Seagull Variations
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"Alexander Molochnikov's direction is audacious, confident and mischievous" - The Moscow Times
Written by Eli Rarey
Created and Directed by Sasha Molochinikov
In association with En Garde Arts
Part of Under the Radar
Moscow, 2022. Colliding with the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, a theater director’s staging of The Seagull is irrevocably compromised… but that’s just the beginning. Seagull Variations is a highly imaginative theatrical production that centers on an artist’s struggle to survive censorship and the personal cost of resistance. Produced by En Garde Arts, written by Eli Rarey, and inspired by the life of Creator/Director Sasha Molochnikov, Seagull Variations contemplates the realities of creating both art and a life far from one’s home and acknowledges that the fight to preserve artistic intent is, in fact, a universal struggle. It is a poignant story of freedom and destruction and people trying to hold on to who they are.
Alexander Molochnikov is a Russian filmmaker and theater director who has been actively working in Moscow for the past decade and relocated to New York in 2022. At the age of 22, he directed 19.14 Cabaret, an anti-war play about World War I at the Moscow Art Theater of Chekhov. This production was nominated for Russia's prestigious theater award, the Golden Mask. From 2014 to 2018, he produced two more significant works at the MAT. One of these, 19.17 The Bright Path, served as a commentary on the totalitarian regime, the revolution of 1917, and contemporary Russia. His debut film, Myths, featured some of Russia's most renowned actors at the time, including Ivan Urgant, Fedor Bondarchuk, Ksenia Rappoport, and Sergey Bezrukov. His second film, Tell Her, an autobiographical family drama, filmed in St. Petersburg and LA, was nominated at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and the Kinotavr festival in Sochi, receiving an enthusiastic response in theaters. From 2018 to 2021, he worked at the Bolshoi Theater, where he directed Carlo Menotti's opera Medium and the ballet The Seagull, which won the Golden Mask award for "Best Ballet of the Year." Just before the outbreak of war, he began filming the series The Monastery, which he both wrote and directed, that ultimately became the highest-grossing series of the year in Russia. While filming, Molochnikov publicly denounced the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, which now prevents him from returning to Russia. In 2024-2025, he plans to direct Crime and Punishment at the Gesher Theater in Tel Aviv and to shoot a short film about political prisoner Sasha Skochilenko.
Part of Under The Radar, the annual festival of experimental theater.
