ON NAKED SOIL
Imagining Anna Akhmatova
Written by Rebecca Schull -- Directed by Susan Einhorn

“They should have shown you --mocker,
delight of your friends, hearts’ thief,
naughtiest girl of Pushkin’s town --
this picture of your fated years,
as under the glowering wall you stand,
shabby, three hundredth in the line,
clutching a parcel in your hand,
and the New Year’s ice scorched by your tears.
See there the prison poplar bending!
No sound. No sound. Yet how many
innocent lives are ending..."

REVIEWS OF THE DEBUT PRODUCTION

"Rebecca Schull's playwriting craftsmanship shines in this production about the tragic life of Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova during the 1930s Stalinist purges."

--Larry Litt, NY Theatre Wire

Anna Akhmatova's words are simple yet strong, jarring but undeniably poignant. The same can be said of playwright and actor Rebecca Schull's portrayal of the remowned Russian poat as she looks back on her life..."

--Ronni Reich, Backstage

"The greatest accomplishment of On Naked Soil lies in its spot-on dramatic realization of the tone of Akhmatova’s poetry itself. Political and personal hardships make for dynamic art, yet Akhmatova’s short verses, with their simple syntax and strict meter, resist indulgent melodrama. Her work is astonishing for what the poet Joseph Brodsky called its “note of controlled terror” and it is precisely that note which On Naked Soil strikes so remarkably."

--Li Cornfeld, Off-off Online

"More than history, Soil is about the words of one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets, who lived under one of the twentieth century’s least poetic regimes. It would be great to see Soil performed together with Schull’s Ginzburg play, but separately her Akhmatova work offers much to contemplate."

--Joe Bendel, J.B. Spins

PRESS RELEASE of the premiere production at Theater for the New City, NYC