In Ostrovsky’s plays there are all human weaknesses and noble impulses!

Today, April 12, marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky.

– Ostrovsky for our theater is the same as Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov for music, – said the Deputy Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Alla Manilova during a press conference dedicated to the opening of the XIII International Theater Festival “Ostrovsky in the Ostrovsky House”, held yesterday at the Maly Theater. – The Ministry of Culture allocated funds to twenty theaters for new productions based on the plays of the playwright.

Alla Manilova said that the department had allocated a targeted subsidy to the STD RF to conduct a competitive selection for grants to regional and municipal theaters for the preparation of new productions based on the works of A. N. Ostrovsky. More than 50 applications from drama and musical theaters were submitted for participation in the selection. As a result, the expert commission selected 18 of the strongest. All productions are already included in the current repertoire today.

Among the landmark events in terms of the anniversary year, the Deputy Minister noted a whole series of events organized by the Maly Theater and the Higher Theater School. M. S. Schepkin, as well as the 25th anniversary International Festival of Russian theaters of the CIS countries “Meetings in Russia”, which started in St. Petersburg, dedicated this year to the work of Ostrovsky.

One of the key Alla Manilova called a large-scale restoration of the Moscow Ostrovsky House, a branch of the Theater Museum. Bakhrushin, which is scheduled to be completed by December. Upon completion of work on Malaya Ordynka, a modern museum center will be opened with a permanent exhibition (the collection of the Bakhrushin Museum includes more than 50 thousand memorial items of the playwright), a Theater Gallery, a landscape park, where the atmosphere of Zamoskvoretsky gardens with historical plantings of the 19th century will be recreated.

The words of the Artistic Director of the Maly Theater Yuri Solomin, for whom Ostrovsky’s plays are a significant part of his creative biography, both as an artist and artistic director, received special attention at the conference.

– Ostrovsky is a real treasure of Russian culture, it is not for nothing that he is called the Russian Shakespeare – such is the significance of his dramaturgy for the Russian theater. His plays have everything: love, hatred, humor – all human weaknesses and noble impulses, – said Yuri Solomin. -Yes, there are some differences in the perception of his plays, say, 50 years ago, 30 and now, but the most important thing is the same – his amazingly beautiful Russian language and the national spirit that is present in all his works. In this regard, I have a big request to everyone to support me. Please support us so that no one distorts our classics, even from eminent directors. You can’t even change the names. Neither Ostrovsky, nor Gogol, nor any of our classics. It should be a matter of jurisdiction. But you can treat the western one more freely …

Speaking about the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Ostrovsky, Solomin noted the importance of the whole country feeling it.

Rector of VTU im. Shchepkin Boris Lyubimov believes that in the series of anniversaries of the great figures of Russian culture – N.V. Gogol, M.Yu. Lermontov, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.A. Nekrasov – Ostrovsky occupies a special place. He reminded us that the anniversaries of A. S. Pushkin and L. N. Tolstoy are also ahead of us. It is important that all events starting in the year of Ostrovsky and subsequent years would help to preserve classical Russian literature and its heritage.

One of the landmark events of this year is the XIII International Festival “Ostrovsky in Ostrovsky’s House”, which started last night with the performance “Dowry” of the St. Petersburg Theater. Lensoviet.

Until April 16, as part of the festival, theaters from different cities of Russia and neighboring countries will present about two dozen performances based on the plays of Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky on two stages of the Maly Theater at once – Historical and Ordynka, as well as in the branch of the Maly Theater in Western Siberia, the city of Kogalym. By the way, representatives of this theater yesterday also made a video call with Moscow during the press conference.

These days, the Maly Theater has gathered under its roof the artistic directors and theatrical figures of many theaters in the country. Among them are Larisa Luppian (St. Petersburg Academic Theater named after Lensoviet), theater director Valery Gradkovsky, director of the Kineshma Drama Theater named after A. N. Ostrovsky Natalya Surkova, director of the Lugansk Academic Russian Drama Theater named after P. Luspekaev Galina Mikhailyuk-Filippova and other heads of theaters participating in the festival.

It was announced that very soon the Film Studio of the Maly Theater would begin work on a full-fledged film based on Ostrovsky’s plays, and on April 25, an anniversary gala concert would take place on the Historical Stage.

Elena Bulova.

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