Woman in the Window

In Stalin's Russia, the great poet Anna Ahkmatova is forbidden to write. In a future, denatured world, a young woman, Rachel, searches for what is missing in her life and the sterile world she inhabits. De Groen uses the lessons of a repressive, torturous chapter in history to illuminate an imagined sterile, artless future where the muses and gods of literature and science have virtually sunk without trace. In a world where a 'poet' means a man who researches poetry in the archives, where there is no nature or wildlife and the moon and stars are seen only in a virtual room created by accessing the science archives, Rachel becomes a dispossessed Akhmatova. When the literary archives, which are seldom accessed any more, are about to be switched off and the 'poets' de-listed, Rachel risks her life to save the poetry archives for future generations. (2 acts: 2 men, 5 women)