When the desert grows old, it will remember Bukhara

Several years ago, director and playwright Alexander Plotnikov jokingly asked his mother, "Mom, did we happen to have any relatives from Central Asia?" His mother replied, "Of course we did—your great-grandmother was from Bukhara."

This unexpected answer led the director to a place where his family's fate intersects with the official history of the 20th century. It turned out that the director's great-grandfather was an officer in the Red Army, that he took part in the siege of Bukhara. That he bombed the city, and after the establishment of Soviet power, he took a thirteen-year-old girl—the director's future great-grandmother—with him to Russia. A story was revealed in his genetic code that had never been fully told: a story about the Soviet conquest of Bukhara, displacement, loneliness, and a century of silence.

The play's goal is not to retell a family tragedy, but rather to trace how losers and winners, personal memory and greater history, are intricately and inevitably linked in our shared past.

The emergence of modern Uzbekistan is examined through the fates of those who found themselves on the other side of the historical narrative—those whose voices were forever lost.

Latecomers will not be admitted to the auditorium, and we ask that you arrive early.
Latecomers will not be admitted to the auditorium — please arrive in advance.