"after akhmatova"

After Akhmatova, the play presented until May 1, 2011 at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, is a powerful insight into the “Great Purge” that Stalin launched in Russia between 1936-1938 to eliminate – by imprisonment or execution – all artistic and social threats to his leadership. At the time, Stalin reforms the state security organizations and orders the purge of Old Bolsheviks, dissidents, “elites”, ethnic minorities, military officers and family members of his opponents.

When Alan, a young American academic, travels to the U.S.S.R. to interview Lev Gumilyov, he believes he knows all there is to know about Lev’s late mother: Anna Akhmatova. Once a writer of love poems, Anna became famous for “Requiem”, which is an ode to her imprisoned son and a dangerous condemnation of Stalin. As he searches for answers, Alan becomes entangled in Lev’s relationship to his mother, to “Requiem” and to its impossible legacy.

The play is inspired by the life and times of Anna Akhmatova, poet born in 1889 near Odessa, who is known to have started writing “Requiem” between 1935-1940 as the Great Purge takes hold. Unable to risk a printed copy, she pens the verses, memorizes them, then burns the manuscripts. in 1963, for the first time, “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova was published in Munich.

In 1966, Anna A. dies in Leningrad at the age of 76.