Sharmanka
Creator - Eduard Bersudsky
Director - Tatiana Jakovskaya
Company - Sharmanka Theatre
www.sharmanka.co.uk
Venue - Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery 0141 552 7080
14 King St near Tron Theatre and beside a good Russian cafe Cossachok
Times - Note new timetable
Tickets £4,
conc £3, children under 16 - free Please book in advance by
phone or e-mail.
Performances each week.
Performances Tue,Thu,Sun at 7pm
Matinee Sun at 3pm
Small groups are welcome any other time by appointment.
Reviewer Thelma Good
It's theatre, sculpture, engineering and delights the eye! Several times
a week there are performances by this unique theatre of the kinetic
sculptures made by Eduard Bersudsky on the second floor of a converted
warehouse in King Street Glasgow. Spot Lenin leaning out of a balcony
and Stalin with his axe in The Tower of Babel where many carved
wooden figures are busily at work but who is in control? Above on the
ceiling The Circle of Fools looks down at us as we move around
our eyes drawn by one mechanical sculpture after another as they spring
into life to a background of music, casting moving shadows. Extraordinary
made from wood, discarded metal artifacts, this artist transforms them.
It's as if the object turns to us and says, "Look at me. They tried
to scrap me but as Maya Angelou says still I rise. "
There's The Orchestra where a tail-coated conductor raises his
baton as the bells and xylophone play, the very precarious Tower
of Pisa where all the little figures try to keep their balance and
the one dedicated to the great Russian playwright and novelist Bulgakov.
Watch La Strada where a couple are locked in to moving one another,
I hope it's not your relationship shown there! I could try to describe
them all but it's when you see them move into life in the atmospheric
lighting in the gallery that you realise their full magic. But there
is no whimsy here, this art, theatre makes us laugh at and think about
the ironies and macabre sides of history, life and our humanity.
Eduard Bersudsky and Tatiana Jakovskaya, herself a noted theatre director
and critic, left Russia in 1993 with Eduard's sculptures and kinemats.In
the seven years they have been in Scotland these mechanical and wood
moving objects have been added to. Look up in the gallery and you'll
see one The Last Eagle in Scotland searching for a roost after
the commercial forests trees have all been planted too close and left
no perches. There are more new ones both in the gallery and elsewhere,
You may have seen Eduard's work already. In the Museum of Scotland and
Royal Museum's Great Hall, Edinburgh is the 10 metre Millennium Clock
Tower. This was built in co-operation between Eduard Bersudsky,
the late Tim Stead (a superb wood designer), Jurgen Tubbecke and Anika
Sandstrom, who all choose to come from other places to live and work
in Scotland. I have heard it suggested its strongly political message
and chimes should ring out in the future Scottish Parliament building
still being built at Holyrood in Edinburgh - an excellent idea! Look
up for St Mungo, a kenetic sculpture, installed in 2003 on the
Tron Clock Tower in the Trongate, Glasgow. There were four on display
including Titanic in the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow.
Phone or e-mail in advance to see a performance of these marvellous
objects which stimulate thought even as they make you smile. Best theatre
lives in the mind after you have seen it, these are vividly living in
mine now. I strongly recommend you go and see them for yourselves, I'm
going back, for the fantastic detail means you can't see take it all
in in just one visit.
© Thelma Good
3 April 2001 and revised 4 February 2004.
