Two million for the “Zemstvo Cultural Worker” will not help theaters in new territories

The director and artistic director of the Kherson Russian Music and Drama Theater, Ruzhena Rubleva, evacuated from Kherson, after the premiere of the play “Khanuma” in Moscow, shared with “MK” her creative plans for the next few months. She also drew attention to the ongoing acute “personnel shortage” in the cultural sector in the new territories, which the initiatives voiced by the President in his Address to the Federal Assembly are unable to overcome.

– Ruzhena Anatolyevna, do the Kherson Music Drama have any plans to bring new productions to the capital?

– It all depends on how much we will be financed. Because to make a premiere, you first need money. For the production of the play “Khanuma” we received a grant from the PFKI, we were supported by the Ministry of Culture of Russia and Sergei Potopov (director of the Maly Theater – I.V.). But what happens next? Of course, we are planning a tour, we are also talking about new productions – we will release a comedy with which we want to support our population, provide people with a good mood and faith in a bright future.

– Can you reveal the name?

– I can’t yet, but I hope that before our vacation we will be able to present it to the audience.

We are experiencing a number of problems – and first of all, we do not have our own work site.

– Is the theater still huddled in the building of the regional House of Culture of Skadovsk?

– Yes, we have been there for a year and a half already. The site is foreign, the cultural center is very active, so we can squeeze in only if there are some “windows”.

Our troupe is in the full sense of the word “wandering artists.”

– Has the “staff shortage” in the cultural sector of the Kherson region been at least partially overcome? How understaffed is your music drama at the moment?

– Of course, incomplete. Who will go to a place where there is constant shelling?

– Could the Presidential proposal to pay 2 million rubles to “Zemstvo cultural workers” who agree to move to new territories of Russia somehow help?

– There we are talking about workers of rural institutions, theater is a little different, besides, we are a theater of regional subordination.

– How many actors are there out of the required number in Muzdrama?

– Now we have a creative staff of 11 people, four of them are ballet dancers. And in the spring of 2022 (after Kherson came under the control of the Russian Army during the Northern Military District, when the theater became known as the Kherson Russian Musical and Drama Theater) there were almost thirty people.

– As far as I know, a guest director from “mainland” Russia agreed to come to Skadovsk?

– Yes, and our local children have a good education, we can rely on our own strength: our artist Alexander Ivanov himself wrote and directed the wonderful fairy tale “A Good Deed.”

And the new premiere will be prepared by Alexander Golubeev, who arrived from Sakhalin together with his actress wife. These are our former employees, they returned with a small child, they live in a TAP (Temporary Accommodation Point) with a leaking roof – but, nevertheless, they serve the theater.

Plus, another married couple agreed to work for us, the wife is a prop maker, the husband is the head of the assembly shop.

– Genichesk, the “acting” regional center, and Skadovsk – how populated are the cities now? Are there enough spectators there – I mean that.

– Kherson region, almost its entire right-bank part moved to these cities! There are more than enough people – and we could work at full capacity.

But due to the difficult situation, large gatherings of people are not allowed.