"For the first time in my life, I felt like a truly Russian writer"

On Radio Dolin - a conversation with the playwright and director Ivan Vyrypaev

“Radio Dolin” is a project for film critic Anton Dolina , where he talks about cinema and not only. In the new issue, he talks with the playwright, director and actor Ivan Vyrypaev. After the start of the war, Vyrypaeva came out in support of Ukraine and most Russian theaters refused his plays.

Ivan Vyrypaev is one of the most popular modern playwrights writing in Russian. A native of Irkutsk and a graduate of the Irkutsk Theater School, he began his career in the theater as an actor, and in the 2000s he became famous throughout Russia with plays “Oxygen”, “Genesis No. 2” and “July”. These plays, in particular, successfully went to the Practice Theater, which Svarypaev subsequently headed for several years.

The directorial debut of Vyrypaev in the cinema took place in 2006 with the film "Euphoria" awarded at the Venetian festival. It was followed by “oxygen”, “dance dance” and “salvation”, in which conversations about the new generation were combined with the “eternal questions” of Russian literature: crimes, punishment, love, jealousy, enlightenment and clouding of reason.

For the past eight years, Ivan Vyrypaev has been living and working in Poland. In March 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vyrypaev said that he would translate all the author’s deductions for his plays staged in Russia to help Ukrainian refugees. As a result, most Russian theaters shot Vyrypaev performances from the repertoire.

The playwright told Anton Valley why and under what conditions he was ready to give the rights to his plays to Russian theaters. They also discussed the Teal House project, in which Vyrypaev and his wife, actress Karolina Grushka, help the natives of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, working in the theater and forced to escape from war or regime.

In addition, Dolin and Vyrypaev discussed whether art can help someone during the war and how it will be after it, how to talk about terrible events with children and what to do if your plays criticizing European society like Valentina Matvienko.