Delirium for Two
Lisa Channer and Vladimir Rovinsky in Delirium for Two.
1998-2008
Role: Actor and Co-Director
Playwright: Eugene Ionesco
Adapted by Vladimir Rovinsky and Lisa Channer
Yale Cabaret (1998),
East St Studios, Amherst, MA (2000),
Invited to perform at ARTS NOW: Art in a Culture of Violence Conference at SUNY New Paltz (2005), and
Minnesota Fringe Festival (2008).
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Vladimir Rovinsky and
Lisa Channer -
Set: Takeshi Kata
Lights: Robert Perry
Costumes: Lisa Channer
Sound: Vladimir Rovinsky
Photographs by Jim Peitzman.
“Delirium for Two is art with an accent at its finest…the stylistic choices work to produce a rich theatrical experience that is refreshing and totally bizarre.”
“Channer and Rovinsky successfully combined the dark, tragicomic view associated with an Eastern European sensibility with the ebullient quirkiness of the ‘American’ character.”
Trapped inside a relationship tainted by boredom, hatred and mutual dependence, the couple argues relentlessly. Outside of their cell-like home, the war rages, reaches an apocalyptic climax and gives way to a victory celebration. Meanwhile, simultaneously attracted to and repelled by each other, the man and woman relive their first meeting, bicker over the right name for the species of a turtle and disagree about who won the war.
The battles outside and within feed off of each other, drive the action of the play and, in this bilingual adaptation, create a metaphor for today’s political landscape. The couple communicates in two languages; he speaks primarily Russian and she primarily English. They understand each other, although rather than clarify, their communications generate arguments, stale-mates and moments of tension broken only by flights of fantasy to an imagined, idealized past.
The world created is both absurdly funny and terribly sad in true Ionesco fashion, putting into personal language the suspicion of difference and inability to communicate that pervade national and international relations. By its unexpected end, the play reflects on the personal and the political with chilling resonance and absurd humor for a world that is war obsessed. Finally we are left to wonder how the couple got where they are and who, if anyone, is watching over them.