About Theatre

Born in 1989, the Theatre on Vasilevsky experienced the same problems as the whole country and all theaters experienced that time. It is important that the Theatre managed to survive and to move forward. The Theatre on Vasilevsky has a completely different energy than the other old theatres have, a different style of internal relations, a different type of contact with the public. Not better and not worse, just different. We are trying to create a collection of notable performances on our stage that could satisfy a wide variety of tastes and favours, so that any audience - from the most sophisticated to the most common one - can be sure that the Theatre was thinking about each of them!

We tour a lot all over Russia. I am sure that theatre is one of the true treasures, the heritage of the country. Not oil, not gas, not gold or diamonds, but the theatre. Directors and actors the country needs to grow like a forest. Soon it could turn out that there will be no one to teach them. That people who are considered the stronghold and the personification of culture could not be able to speak and move well, and the most important, feel themselves a creative intelligentsia. Then everything would become a low culture and show business. I hope not to live in such times.

We are lucky that in our Theatre there were and there still are people who you can look up to. We had such amazing creative persons as Vladimir Osobik and Alexander Khochinsky, Boris Chernogorov and Valentina Kovel, Antonina Shuranova. Our young theater has already experienced the bitterness of irreparable losses, but among those people there were such great figures who gave young actors not only a powerful and creative impulse, but also a lesson in the high artistic ethics. And I don’t know what is more important and more valuable. Now we have Mikhail Nikolaev, Tatyana Kalashnikova, Elena Martynenko, Ilya Noskov, Yuri Itskov, Nadezhda Zhivoderova, Natalya Lyzhina, Tatyana Mishina, Natalya Kutasova, Elena Rakhlenko, Artem Tsypin, Tatyana Bashlakova, Sergey Lysov, Lyubov Makeeva, Ekaterina Ryabova, Tatyana Malyagina, Andrey Feskov, Natalya Kruglova, Svetlana Shchedrina, Alexander Udaltsov, Oleg Chernov, Vladislav Lobanov, Igor Besschastnov, Arseny Mytsyk who are real devotees of the profession and for whom living means working, and working means serving the art.

The city did not immediately accept us, but resisted a bit, ignored and tried not to notice. And when we were accepted, it was a true and real accepting.

In 2007 famous director Andrzej Bubień became the chief director of the Theatre and the same time he staged performances all over Europe taking part in several international festivals. He earned several awards for the Theatre on Vasilevsky, like the Golden Soffit in two nominations with his “Daniel Stein, Interpreter” based on Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s book. Another his performance “Russian Jam” received also the Golden Soffit and was nominated for the Golden Mask, the main theatre award in Russia.
I like how our Theatre is growing and moving forward.
From 2011 the chief director of the Theatre became Vladimir Tumanov, his performance “Tanya-Tanya” based on Olga Mukhina’s play had been on our stage for more than 16 years and earned the Golden Soffit Award and the Golden Mask nomination. In the February of 2011 Maxim Gorky’s “Children of the Sun” directed by Tumanov was premiered and became the Golden Soffit Award nominee.

In 2012 Vladimir Tumanov staged “Uncle Vanya” by Anton Chekhov, and young director Denis Khusniyarov produced “Without a Dowry” based on the play by Alexander Ostrovsky. And the same year Alexey Uteganov released his premiere for kids “Pushkin’s Fairy Tales” based on several work of great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

Theatre season of 2012-2013 was a season of Russian classics, the repertory contained the works by Chekhov, Ostrovsky, Gorky and Pushkin.
And the 2013-2014 season was already devoted to Russian and world classics. In 2013 Vladimir Tumanov staged “Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Denis Khusniyarov produced “The Clown” after the genius novel by Heinrich Böll. Though the first premiere in 2013 became “My Dear Mathilde” based on Israel Horowitz’s play “My Old Lady” and directed by John Pepper, a famous American-Italian photographer and theatre director.

The Chamber stage hosted the premiere “The Cursed Love” directed by Vladimir Tumanov and written by famous playwright Tatyana Moskvina.

The Theatre on Vasilevsky can boast its marvelous company that consists of merited and already famous actors and the creative youth at the same time. Some of the young actors were already awarded with different prizes and nominations. Our leading actors and directors are always honoured with benefit performances on the occasion of their career anniversaries or any other notable event.

Our Theatre takes part in different festivals, like “Vsevolozhsk Spring” or “Theatre Marathon”, and we also care about the charity activity. The Theatre has a tradition to invite children from needy families and orphanages of the region. We hold charity performances that benefit different funds that help children.

In May of 2017 our performance “The Thunderstorn” was hosted on the stage of the Mayakovsky Theatre during the Days of Leningrad region in Moscow. Out Theatre took part in the traditional festival “Cultural Summer” in Serbia, and the performance “Marriage” directed by Vladimir Tumanov and written by Nikolay Gogol toured in different cities of Serbia.

In November, 2017 the Theatre on Vasilevsky had a successful tour in Estonia where “The Boors” by Vladimir Tumanov based on Carlo Goldoni’s play was shown to the audience in the cities of Narva and Tallinn.

In 2018 Theatre on Vasilevsky became one of the organizing members of the “Vsevolozhsk Spring” theatre festival. That year the festival included also the concert of “The No Smoking Orchestra” of famous director and musician Emir Kusturica.

In 2018, the Theatre on Vasilevsky recruited a course of students on the basis of the RGISI (Russian State Institute of Performing Arts). The chief director of the Theatre Vladimir Tumanov became the master of the acting course, the leading artists of the theatre took part in teaching at the course.

Perhaps in the new season, the Theatre on Vasilevsky will organize a new theatre festival.
We had enough time for the Theatre to take its place in the cultural landscape of the city and country. The creative team is not just young and mobile, it is full of enthusiasm and romance. According to leading critics of St. Petersburg, the way of the Theatre on Vasilevsky "lies through the modern art space." The Theatre has become a real island of hope, of love for human, of faith in his best moral intentions.

Vladimir SLOVOKHOTOV
Merited Worker of Arts of Russia,
Producer, Artistic Director