Under the pulsating glow of neon lights, The Secret of the Lake of Dreams unfolds like a glitched-out dream—a fusion of ancient myths, cybernetic landscapes, and hyper-stylized theatricality. This is not just an adaptation of Eastern fairy tales; it is an immersive experience that reimagines them through the lens of pop culture, video games, and digital aesthetics. Directed and designed by David Sakvarelidze, the new production at Rustaveli Theater creates a visually electrifying, sonically hypnotic, and emotionally surreal world where folklore meets the future.
In an era where attention spans are shaped by social media and gaming interfaces, Sakvarelidze does not fight the trend—he weaponizes it. The Secret of the Lake of Dreams is structured like a high-speed TikTok reel, a hypnotic stream of striking imagery, hyper-saturated color palettes, and rapid shifts in pacing. Yet beneath this frenetic energy lies a deeper tension between tradition and modernity, between the ancient storytelling instinct and the algorithmic rhythm of digital culture.
Sakvarelidze and artist Nino Kobiashvili have crafted a visual language that feels like a fusion of Robert Wilson’s atmospheric stage paintings and the immersive, color-drenched worlds of cyberpunk video games. The scenography does not merely frame the narrative; it becomes an active participant, morphing in real-time with the flow of the performance. Layers of projected graphics and fog-filled neon corridors evoke the aesthetic of dystopian sci-fi while remaining rooted in the poetic ambiguity of folklore.
The play’s eponymous Lake of Dreams is not a naturalistic setting but a shifting, liquid illusion—a paradoxical entity that flickers between water, mirror, and portal. The audience is never quite sure whether they are staring into an abyss or their own reflections. This use of visual disorientation reinforces the play’s thematic core: reality is fluid, perception is unstable, and myths are just a few pixels away from hallucinations.
The Costume Revolution: Cyber-Folklore on Display
One of the production’s most striking elements is its approach to costuming. Instead of adhering to conventional historical accuracy, the design embraces a vivid, pop-cultural sensibility that pulls from comics, gaming, and cyberpunk aesthetics. Imagine warriors dressed like they stepped out of a futuristic anime, their armor gleaming under neon strobes. Think of shamans reimagined as holographic entities, their robes pulsating with embedded LED patterns. The bold, exaggerated designs make the characters feel like avatars in a mythological RPG rather than figures from traditional Eastern folklore.
This deliberate aesthetic choice does more than simply modernize the visual language of fairy tales—it challenges the notion of authenticity itself. Can a tale passed down for centuries still be considered “ancient” when dressed in the hyper-futurism of contemporary digital culture? The production seems to argue: absolutely. Mythology, after all, is a continuously evolving software—updated, re-skinned, and re-rendered for each new generation.
If the visuals are hypnotic, the music is pure adrenaline. Sakvarelidze’s electronic score pulsates like the heartbeat of a sentient machine, a fusion of deep synth basslines, glitchy distortions, and ethereal modulations. This is no traditional orchestral accompaniment; it is an evolving soundscape that grips the audience, oscillating between cinematic tension and dancefloor euphoria.
At times, the music swells into a cybernetic ritual, its textures reminiscent of ambient techno and experimental sound design. At others, it fragments into abrupt silence, allowing for moments of stark theatricality—such as the sudden flood of bright white light in the auditorium when the fatal arrow is loosed. This precise control over sensory stimulation makes the production feel interactive, as if the audience itself is being pulled into a game where the stakes are both digital and mythical.
A Cast in the Grip of the Glitch
The ensemble cast, featuring Mikheil Archvadze, Nino Tarkhan-Mouravi, Kakha Kupatadze, Bachi Lezhava, Marita Meskhoradze, Sandro Mikuchadze-Ghaganidze, Edmond Minashvili, Eka Pashmashvili, Zuka Papuashvili, Gagi Svanidze, Malkhaz Kvrivishvili and Keti Khitiri, is given a unique challenge: to embody figures who exist simultaneously in legend and simulation. Their movements are choreographed like a blend of ritualistic ceremony and VR-game mechanics, shifting between fluidity and abrupt, almost mechanical gestures.
Characters emerge and vanish like spectral data—sometimes hyperreal, sometimes fading into digital static. This fragmented presence reinforces the dreamlike instability of the narrative. Who are these characters? Are they echoes of ancient figures, or are they digital projections generated by the audience’s own collective memory of folklore? The ambiguity is deliberate, mirroring the production’s overall interrogation of reality.
Between Myth and the Machine
In its essence, The Secret of the Lake of Dreams is not just a retelling of folklore—it is a radical reinvention of how we engage with myths in the digital age. By embracing pop culture, gaming aesthetics, and electronic music, Sakvarelidze constructs a production that is both hypnotically modern and deeply archetypal. It understands that stories are living organisms, capable of mutating and adapting to whatever cultural code they are embedded within.
The performance does not simply ask the audience to passively watch; it demands engagement, reaction, immersion. It triggers the same response mechanisms as a high-stakes game or a viral video—compelling, entrancing, impossible to ignore. And yet, beneath the neon glow and glitchy mirages, the play’s core remains deeply human: a timeless fascination with the unknown, the mystical, the dreamlike.
By Ivan Nechaev
