A Profitable Position

 ...O. Ostrovsky is great because he, like nobody else could combine social and personal things...

  ... As yet about today, that, perhaps, correctly, no one could say with such, in general, and ruthlessness, and rage, and prophetic gift, as Ostrovsky did. I think, I have the right to say that because I produced many of his plays in the recent years. Let me just name them: Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man, Wolves and Sheep, Balsaminov’s Wedding, Innocent Victims, and now A Profitable Position. Now you can imagine that I am literally filled with Ostrovsky. Apparently, that is for a reason. And maybe Ostrovsky has never been more demanded in Russia (and also in Ukraine) as today. One can hardly find a theater which has never produced Ostrovsky’s plays, - all of them do that, and sometimes more than once.

  The fact is that Ostrovsky, following Moliere, seems not to have left a single phenomenon, not a single dash of our character, and simply not a single commandment, which we constantly violate and about which he speaks in his works. So, when it comes about Ostrovsky, every stage director producing him must feel the poetry of his works, let alone such routine things as characters and collisions. Everyone knows that Ostrovsky is canonical. But it seems to me that the best of his plays allow to address the deeper issues. Apparently, philosophical parable plays a crucial role in that. That is why he is complex, and great, and deep, and interesting for everyone who touches it. 

  ...The very headline “A Profitable Position” on the play title is hypnotizing, and no one pays attention to the first line: “I love you...”

And that is the key to understanding the whole play.

  “A Profitable Position” is the most wonderful play devoted to love. Who else could ever write about it as good as Ostrovsky?

  ...And that was the only reason why “A Profitable Position” is so socially sharp. Love is the truest fragment, which reconciles the concept of incomes ...

  Almightiness of money...

  And the fact that today, after a century and a half, it reads even more sharply, says about the truly prophetic gift of the Great Russian Dramatic Poet ...

  ...Nevertheless...nevertheless... I want to believe that there are things you cannot buy.

  And that the words - “Honour”, “Dignity”, “Love” - we did not leave forever in the beautiful soul of the 19th century.

  And that what I wanted to show in this play...

Arkady Katz (stage director).