Ilya Epelbaum. "Theater of imagination"

Today - forty days, as Ilya Epelbaum , one of the creators of the glorious in every sense of the Shadow Theater, is no longer with us. Yes, I know that according to the laws of the genre after the words “no more with us”, it is supposed to object to himself and say something like what it is, they say, there isn’t with us when there is, when right here, nearby, always and so on.

But still, Ilya, alas, is not with us, it is not with me, and I feel this absence very sharply. And when this sharpness retreats, I do not know.

The last project of Ilya is called the "Theater of Imagination." Its essence - if very briefly - is that instead of a full -fledged, traditional theatrical performance, its brief verbal description is quite enough. Ilya managed to create several such "performances of imagination."

They seemed so close to me both in theory and in embodiment, they were so related to the practice of conceptual art that I, inspired by them, composed scripts for two more performances.

One of them Ilya managed to implement. The second, alas, remained in the form of text.

And the first thing was the last of those that we did together, and the last for Ilya. Needless to say, I value our happy cooperation!

It didn’t reach the premiere. First, the first wave of this vile infection surged, and it was not up to the prime minister. Well, then ...

The premiere will be, I have no doubt. In any case, I really dream about it.

In the meantime, so.