Demon: A View from Above – When director and performers are scenographers

Dmitry Krymov is a Russian artist who has developed an international reputation through work that combines images from paintings, poems, prose, plays, music and popular culture to create phantasmagorical, one-of-a-kind performances. Following no obvious linear narratives and no literary dramaturgy as such, the images built up on Krymov’s stage may be seen as dynamic montages. Montages because they combine visual and aural elements from various sources; dynamic because they are constructed literally before our eyes. Of special interest is the fact that his performance style developed along aside of, and emerged from, his approach to teaching scenography, where designers actually devise and execute the performances.