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Artistic Collaborations

I CAN SPEAK
a poetry performance
by Marina Kazakova (BE) & Sara Maino (IT)

Production 2023

Supported by Science Communication Funding of LUCA School of Arts.
Premiered at TomorrowToday (LA, USA) and Specs’ Twelve Adler Museum Cafe (SF, USA) in December 2023.

Description

“I Can Speak” is a poetry performance presented by Marina Kazakova and Sara Maino. Loosely autobiographical, it incorporates poems composed and recited by the two authors, along with their individual monologues. It unfolds around memories revisited by the two poets, highlighting key moments in their lives that pushed them in discovering their own language — the language of poetry.

The show is dedicated to depicting the most crucial process that every person must undergo at some point—the process of “gathering” or “concentrating” one’s personality, discovering the language of your own.

This is a journey through the thorns of the contexts in which we are raised towards the stars of self-discovery.

Marina does this journey from the culture of silence, the environment of the crumbling of the Soviet regime. It is in silence that poetry, like prayer, arose in her. In contrast, Sara’s poetic journey originates from the meadow of Monte Velo in Trentino, Italy — a mythical gathering place where stories are shared in a circle every Sunday.  The tales shared here connect the Trentino valleys to Sicily, Africa to Lake Garda; they traverse the ocean, reach America, and then return to a thousand meters Velo. At the same time, the meadow is encircled by  mountains that obscure the horizon, creating a sense of confinement.

“I can speak” is both the voice of two artists in a challenging time, and the birth of a unique creative speech act.


*The performance is part of the showcasing the outputs of Kazakova’s recently completed PhD on symphonism.

FORESTA ROSSA
a poetry performance
by Marina Kazakova (BE) & Sara Maino (IT)

Production 2023

Supported by Culture Moves Europe.
Premiered at the 6th International Literary Festival FLII – WORDS OF FIRE.

Description

Foresta Rossa is a two-poets intermedia show featuring spoken poetry and live painting. The performance is created specifically for a festival location in Lousa (Portugal) that was impacted by forest fires. The show aims to address the issue of environmental emergency and its effects on people, in the face of the increasing threat of global warming.

The performance consists of a pre-structured dialogue, with improvisational parts that respond to the unique context of the performance location. The site-specific element of the show involves visits to the location to collect memories from victims and analyze artifacts of forest fires.

CAFE EUROPA
a poetry performance
by Marina Kazakova (BE) & Sara Maino (IT)

Production 2023

Supported by The Research Foundation Flanders and LUCA School of Arts.
Premiered at Festival Internazionale di Poesia Palabra en el mundo di Venezia 2023.

Description

Two characters (Europa and the East-Comer) meet in a café in an unknown city. They confess their visions, feelings and memories to each other, giving the sense to seemingly solipsistic monologues.

LETTERS TO A SILVER STAR
a poetry performance
by Marina Kazakova (BE) & Sara Maino (IT)

with a contribution of Giorgio Briani’s music (IT), John Vandervelt’s vocals (USA) and Sara Maino’s (IT) live drawing
Production 2022

*The show is part of the ongoing PhD Research of Marina Kazakova at LUCA School of Arts/KU Leuven ‘Lyric Poem. A research on how the unique characteristics of lyric poetry can be expressed in an audio-visual medium’.

Description

The show consists of a series of poems that are performed by the authors in a sequential order as a dialogue with music, live drawing and gesture.

📃Festival debut at the 34th International Hopkins Festival at Newbridge College Theatre, Newbridge Co. Kildare, Ireland, 22-23 July 2022
🎥Watch the recording of the show

REVIEWS
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I was struck by the importance of hands, during the performance at the Gerard Manley Hopkins International Festival. Hands defined the space, carved out sculptures in the air, engaged in an act of translation and communicated like picture Braille.
Elizabeth Doyle, MA Ancient & Modern Literature TCD, English UCD, MA Drama Studies UCD, MA Journalism DCU, Writer, 2022

Closely observed, lyrically told, largely a meditation on stargazing. The dialogue of two poets moves from the South of Europe – Lake Garda, to the North – Mer du Nord, from Belgium to St.Petersburg, from St. Petersburg up to the stars as secrets unwind back through time until a puzzle is complete. The performance builds up a story obliquely, like a mosaic of sounds and colours weaved into a seamless whole.
Giuseppe Serpillo (Uni. of Sassari, Sardinia), 2022

This poetry performance is a powerful demonstration of how engaging reciting can be. It showcases literature in performance.
Desmond Egan, Irish poet, publisher and artistic director of The Gerard Manley Hopkins International Festival, 2022

A moment of understanding, a passage to follow a star in the sky, a dialogue where dreams are shared and imagination takes flight.
Bruno Gaurier, Hopkins scholar and translator, 2022

A chapbook “Letters to a Silver Star” published by Editura frACTalia will soon be available at the webshop

 

 

 

 

A TALE OF TWO
poets in chiasmus

Marina Kazakova & Sara Maino
Sara Maino & Marina Kazakova

Intermedia performance
live poetry, sounds, music and video
Production 2021

Description

We take a road through the favourite verses of great poets – alchemists from different centuries, as sparkles. You just need to listen – and we will hear the innermost secrets, learn about the muses of Sappho, Francesco Petrarca, Marina Tsvetaeva, Igor Severyanin, Joseph Brodsky. The answers to all our questions are stored in encrypted messages of poets, they contain the whole palette of human feelings, relationships and experiences – love and grief, resentment and forgiveness, sin and temptation. You can overcome whole distances without fear, and stop 5 millimetres from your fate – this is the discovery we want to share in our new performance through their voices and ours.

 

SO, WHAT IS YOUR QUESTION: A Two-Poets Show

Production 2019

Description
The plot of “So, What Is Your Question” boils down to a dialogue between the two poets: Sara Maino and Marina Kazakova. The main conflict is the clash of the visible and the invisible, the inner and the outer, the internal and the external worlds.

🎥 Watch the video summary of the performance

First, we see the poet’s outer – the observer, who’s dreams, thoughts and imagination are verbal and out loud. Then, we see the inner, claiming its place and revealing itself through the smell, the emotion of fingers over a typewriter, through the poet’s eyes and, most importantly, through her magic interaction with the spectators. In the end, we try to feel the balance between the two: the visible (Marina Kazakova) and the invisible (Sara Maino), the poet and the spectator, us and the universe.

In this live poetry act, the artists display their instant thoughts on their creative relationship and why it and how it has unfolded the way it has, they come to see that there is a point within ourselves when we turn inward or outward in response to what we experience. The question is: when should we look inward for the power and when should we look outward – or maybe it is the synthesis of the two… In the closing part ‘I let my hands rain upon your trembling silencio’ the poets appear face-to-face, focusing our attention on the problem of the balance within ourselves, between each other, between us and the universe…
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