Grammar of Insomnia

The name of honored actress of the Russian Federation Alla Azarina is well known to theater lovers. In the radio play “Grammar of Insomnia,” the actress plays the role of Marina Tsvetaeva. Tsvetaeva’s art is in many ways not “stage-like”: her prose works are a stream of emotional consciousness, and in her letters there is a whole life running in parallel with real events.

The script of the radio play “Grammar of Insomnia,” which tells the love story of Marina Tsvetaeva for Boris Pasternak (Nikolay Karachentsov) and for Rainer Maria Rilke (Georgy Taratorkin), was written by Alla Azarina herself—mixing letters, poems, and love confessions of three “Orpheuses” from the early twentieth century. She performs the role with tearful tragic intensity of a broken life, of the unshared feelings of one poet for another. Her work is self-sufficient. The actress speaks and sings with her soul.