Chiara's Story

Available for 24 days

Battle-scared from her Russians, can Chiara's creativity bring her salvation? And what about the dog? Susie Maguire's trilogy of comic stories about the fallout from a break up. Who gets left with what? Music, water, transportation, arithmetic, possessions, separations....and love. Vicki Pepperdine reads Chiara's story Chiara is a performance artist. She does a little bit of dance, singing, theatre and mime. Boris was her first Russian. Dimitri was her second, although he was more Hampstead than St Petersburg. All she has left from these relationships is a selection of battle scars. Surely she can salvage something from this? Never one to under-analyse the events in her life, she convinces herself that she can create something from this mess: "Yes," she decides, "I can workshop this." Pretty quickly she's mapped out an entire performance project complete with Rimsky Korsakov, some 'Eugene Onegin-y' type music, with Boris represented by a Nosferatu figure, whilst Andria and Dimitri are played by a pair of coats and hats. With references to film noir, Dali and Eisenstein all chucked into the melting pot for luck. Producer: Sarah Langan First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2010.