden between the lines. Perhaps some unspoken thing lurks beneath it all…

It is this unspoken thing that is illuminated by Timofey Kulyabin in his production of “In the Solitude of Cotton Fields”, that following its premiere at Dailes theater in Riga, Latvia, between 2022, May 28-31, Greece and Onassis Stegi stages the first performance of its international tour.

Hi-tech cameras constantly surveil the two leads, gradually revealing what lies hidden between the lines and behind their various evasions: a past instance of pedophilia. As the director notes: “We are creating a show of secret desire that is punishable and which any society recognizes as criminal – according to the law. There are two actors in this play, but only one scene. We spend most of our time in subconscious, nightmarish visions…”

With John Malkovich and award-winning Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite, alternating in the roles of Client and Dealer, the work is being brought to the stage by a Russian director who first came to Greece in 2018 to present a landmark production of Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters performed exclusively in sign language.

There are two actors in our performance but only one character. We will spend most of the time in the subconscious, in the nightmares of a person who will never appear on stage. Instead, we will see two confronting figures conducting a tense, emotional and complicated dialogue. It is a dialogue of a person with his own secret desires and fears. With something he can’t even admit to himself – and at the same time, something he can’t get rid of without committing suicide. It is a story of human complexity, which faces the world where complexity is something unwanted, inappropriate, almost obscene. This world is creating inner discord, disharmony that is killing the person from the inside as some lethal disease.

-Timofey Kulyabin

-On the cusp of his 70th birthday, John Malkovich is making his first appearance at Onassis Stegi. A child of the Chicago and New York scenes before going on to immerse himself in Hollywood, playing some of the most controversial and sinister villains in ’80s and ’90s cinema, Malkovich dips selectively into the theater, both as a director and as an actor. In the former capacity, he has won the Molière Award (France) and the Milton Shulman Award (UK).

-This isn’t the first time Malkovich is co-starring alongside the acclaimed Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė. One might say they are something of an artistic duo, boasting more than ten theater and film collaborations together. Landmark moments in their partnership include the stage play “The Giacomo Variations” (which went on to be adapted for the screen, directed by Michael Sturminger) and the Russian film “About Love. For Adults Only”.

-A child of the Russian Institute of Theater Arts (GITIS) and just 37 years of age, Timofey Kulyabin stands tall among the most eminent Russian directors of the younger generation, garnering acclaim at festivals across Europe. Artistic Director of the Red Torch Theater in Novosibirsk since 2015, he is known for his radical takes on classic writers. Athenian audiences first encountered him in the summer of 2018 via just such a production, presented at the Athens Epidaurus Festival – Anton Chekov’s “Three Sisters”, performed exclusively in sign language. This deeply moving work brought Kulyabin the Russian National Theater Golden Mask Award. His recent public criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led him to seek refuge in Europe.

-Through lengthy, allusive monologues, the two leads of “In the Solitude of Cotton Fields” give themselves over to an obtuse verbal duel in which both realism and poetry nestle. As Timofey Kulyabin himself notes: “There are two actors in this play, but only one scene. We spend most of our time in subconscious, nightmarish visions of a hero we don’t see. Instead, there are two mutually opposed figures on the stage, engaging in a tense, angry, and complex dialogue. This is an inner dialogue with the self – with secret desires and fears. […] This is the story of human complexity in a world in which complexity becomes something unwelcome, misplaced, inappropriate. This world creates internal discord, a dissonance that kills a man from the inside, like a deadly disease.”

-A child of post-war France, Bernard-Marie Koltès ran away from his conservative family, launching himself into a bohemian pursuit of life and the study of the human soul while travelling across the world, taking in America, Africa, and Europe. His passion for writing struck at the age of 22, and by the end of his short life – he died of Aids in April 1989 – he had written twelve plays and novels, including “Roberto Zucco”, “Quay West”, and “Black Battles with Dogs”. “The need to write is difficult to explain,” he noted in Le Monde, a year before his death. “It’s a little like doing drugs, I think: you start by accident, you like it, then you can’t do without it, even though you can’t say you really enjoy it. It’s like heroin: it’s not the presence of it that satisfies you, it’s the lack of it that makes you suffer. Someone might wonder why it is I write for the theater when I almost never go to the theater and more often than not read novels. Maybe it’s that I love it very much. Or maybe it’s that I don’t love the theater at all, but do like to write for it.” Since his death, he is considered the French playwright most frequently staged internationally.

-Patrice Chéreau – the renowned French director who showcased Koltès’ work for the theater in all its richness – called the writer “a meteorite that streaked across our skies in profound solitude, and with incredible power”.

-“In the Solitude of Cotton Fields” was first staged in France in 1987 by Patrice Chéreau, and in Greece in 1995 by Theatro tou Notou (at the Amore Theater). Directed by Roula Pateraki, it starred Michail Marmarinos as the Dealer and Akilas Karazisis as the Client.

-“In the Solitude of Cotton Fields” has been published in Greek by Agra Publications, translated by Dimitri Dimitriadis.