Covid helped: a new theater appeared on the site of a Chinese restaurant

Artists from metropolitan and regional bands will take the stage of “Mask”

A new mask theater has appeared in the building of the Moscow Youth Palace on Komsomolsky Prospekt. Even 20 months ago, there was an extinct territory there, and before the pandemic, a Chinese restaurant was briskly operating, where numerous groups of tourists were brought from the Middle Kingdom. About how another stage appeared, the first viewers learned directly from its creators in the course of the action stylized as an ancient Greek performance.

Here is how it was. The pandemic has begun. The Chinese tourists disappeared abruptly. The restaurant where they were fed burned out and ordered a long life. However, there were creative people who equipped the new stage.

Together, a hall for 620 seats and a stage equipped with the latest technology were invented and built. The evening began with a screening of a short film stylized as a silent movie. The audience saw on the screen what was here until recently, some ruins, and what everything has turned into.

Musketeers took the stage and sang “It’s time to rejoice in our lifetime.”

Of course, the artists of the Imperial Russian Ballet under the direction of Gediminas Taranda, who performed the pas de deux from Minkus’ Don Quixote ballet, had a tight space on the front stage. But a fragment from the musical “Mamma Mia” with the hit of the group “ABBA” fit perfectly into the proposed parameters.

The artists of Lenkom Mark Zakharov performed excerpts from the performances Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro and Juno and Avos. Victor Rakov in the image of Count Rezanov was so overwhelmed with feelings, he took his mission so seriously, as if he had gone out to play not an excerpt-greeting, but a whole performance.

But that evening, the Greek gods, led by Zeus, and nine muses seconded to the “Mask” from the independent theater “Trickster” reigned on the stage. They played a fragment from “Ruslan and Lyudmila”, took on the function of an entertainer.

Not without curiosities. Apollo and Melpomene did not allow the ballet dancers to complete the variations, all the time they jumped out onto the stage, not suspecting that this was not yet the finale. The audience was encouraged that evening to come not only in everyday clothes, but also in Greek chitons. And such visitors were found – they appeared in something white, golden wreaths, attracting everyone’s attention.

Directors of the capital’s theaters gathered in the hall – Dmitry Astrakhan, Mark Rozovsky, Vyacheslav Dolgachev, Andrey Zhitinkin, composer Alexei Rybnikov, artist Nikas Safronov, who created the logo of the new theater.

Venetian masks were displayed in the foyer. The carnival game continued even in the toilet. The door to the men’s room is decorated with the letter “M”, but the women’s room is decorated with its reverse, the English W. Not everyone will quickly realize that these are “women” and can wander into the “F” to immediately fly out of there at the speed of light. The joke worked. Momentary stress. “Mask, I know you!”