Plays by Ivan Vyrypaev RU

DISTORTED THINKING (Meyatzara)

Ivan's newest play, completed in July 2026. The final interview of a man who, 20 years ago at the peak of world fame, walked away from his work, his family, and his entire familiar life—and now, 20 years later, he gives his first interview to a famous journalist who, ten years later, for some reason brings that interview onto a theater stage. The play addresses the problems of modern society and personal relationships, while also exploring the issues of linguistics and language as an expression of the thinking inherent in us from birth.

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DISTORTED THINKING

(Meyatzara — in the Noh Yao language)

A new play by Ivan Vyrypaev · A presentation for producers, theater and festival directors

The last interview of a man who walked out of civilization at the peak of world fame — and a woman who, ten years later, for some reason brings that interview onto a stage. A love story without a single romantic scene.

The story

Mexico City, 2036. The stage of the Río Lerma theater. Theater producer Jacqueline Wood presents to the audience a documentary show: the last interview of the legendary music producer Michael Mitropoulos — a Greek, "the man who made the West listen again," winner of five Grammys — who in 2006, at the height of his influence, vanished in a single day: he left the industry, his wife and his three-year-old daughter, and spent twenty years living on the Usumacinta River, beside the closed Indian tribe of the Noh Yao, under a new name: Mairu. On May 14, 2026, journalist Patti Rulfs recorded his first conversation in twenty years. A week later, he drowned in his river. The body was never found.

The interview is a two-hour duel. Patti fights for the answer to a single question — "why did you leave?" — and receives: "It takes a long time to explain." The conversation moves through the doctrine of "distorted thinking" (Meyatzara), the death of a tribeswoman whose husband would not allow her to be saved, the confession of a "terrifying inevitability" — an affair with his wife’s sister, a three-shot mezcal ritual — and ends not with an answer but with stillness: a sunset, a moon path on the river, and thirty-seven seconds of silence. On a condition set by Mairu himself, the interview was published without a single cut — with all of Patti’s comments, her swearing, her drunken monologue about a lost love, and her mistakes.

The show is led by a woman about whom the audience knows almost nothing. She calls herself the producer of this project. She reads Patti’s comments — and, against the verbatim oath, slips into them brief "additions personally from me." She thanks people whom she seems to know far too closely for a producer. Sometimes she cries — in places where there is, it would seem, nothing to cry about. Who this woman is, why out of all the texts on earth she chose this particular conversation, and what ties her to the man who drowned ten years ago — is a mystery the show holds until its final minutes and resolves with one single word.

How it is made: a theater inside a theater

The show is its own set: the audience sees the stage of a Mexico City theater in 2036, on which a show about the 2026 interview is being performed — the real house becomes the house of the Río Lerma, and the frame closes without a single scene change. Inside the frame is a classically built play: Patti and Mairu conduct a two-hour dialogue between themselves, never breaking the fourth wall; the tension of their duel holds like the best chamber drama. And only one person on stage speaks to the house directly — the host: she addresses the public gathered in Mexico City, that is — ontologically — the very people sitting in the theater right now. This is how Vyrypaev’s signature theater works: behind the play always stands the author himself, his thinking visible through the text — and this is exactly why he needs the Mexico frame: it turns the show from "a story about other people" into a conversation happening here, with us, today. The text behaves like music — repetitions, refrains, crescendos; not for nothing is the play’s hero a music producer. For the audience this is an experience that cannot be had in a cinema or on a streaming platform — and that is precisely why this kind of theater fills houses today.

Why this play — now

The roles: three actors — three star parts

The production: inexpensive does not mean modest

The author

Ivan Vyrypaev — playwright, theater and film director, one of the most frequently staged contemporary authors in Europe. His plays ("Oxygen," "Illusions," "Drunk," "Solar Line," "The Iranian Conference" and others) have been translated into dozens of languages and run continuously on stages across Europe, Asia and the Americas; productions of his texts regularly appear at major international festivals. He is the writer-director of several feature films. Vyrypaev is the creator of an instantly recognizable theatrical language in which philosophy, humor and direct emotional contact with the audience work as a single machine; "Distorted Thinking" is to date the fullest demonstration of that machine. For a producer, Vyrypaev’s name is the proven box office of intellectual theater.

The full text of the play (RU/EN/GR), terms and contacts — upon request.