By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008

As rehearsals were gearing up last week for their first show of the season -- an original stage adaptation of the vintage horror film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" -- the leaders of Synetic Theater faced an uncharacteristic problem: They lacked the energy to care.

Half a world away, Russian tanks were rolling into their homeland, the small, mountainous nation of Georgia, from which Synetic's founders, Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili, emigrated more than a dozen years ago, and where several other Synetic actors and musicians also were born.

"We were emotionally completely in different place," Irina Tsikurishvili explains. "We get into rehearsal and we were starting to talk 'Caligari' -- and the talk goes to Georgia right away."

Anyone who has seen the Arlington-based company's passionate, movement-driven work knows the theatrical universe inhabited by Synetic is nothing if not intense. So it comes as no surprise that anxieties the invasion unleashed in members of the company -- the only Georgian-led troupe in North America -- would provoke a powerful reaction, of a sort that might inevitably spill onto the stage.

Which is precisely what has happened. The little company, which over the past decade or so has developed a dedicated following on the heels of admiring reviews and a slew of awards, has taken the unusual step of dropping an advertised opening production at the last minute, replacing it with one allowing for a more personal expression of anguish.

Synetic is working double time to substitute a revival of "Host and Guest," the company's stirring 2002 creation set in a rugged Georgian enclave, where ethnic hostilities come to a barbaric boil and a bond sealed between longtime enemies leads to calamity. If all goes according to schedule, "Host and Guest" will begin performances next month at Synetic's part-time home, the Rosslyn Spectrum.

"As a Georgian, I've got pain," says Paata Tsikurishvili, Synetic's artistic director, who came to Washington in 1995 unable to speak English but aching to make an artistic mark. "I'm not a politician. I also have Russian friends. I wanted to respond some way because innocent people are dying. And I thought, 'Host and Guest' is the only way to do it."

By virtue of its local renown, Synetic has become not only a force in Washington theater, but also a touchstone for the small Georgian community here.

In addition to its celebrated, highly physical reworkings of Shakespeare, the troupe has tried to appeal at times specially to Georgian tastes, with such offerings as "The Crackpots," an original stage version of a popular Georgian film comedy. The company's interests extend beyond the Caucasus, however, in terms of both audiences and artists. Anastasia Ryurikov Simes, Synetic's set and costume designer, is Russian; Dan Istrate, an actor who's often seen in Synetic productions, is from Romania; and the troupe has also staged adaptations of Russian works, such as Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita." (The majority of Synetic's actors are young and American.)

Still, with a geopolitical crisis brewing in Georgia, the chord that's been struck with Synetic is deep. Paata Tsikurishvili's father, Vakhtang, and his sister Tamar still live in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, and other company members, such as Irakli Kavsadze (who has played Scrooge and Macbeth for Paata), have ties just as profound: Kavsadze is from a famous Georgian family that has been in the theater there for generations.

"Me and Irakli and Konstantine, we thought maybe we should consider somehow to support," Paata Tsikurishvili says, referring to Kavsadze and Konstantine Lortkipanidze, Synetic's Georgian-born composer. "We thought we should go there and stand next to our own people. And then," he added, "we found out it's not a wise move."

Worried about their relatives (Kavsadze says he had sent his two school-age daughters to Georgia for the summer) and about the survival of President Mikheil Saakashvili's pro-Western government, Synetic's Georgians had debated their other options. Ultimately, they fell back on what they do best.

"Our weapon is art," Kavsadze says. "The theater, the stage."

The ferocious "Host and Guest," based on a Georgian epic poem, tells of a chance forest encounter between a pair of hunters who ordinarily would have been antagonists: Joqola is from a Muslim village and Zviadauri is from a Christian one. Their enmity, however, is trumped in Joqola's mind by the ingrained mountain custom of respect for a visitor. It turns out that Joqola feels more strongly about honoring the tradition than do his neighbors, for his village is inflamed after the unshakable Joqola invites the Christian to stay for the night. The aftershocks spatter blood everywhere.

Changing plays meant upending lives. Six "Caligari" actors for whom there were no corresponding roles had to be let go last week, and six others had to be recruited for the 14-member cast. The Tsikurishvilis put in calls to "Host and Guest" veterans who'd been in previous productions -- several years ago, Synetic took the show to Philadelphia and New York -- and the condition of old, stowed-away sets had to be assessed.

"He called me and I said, 'Paata, if you want me to do the show, I'll do it,' ' says Ben Cunis, who had planned to take a breather from acting after two consecutive, grueling roles, in Synetic's "Romeo and Juliet" (he was Romeo) and "Carmen." He was quickly cast as Zviadauri, the role that Kavsadze played in the original 2002 production. Istrate was one of those held over from "Caligari," and he will now play Joqola, a part that Paata Tsikurishvili originated. (The Tsikurishvilis tried to entice their own son, Vato, into the show, but he's busy in football practice for Churchill High School in Potomac.)

Over the weekend, the actors gathered in a mirrored rehearsal room, nestled amid the restaurants on the main street of the Village at Shirlington, to start to learn the stylized movements of "Host and Guest." Irina Tsikurishvili, returning to her role as Joqola's wife, Aghaza, is also the production's choreographer, and she was busy drilling the young actors, who were holding long wooden dowels for one of the show's signature scenes, in which they portray undulating trees in the harsh landscape.

The advantage to performing "Host and Guest" this time around, the Tsikurishvilis say with ironic little laughs, is that the non-Georgians who come to see it will know without explanation that its subject is a Georgia far from Macon and Savannah. For a young American actor such as Cunis, though, the piece offers a more intimate sort of primer on seemingly inexplicable types of barbarism.

"It's about the uselessness of violence, about how regional and ethnic hatred is really a useless gesture," he observes. "It's saying, 'Remember, people do this to each other.' "