A play about Krasnodon underground fighters was “read” at the Vakhtangov Theater

Its core will be the story of the heroism of the Young Guards who operated in the Lugansk region

January 23 in the “Amphitheater” of the Simonovskaya stage of the Theater. Evgenia Vakhtangov read a play about young Krasnodon underground heroes from the Young Guard.

Director Sergei Potapov instructed the Vakhtangov actors to read the work of Victoria Nikiforova, a theater expert, playwright and journalist, “by role”: Ekaterina Simonova, Polina Chernyshova, Daria Shcherbakova, Evgeniy Kravchenko, Vasily Tsygantsov, Ivan Zakhava and others. The outlines of the production are not yet clear – the text of the play is being “tested” and revised, but it is possible to understand what the composition of the future performance will actually be by name.

Its semantic core will be the story of the heroism of Oleg Koshevoy, Ulyana Gromova and other Young Guards who operated on the territory of the present-day LPR, the fate of their relatives, the betrayal of friends and individual fellow countrymen. And the main source of dramatic conflict will be the problem of moral choice, which was especially difficult for residents of the territory of the USSR occupied by the Germans.

Let’s note that the press nicknamed Nikiforova’s play “Young Guard 2,” but the two came about by accident, the author herself explained on the sidelines. This is not a continuation of Fadeev’s novel or other classic works written on Krasnodon material. And not a play about the Northern Military District, as one might think. Although any reference to the Lugansk or Donetsk topic one way or another reveals the reasons why the special operation began. And he explains why the word “unconquered” epithet is so firmly united with the word “Donbass”.

Where, by the way, there was a Holocaust of its own, but nationwide, only the places where hundreds of thousands of people were killed were not concentration camps, but the pits of mines and the voids of other workings.

In fact, the Vakhtangov Theater, which staged Fadeev’s “Young Guard” back in 1948, suggests that we remember this. Then Koshevoy was played by Yuri Lyubimov, and the director was the legendary Boris Zakhava, whose great-grandson, Ivan Zakhava, participated in the reading today.