SCREAMS FROM THE UNDERGROUND

“Screams from the Underground”

Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, stage adaptation by Stoyan Radev, directed by Stoyan Radev, a one-man performance by Yordan Rusin

“Screams from the Underground” is a performance based on Dostoevsky’s text Notes from Underground.

Nietzsche wrote that in these notes truth is not presented as a philosophical argument, but screams out in pain, because only in that way can truth reveal itself. That is why we turn the text into a performance — so that it can happen, be experienced, and not merely be read.

The “underground man” puts his finger on his own wound, reaches complete self-exposure, and confesses his absolute disagreement with the orderly world and its laws, not sparing himself his own guilt and powerlessness. There is no salvation, unless honest confession is salvation.

In the preface to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche speaks of the “last man.” He seeks comfort, not meaning, avoids suffering and risk; for him there is no God, no truth, no purpose, only cynical comfort. He lives long, but shallowly. It is as if Nietzsche were describing modern man.

We offer an encounter between this modern man and the underground man, and believe the effect will be, at the very least, stirring.

Stoyan Radev