"I left and never came back" is a site-specific performance designed as an interactive game. It is based on true stories of homeless people. Each show can have a maximum of 10 viewers. Each viewer will have their own hero and the story of how they lost their home. In this performance, there are no actors, the audience will become witnesses and co-authors of their heroes' stories.
12:12 Group made a performance around objects. What defines the concept of the home? Someone can't imagine home without tea in a favorite mug or a purring cat on their knees. For someone, home is any place where they brought their slippers. For someone it's where the night light shines at his favorite book. Everyone has their own main objects that create their home. But for the homeless, these are luxuries, and there are no circumstances in which they can be useful. You can look at these strange and inaccessible objects through the window, watching someone else's life. And you can imagine your life surrounded by these objects, if it went differently.
By and with: Art-group 12:12 ( Ksenia Bodrova, Marina Dadychenko, Anna Sagalchik, Tim Tkachev)
Photo credit: Kirill Voroncov, Leonid Tsoi, Ekaterina Mushinskaya
Poster design: Varvara Nevzorova
Special thanks to the center "Dom" for help with the props.
12:12 Group made a performance around objects. What defines the concept of the home? Someone can't imagine home without tea in a favorite mug or a purring cat on their knees. For someone, home is any place where they brought their slippers. For someone it's where the night light shines at his favorite book. Everyone has their own main objects that create their home. But for the homeless, these are luxuries, and there are no circumstances in which they can be useful. You can look at these strange and inaccessible objects through the window, watching someone else's life. And you can imagine your life surrounded by these objects, if it went differently.
By and with: Art-group 12:12 ( Ksenia Bodrova, Marina Dadychenko, Anna Sagalchik, Tim Tkachev)
Photo credit: Kirill Voroncov, Leonid Tsoi, Ekaterina Mushinskaya
Poster design: Varvara Nevzorova
Special thanks to the center "Dom" for help with the props.
Reviews
Alena Petlachenko
Theatre theorist, Fontanka.ru correspondent
"The word "home" is a clue here -- the performance was shown to support Nochlezhka.
And all the stories are somehow connected to the topic of homelessness or social insecurity. My hero came to SaintPetersburg to apply for the univercity, didn't get enough points and stayed in the city to apply in a year. But because of the COVID pandemics she lost her job and got to the street (spoiler: there was a hapy end but not all the heroes were that lucky). And it also seems to be important: to reflect the pandemics from the point of social consequences".
And all the stories are somehow connected to the topic of homelessness or social insecurity. My hero came to SaintPetersburg to apply for the univercity, didn't get enough points and stayed in the city to apply in a year. But because of the COVID pandemics she lost her job and got to the street (spoiler: there was a hapy end but not all the heroes were that lucky). And it also seems to be important: to reflect the pandemics from the point of social consequences".
Sonya Dymshits
Theatre playwright, director and teorist
"The performance is very attentive towards the audience, the stories and the objects. It doesn't impose anything. It gives the audience a lot of freedom -- inside the window every person can choose what and how they do. Each person decides how much time to spend near a window. There's no attempt (and it's precious for me) to make us feel pity ot guilty. We are offered to have our own experience".
Kirill Vorontsov
Photographer, animator
"...Stories that hve tactility affect us a lot. In addition the performance is anti-covid in it's message and mechenics".
Alexandra Ignatyeva
Nochlezhka volunteer
"A sudden discovery and understanding of who you are. No, it's not a banal "Remember, someone's life is worse", "Your problems are'nt problems camparing to..." and other quite fair phrases. That was an immersion into your own feelings mediated by the actions that the participants performed. And they became their own spectators. At least as it was for me.
Me. I myself, as I was rereading my hero's story (and we are totally different, nothing common), participated in something that happened inside a stranger. Loneliness. Cold. Loss. Disappointment. Wish for warmth. Memories. And still – hope. Hope. I repeat this word trying to feel all the shades and sides of this feeling. And I understand, it's true. The hope is there. Always."
Me. I myself, as I was rereading my hero's story (and we are totally different, nothing common), participated in something that happened inside a stranger. Loneliness. Cold. Loss. Disappointment. Wish for warmth. Memories. And still – hope. Hope. I repeat this word trying to feel all the shades and sides of this feeling. And I understand, it's true. The hope is there. Always."
by Karina Merkuryeva
"We are interested in the topic of homelessness, because we are in marginal condition ourselves, – Anna Sagalchik, curator of Group 1212 says. – When we passed the vulnerability index, it showed us high chances to become homeless, so this is also a personal thing.