Dashoguz State Music and Drama Theater named after Nurmukhammed Andalib started staging a performance based on the Turkmen heroic epic "Gorogly". The embodiment on the theater stage will be one of the most dramatic chapters of the Bezergen epic, touching on the themes of friendship, fidelity, love and slander that led to tragic consequences.
Compiled in the tradition of oral stories, the legendary epic about Gyorogly and his forty horsemen has survived to this day thanks to the art of bakhshi-destanchi. They memorized the lines of the epic from their teachers, who, in turn, drew knowledge from other singer-storytellers.
“It is our sacred duty to tell the world about the art of Turkmen bakhshi,” says Guvanch Baimedov, the author of the staging and director of the future performance. - Keepers of musical traditions and folk singing, they were able to convey to today's contemporaries a unique in its essence, cultural heritage. We set about staging the chapter on Bezergen, because it reveals the concepts of honor and duty. It also contains a message about striving for a better life, which carries an instructive character, that you need to be able to forgive and see the good in the world around you.
The entire theater troupe and professional bakhshi Amanmurad Kakaev are involved in the new performance. The action is conceived in such a way that it is through the singing of the bakhshi - dutar and accompanying it, gydzhak - that the main plot of the story will develop. Actors who instantly transform into epic characters will be able to try on several roles at once.
The good news about the inscription of the art of dutar making, the performing musical art of playing it and the art of bakhshi on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity served as an inspiring factor for the implementation of a new theatrical production.
It is worth noting that in December 2015, the Turkmen epic "Gorogly" was also added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Interest in the national hero has long gone beyond the borders of Turkmenistan. Back in 1843, a part of the legend in French was published in a Parisian independent magazine. The translation was carried out by the French writer George Sand, who noted that Gorogly personifies the moral code of the nation.
