A Propos of the Wet Snow – (Based on “Notes From Underground” by Feodor Dostoevsky).
One of the most famous literal articulations on the irrationality of the human soul has been adapted into an emotionally challenging and physically active work touching on the main problems of modern life: hatred, destruction, intellectual and physical terrorism.

These “Notes” theatrically deliver the story of the notorious Dostoevskian hero – a person from the underground.  On examples from his own life he demonstrates the paradoxical quality of the human soul – “the territory on which God and devil carry on their battle”.  Starting from the philosophical question about the nature of evil in the human soul our protagonist quickly moves into the anecdote from his life.  Getting drunk at the farewell party with his old school fellows he challenges one of the most popular and successful members of their group.  Confronting this successful young man our hero is questioning all prosperous parts of society, everyone who corrupts with public rules and lies, who represents the corpus of “life winners”.  In his drunken debauchery the man from the underground defends the individual truth and personal freedom against compliance with social rules and norms of behavior.

By challenging the relationship between the individual and society, Dostoevsky touches upon a most vulnerable issue of the day – why people choose a freedom of doing something that hurts them rather than complying with public rules and be rewarded for it?

Oleg Liptsin (Dostoevskian Hero/Director) - Mr. Liptsin studied theater at Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow with Anatoly Vasiliev and Mikhail Butkevich.  He worked as an actor and assistant director at the renowned Moscow State Theatre “School of Dramatic Arts” (Theatre de l’Europe) under artistic direction of Anatoly Vasiliev. For 3 years Oleg performed in a worldwide known production “Six Characters In Search Of An Author” by Pirandello.

In 1989 Oleg established one of the first independent theatre ensembles in Ukraine – Theater Club, Kiev – which became a leading experimental and avant-garde theatre-laboratory in the country. 

He has been awarded a National Award for Experimental Work in Theatre by the Theatre Union of Ukraine, won the “Best Director” award and 4 nominations for “Best Director” and “Best Actor” in Ukraine, participated in more than 30 international festivals.

Currently Mr. Liptsin works as director and professor of drama in different parts of the world.  He established and conducted the post-graduate educational program in stage directing at National University of Theatre, Film and TV in Kiev, teaches acting at Slavic University in Moscow and at Shelton Theater School in San Francisco, manages the International Theater Ensemble.
www.internationaltheaterensemble.com

Ai-Cheng Ho (Prostitute) – Ai-Cheng Ho was born in Tau-yuan, Taiwan.        She studied acting with Oleg Liptsin at Acting International in Paris and was trained in Jacques Lecoq’s acting method at the International Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris and International School of Performing Arts in London.  Since 2004 Ai-Cheng Ho is a member of ITE, she participated in such ITE projects as ‘Cherry
Orchard On Plain-Air’ based on Anton Chekhov, ‘The Snake-Woman’ by Carlo Gozzi (Commedia dell’arte) and ‘Mozart and Salieri’ by Pushkin.  She holds a Master of Performing Arts with major in Film study from the University Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne. 

Kevin Quennesson (Video Art) – Kevin was born in France and studied sciences in the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, leading French school of Engineering.  He came to the USA in 2004 and studied philosophy at Stanford and computer vision and graphics at GeorgiaTech.  His interests are in the intersection of technologies and the humanities.  He showed his first work called “conscious=camera”, which is based on real time body tracking as a poetic interpretation of Satre’s phenomenology images in the work “L’Imagimaire”,  in August 2005 at Siggraph, LA in the Emerging Technology and Art Gallery category.  In 2006, he presented at Siggraph in Boston his "traces" installation aimed at representing people passage and absence.  "traces" is featured in the large scale "quell code" (source code) Kunst an Bau installation in the new headquarters of SAP in Germany.  "Quell code" was made in partnership with the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria.

Since 2006 he has been featured artist of Victory Media Network in Texas, the largest outdoor media art gallery in the world.  He currently lives in California and is a Apple Inc software development engineer.

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