or Optimism — a rap opera after Voltaire inside an 8-bit video game.
A philosophical fairground after Voltaire, where life and death fight each other — inside an 8-bit video game.
“Candide” is a collaboration between Praktika Theatre, the Brusnikin Workshop, and scenography students from the British Higher School of Art and Design. Liza Bondar took Voltaire’s novella and turned it into a postmodern rap opera with a live orchestra, 14 performers, and large-scale video design.
The central idea is the 18th century inside a video game. Naive Candide travels through the absurdity of the world: Bulgaria, Holland, Argentina, Eldorado. Endless catastrophes with a smile — everything plays out as game levels, with the ending always waiting in the next scene.
Candide moves through Voltaire’s 18th century level by level — through catastrophes, temptations, and absurdity, where every ending becomes a new beginning.
Voltaire’s 1759 novella is retold by Rodionov and Troepolskaya — fast, brutal, and unsentimental. Each “level” destroys the hero’s faith in the best of all possible worlds, and the next one begins immediately. Bulgaria, Holland, Argentina, Eldorado. The ending is always ahead.
The performers sing, dance, and act at the same time. A live score by Andrey Besogonov, performed by the Studio for New Music symphonic ensemble. Choreography by Ira Ga. The production invented its own genre as it developed: physical theatre, live opera, and choreography all work inside it at once.
Pixel graphics set the rules of the game. Each scene has its own level: colour, pattern, noise density. The video-game logic is readable even when live bodies and voices are on stage — the 18th century is stitched through with an 8-bit grid.
Gradsky Hall was both a necessary and precise choice: a live orchestra, 14 performers, large-scale projection. Praktika could not physically accommodate a production of this size. It needed a large stage capable of holding both physical performers and a digital environment.
Praktika Theatre as producer. The Brusnikin Workshop as company. BHSAD students as scenographers and video designers. Three different working logics in one space, each with its own ethics and pace — all of which had to be held together within one production.
The video design was built as a digital environment in which the physical stage exists: it breathes with the orchestra, responds to the performers’ rhythm, and sets the temperature of each moment. Animation and live sound become one organism.
The pixel aesthetic works as structure. Each scene has its own visual “level”: a unique pattern, colour temperature, and set of elements. Moving between scenes worked like switching levels in a game — with a full reset of the visual context.
All video material was created from scratch: animated pixel patterns, background scenes, character and object sprites, dynamic textures — from dense noise fields to classical colonnades in pixels. The content was projected onto a large backdrop.
The main challenge was that the video worked with a live orchestra, whose tempo shifts from performance to performance. It was necessary to plan in advance where the video could “breathe”, and where it had to land precisely on a note or movement. Constant iteration.
Close dialogue with the designers — Yulia Staroverova and Pavel Nikitin (set and costume design). Margarita Akimova and I divided the tasks: what belongs in the physical space, and what belongs in video. That boundary was constantly being negotiated.
We must cultivate
our garden.
