Songs From Oblivion

Based on Yue Dong's novel A Supplement to the Journey to the West, or, The Tower of Myriad Mirrors

“It’s not too late to become whom you might become.
To create the life of your dream.
Realizing your hidden potential
Is not frightening!
It’s fascinating!”

Inna Dulerain wrote a play based on the 17th century Chinese novel, A Supplement to the Journey to the West, or, The Tower of Myriad Mirrors. The action takes place in our days.
The main heroine - a girl in depression - is a participant in a live talk, self-help television show. People try to help her, "transferring" her consciousness into various potential versions of her life. This is possible thanks to an experimental high-tech device, The Tower of the Myriad of Mirrors. As she enters various versions of her own reality, “living through" the options of her life, the heroine is not relieved of her problems, although a disturbing psychic shift begins to affect the talk show host, as well as its guests and participants. The device breaks down, the girl turns out to be the Monkey King, and everything surrounding her is an illusion. As a result, the Monkey King is freed from illusions and achieves true liberation.

A-Wing Hsu – The Girl (Monkey King) is a participant in a talk show. She is Chinese, 25 years old, considers herself a “loser,” and does not understand who she is or why she is alive. She keeps a video diary.

Nicole Young – The Talk Show Host is a life coach, a personal success trainer. She is the model Brit, possesses impeccable manners and is the bearer of the true spirit of the victor.

Inna Dulerain – The Doctor is a psychologist and programmer from Russia who created an experimental computer system dubbed The Tower of the Myriad of Mirrors, which, when it is connected to a person’s brain, transforms dream into reality. The doctor’s passion for her creation borders on the maniacal.

Chara Kolaiti – The Pop Star is a YouTube star from Greece, who woke up famous one morning and, ever since, it has been her job to “be popular and never be forgotten.”

The Songs From Oblivion project is created simultaneously by performance artists in various countries. A surrealistic novel that forms the basis of the play and performance describes a mirror “reality,” through which characters can journey, believing that everything around them is real. Designer Stepan Lukyanov created eight monitors on which the topics of the talk show are projected. The screens are elastic, so you can walk through them. The focal point of the stage design is one screen that exists in various planes and finally explodes. The entire performance is an illusion, a dream existing in the mind of the main heroine. The disembodied voice which controls this sweet dream from above is, in fact, a computer program, siri. The culmination of the soundscape created by composer Alexei Nadzharov, is a song composed for karaoke, in which the audience may participate. However, the song about a Pied Piper calling to an artificial paradise all those who are ill is sung by an artificial voice, a robot. And yet, true liberation is possible, and the heroine does find it.

Performed in English with Russian subtitles.