"Things haven't been easy for me either. That's why I lost my looks. No, don't say anything. I know I have. My youth is gone."
Yelena
YELENA
THE PLAY
"It's this...restlessness that torments me...It always has...The need to be moving...To be doing something new...Or else I feel that life is simply passing me by...That I'm not really living at all...That's why I've never amounted to anything" Yelena
Yelena is South African playwright Reza de Wet's second play in her Russian Trilogy. First performed in 1998, Yelena uses characters from Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, set eight years later. The action takes place over the course on a single night and explores decay, obsession and compulsion.
HE WRITER
"Instead of comedy and pathos, the humour in Yelena is very black and apart from empathising with the characters I also wanted the audience to experience a certain horror as the ghastly logic of the character's fear and obsession are revealed". Reza de Wet in conversation with Juanita Perez, 2001.
Reza de Wet was a South African playwright and actor, who wrote in both English and Afrikaans. Her first play, Diepe Grond (African Gothic) was first performed in 1985 and immediately established her as an exciting new voice in South African and Afrikaans theatre. De Wet never wrote any overtly political plays. Instead she used subversive storytelling - often utilizing elements of fairy tales, magical realism and symbolism - to create beautifully unsettling, radical work.
Reza de Wet wrote twelve plays during her career and she was awarded more theatre and literary awards than any other South African playwright.
She died in 2012.