A Kazakh “place of power” is in the making through the initiative of young director and producer Rustem Begenov, who last year created the cross-genre Medea.Material with sixteen girls from the Eat Models agency. The one-hour performance, produced by the ORTA Center for Universal Arts, was shown only a few times—in November 2016 in a loft space of the MEGA shopping mall. By December, however, it was brought to Moscow, where it was presented at the Meyerhold Center as part of the off-program of the prestigious NET festival, which for 18 years has showcased a cross-section of contemporary European theatre.

The artistic gesture of placing all elements on equal footing dissolves—like in a chemical solution—any form of violence toward the viewer. We are not forced to empathize or to understand; instead, we are invited to see and to feel. This encounter with a new kind of art, taking place on the top floor of a shopping mall, feels like a fitting bridge into the future—one in which the growing prominence of the Kazakh language will be inseparably linked with theatre.

By placing something local within the context of European theatrical culture and advanced engineering, Rustem Begenov makes the Kazakh part of a multicultural space. In this space, there are no primary or secondary elements, only differences—often cultures that do not easily merge. Equality and the simultaneous presence of difference within a shared space: this is the idea of a future in which wars may still exist, but not within the realm of art.