“Art should attend us everywhere that life flows and acts.”

- Vladimir Tatlin

Tatlin’s Tower by Evan Yionoulis and Thomas Cabaniss whisks the audience back to 1918 Moscow in the first months after the communist revolution and re-creates a time when avant-garde cabaret performers believed that theatre could transform society.

A collaboration between America’s Dickinson College, UEA School of Drama and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, this UK premiere and is performed in front of the 10-metre scale model of Vladimir Tatlin’s monument erected next to the Sainsbury Centre. 

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This is a cabaret-style piece centres around Vladimir Tatlin, one of the most important figures in the Soviet avant-garde art movement in the 1920s.  The piece focuses on a rehearsal of Mystery-Bouffe, a play by Vladimir Mayakovsky (also a character in the play), in preparation for a visit from Lenin’s wife. During the piece, Tatlin is designing and discussing the philosophical ideas behind his Monument to the Third International- commonly known as Tatlin’s Tower. The play is set to music and has songs that enhance the still timely debates on artistic freedom, the power of art to create change, and the role of the artist in society.  Tatlin became famous for the design of his Tower, even though it was never built.