Musical performance

STUPID LIFE

When we are dead, we are not aware of our death – it's painful only for others. The same can be claimed if you are stupid – it only causes pain to those around you.

The meeting of two iconic cabaret groups – Ukrainian Dakh Daughters and British The Tiger Lillies – with the talented actresses of the Dailes Theatre in the musical performance Stupid Life. At a time when humanity is shaken by evil, it's cowardly to look away from the uncomfortable and hurtful. It's necessary to the very core of the bone to laugh at the stupid life – especially in a black and radically honest manner. In a visually suggestive stand-up show format, in three different languages – Latvian, Ukrainian and English – the artists will search for answers to the questions of freedom and democracy, stirring up the air on the stage with heretical humour and deadly irony.

Dakh Daughters is an internationally acclaimed Ukrainian freak-cabaret founded in 2012 in Kyiv. Since Russia's full-scale invasion in Ukraine in 2022, the troupe has chosen France as its home-base, performing concerts in Europe and many other regions. Fusing post-folk, dusty variety, sometimes even five languages and Shakespearean sonnets, Dakh Daughters is perhaps the most visible phenomenon of Ukrainian music and performing arts.

The artistic director of the Dakh Daughters is Ukrainian theatre director, professor and playwright Vlad Troitskyi, who in 1994 founded the first independent theatre company in his native country – the Center of Contemporary Art Dakh Theatre – and GogolFest, the largest multidisciplinary festival of contemporary art in Ukraine. Both of them have become the most recognizable creative centres of theatre, music and contemporary art in Ukraine.

British music trio The Tiger Lillies have been at the vanguard of the scene for over 30 years with their darkly grotesque, nihilistically snarky and punk stage personas and witty songs. Their aesthetics are inspired by almost everything – both Kurt Weill and the French chanson, as well as miming and a London prostitute named Lily, who wore costumes with animal prints. It is the bubbling Berlin of the Weimar era a hundred years ago, which now chants in English.

Performance in Latvian, Ukrainian and English, with Latvian and English sur-titles.

Performers:
Solomiia Melnyk, Ruslana Khazipova, Anna Nikitina, Natalia Halanevych (Dakh Daughters); Tetiana Troitska (CCA Dakh); Martyn Jacques, Adrian Stout, Budi Butenop (The Tiger Lillies); Ērika Eglija-Grāvele, Ilze Ķuzule-Skrastiņa, Ieva Segliņa (Dailes Theatre)

Director, dramaturg – Vlad Troitskyi, lighting artist – Astkhik Hryhorian, video, sur-titles – Mariia Yakovenko, sound engineer – Simon Auffret

Curator – Andrii Palatnyi, Artistic manager of Dakh Daughters – Iryna Gorban, Manager of GOGOLFEST – Anna Basova, Managers of The Tiger Lillies – Martyna Lach, Tim Whitehead, Coordinator – Viktoriia Fedoriv, Producers – Festival of Contemporary Arts GOGOLFEST (Ukraine), Dailes Theatre (Latvia)