Russian Soup - Inotrope Productions
Directed by John Bolton, created and performed by actors Greg Ulfan
and Joseph Sherman – both of Russian Jewish backgrounds, Russian
Soup is an innovative and highly moving theatrical and music performance
based on the great 19th and early 20th century literary masters such
as Gogol, Chekov, Dostoevsky and Babel. Their inspiration to recreate
these great short stories for the wider audience comes from a great
tradition and culture of Russian and Jewish story telling. This stories
recount our most profound human experiences, the history and wisdom
that we have learned – or indeed failed to learn.
Russian Soup carries the tradition founded on the notion that story
telling of ancient and profound human experience is critical to the
survival of culture. Russian Soup links the great dreams, hopes, language,
faith and culture of Russian and Jewish generations to their emotional
and cultural source and nourishment. The tradition of story telling
through theatre lives on because it remains relevant to the times in
which we all live. The great stories remain classics because they are
our own most personal, intimate and emotional selves writ large.
Russian Soup is a series of highly portable short plays and stories,
that mix English and Russian language and idioms, from 10 minutes to
30 minutes each. The program of stories covers a wide terrain of experiences,
subjects and topics; comic tales with elements of dark tragedy, romance
and heroic drama. These stories can be provocative, sharp, funny, witty
and full of human pathos.
