New theater seasons kick off in Colorado Springs
We’ll never know how it feels to go about our quotidian lives without knowing the language, without being able to communicate well, while also trying to understand and adjust to huge cultural differences.
But Buba Basishvili does know. And it’s been challenging for the theater artist, who moved to the U.S. a dozen years ago from the Republic of Georgia, a country at the intersection of Europe and Asia.
In his new solo show, “The Bluebird,” inspired by Charles Bukowski’s poem “The Bluebird,” Basishvili depicts the immigrant experience, as well as his own journey seeking a new life in a strange land. Produced by Theatre Artibus, the Denver-based company Basishvili founded with his partner, the show will run Thursday through Sunday at Millibo Art Theatre.
“The idea of it resembles my desire to express myself, to find a place where I could create, where I could be an artist,” Basishvili said.
“Some of it is my story, some of it is my images. There is an ocean crossing in the show, which when people saw it they thought it was not only for immigrants, but for every person’s journey in life. We all go through the difficulties. This story can be anyone’s, if they’re an immigrant or not.”
Basishvili, who spent more than 15 years as a performer and teacher at Georgian State Pantomime Theater, arrived in California in 2012 to attend Dell’Arte International — School of Physical Theatre in California: “An existential clown school,” he said.
He and his partner moved to Denver in 2017 and founded Theatre Artibus, which has taken its original productions around the globe.
There’s no dialogue in the new 50-minute show; the storytelling is done solely through movement and original baroque pop music by the avant garde duo Homospouses, two real-life spouses from the Republic of Georgia and Colorado.
And it all stems from the first line of Bukowski’s poem: “There’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out, I only let him out at night sometimes, when everybody’s asleep.”
“The storytelling is funny and simple,” Basishvili said. “It’s not hard to understand.”