Chikatilo, I tried to go beyond my limits. However, the primary intent was in no way to shock or amaze the audience with my acting skills…    

     …Playing Chikatilo was indeed hard. Every play was leaving me in the dirt I could merely wash myself out. You know, acting as such a queer (to say the least) personality on stage on a regular base will do the actor no good. My goal nevertheless was to reveal the very essence of this horrific man... You know, actors tend to absolve their characters from blame, and not like by some superior will, but to understand who this person is and why he acts this and no other way.   The play goes as a monologue of the man, burdened with dreadful crimes, who’s appealing to God on the verge of execution. And  it is quite possible to make the play the mean to shock the audience and draw pervert interests.  However, the other possibility is, while still in some avant-garde form, to stay within the system of spiritual values. What did Fedor Dostoyevskiy have in mind when exploring the inner self of Raskolnikov? What, to explain how bad it was to kill old ladies? Well, the art is for art’s sake, so to speak. All those tasks we impose on the art are nothing more but our own feelings and impressions we’ve got from reading the novel. One person may withstand Dostoyevsky pretty well, whereas another, flipping through pages of “Prestuplenie i nakazanie” (The Crime and Punishment), might go out hunting for a victim.  All in all, I don’t think anyone would ever see me playing Chikatilo again, because I’m not going through this peculiar project again…         

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