| Foreword by the director
"Russian Classics Theatre was born not in the snowy fields and birch forests of Russia, but in London, England. How did that happen? Well, it's not easy to describe the birth of a new troupe. It started with the coming together of people with similar tastes and ideas when Olga, Leonid and myself first collaborated within other theatrical groups. I directed both of them in contemporary plays and then in the famous masterpiece by Gogol "The Marriage". That production was followed by the stage adaptation of Nadeszda Teffi's satirical story "Demonic Woman". The latter was performed at the Stars of Albion Festival in 2018.
But while working on all the above described productions, we've discovered that we agree on many crucial aspects of the creative process; we want to create high quality, morally sound art that promotes the eternal values of human society, like kindness, respect to all beings, appreciation of each other and of the surrounding nature. We agree that artistic experiment is necessary and interesting. However, experimentation should never interfere with the initial ideas of the author, nor should it be introduced just to increase the shock value of the production. We aim to assist with the intercultural dialogue and are honored by the fact that we're building our new theatrical home in the land of Shakespeare and Sheridan.
The name of our theatre does not mean that we will be concentrating solely on staging Russian dramatists of the 18th and 19th centuries. We are hoping to stage English and European classics in Russian translations. The photograph on this page shows our first attempts to work on Lorca's timeless piece "The House of Bernarda Alba". Lorca belongs to the whole of humanity and so do Chekov, Turgenev and Gogol. That is why we will always have subtitles in our shows and will always encourage an on-going dialogue with international and multi-cultural audiences." |
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