UNDER CONSTRUCTION

theater group DAVAI, Israel

Cast: Vitaly Azarin, Alexey Gavrielov, Fyodor Makarov
Set and sound design: Losha Gavrielov  
Costumes: Yasmin Wollek
Original music: Daniel Sinaisky
With the financial support of the Israeli Culture Ministry
Running time: 70`

Theater group DAVAI was formed in Tel-Aviv, Israel, in 2013 by Fyodor Makarov, Alexey Gavrielov and Vitaly Azarin. All three members were born in ex-USSR and moved to Israel in the 90’s. Immigration creates an impact on the personality – we all became travelers, citizens of the world. Hence our attraction to non-verbal theater and clown – media that speaks to the hearts of people in any country, bypassing the limitations of language, culture, age and creed.
Their background training includes drama, movement, clown, voice, photography, philosophy, cinematography, circus, music.
Inspired by heroes of silent comedy such as Chaplin and Keaton, by visionaries of modern theatre such as Robert Wilson, and by physical comedy such as Slava’s Snowshow and Monty Python, DAVAI create absurdist comedy shows, where touching human stories are told without use of words.
Where  are we?  We don’t know.
Where  did we  come from?  We don’t remember.
One  thing  for sure:  now it’s the  time for a cup  of tea!
A physical comedy about three eccentrics sharing a crammed run-down flat: bulbs burning out, pipes bursting, mosquitoes biting, brains jammed, the outer world sending threatening signals… But these gentlemen want to have tea, and they will have it, even if the entire world is falling to pieces!  The show pulls the audience into a poetic, phantasmagoric realm, saturated with absurd humour. And beyond the clownesque and the grotesque, the physical virtuosity and the laughter, the show reveals insights about the world and how we cope with it.
Looking at clown Fyodor Makarov, who together with his partners from the Davai group Losha Gavrielov and Vitaly Azarin, presents the fascinating show Under Construction, you’d never believe he was a third-generation Russian-Jewish intellectual. A classic prole from George Orwell’s novel “1984’ – his eyes vacant, his face dumb, his body stiff. His partners are the same.  
Maxim Reider, Jerusalem Post