Talk: Tarkovsky in London

Pushkin House in collaboration with The Stanislavski Centre for Contemporary Practice at Rose Bruford College invites to join the talk about film director Andrey Tarkovsky. In 1983 he came to London at the invitation of the Royal Opera House to direct his first opera production, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. At the time Irina Brown, having moved to Britain in 1978, was directing a project for a fringe opera company, mentored by the Head of Staff Producers at ROH, who invited her to come on board as Tarkovsky’s interpreter and second assistant director on the production.

During an evening of conversation with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, Brown will recall the time spent with Tarkovsky working on the production of Boris Godunov (revived by her on a number of occasions at the ROH as well St Petersburg and Monte Carlo). His work and his approach to the creative process has informed her work ever since. They were not only colleagues but also good friends. Brown and her husband invited the Tarkovskys to stay with them throughout their three months’ sojourn in London

Brown will for the first timeshare photographs of Tarkovsky taken by her in London and Paris in the final years of his life. In addition, Brown will play short edited excerpts of recordings of public lectures Tarkovsky gave at that time in London, at the peak in his creative career, yet tortured by being separated from his 13 year-old-son who was kept hostage in Moscow by the Soviet authorities. Tarkovsky was to die of cancer in 1986, having never made it back to the Soviet Union.

Born and educated in St Petersburg, Irina Brown has lived and worked in Britain for over forty years. Her prolific career has spanned opera and theatre, classical drama and new writing. An innovative interpretation of classics, physicality, and evocative visual language is the basis of her theatrical practice. Irina was Artistic Director of Tron Theatre, Glasgow and Joint Artistic Director of the Natural Perspective Theatre Company, London. She has directed for the Royal National Theatre and Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Scottish Opera, Mariinsky and Opéra de Monte-Carlo. She is Curator of the Stanislavski Centre for Contemporary Practice (Rose Bruford College).