Job

The Alef Theater presents a production based on Joseph Roth’s novel Job. It is the story of a man who lost everything and came face to face with hardship and loneliness, yet found happiness at the end of his journey.

Mendl Singer, a modest teacher from a Jewish village, lives a quiet, orderly life: his existence is filled with prayer and a tranquil confidence in his own world, which begins to fall apart. A child’s illness, family discord, emigration, wars, and the deaths of loved ones follow one another. All of life’s trials are concentrated in a single fate.

The production’s central question is: when everything has been taken away, does anything indestructible remain?

The play reflects not only tragedy, but also the miracle of emergence, when it seems there is nowhere and nothing left from which rebirth could occur. It is about an impossible meeting that nevertheless takes place. About life being pieced together again from fragments.

In today’s world, where stability seems like an illusion, Roth’s text resonates with renewed intensity, transforming Singer’s despair from a story into a reflection of our own time.

The production is a fusion of different theatrical styles: live acting, puppet theater, music, and video create a multilayered space of human perception, bringing together the visible and the invisible.

Job is like a photograph of the past come to life—a tragic reality turning into a magical story.

An outstanding creative team is behind the project:

• Director and adaptation: Veniamin Smekhov
• Set designer: Sofya Matveyeva
• Director: Tigran Saakov
• Composer: Vyacheslav Ganelin
• Videographer: Ilya Delyatitsky
• Lighting designer: Ilya Gerchikov
• Sound engineer: Anya Lyakh
• Cast: Ksenia Markuze, Alexey Mezhov, Tigran Saakov