Dear friends!

On September 14-18, the Fifth, jubilee, International Alexandrinsky Theater Festival will be taking place on our stage. As always, the main task of the festival is strengthening of cultural links between the Russian national stage and national stages of other countries. The original and unique character of the Russian theater culture can not reveal itself in isolation: it needs context; this is the only way we can see its special look, its mentality, and the nature of its feelings impersonated in the national drama art traditions. We would like to let Russian public hear familiar and close to its heart melody in the harmony of other voices expressing the thoughts and feelings that are originated by our present - quite complicated and contradictory - life. And here the role and significance of national stages, which are meant to accumulate and reveal the nature of the dramatic character of the time, is quite evident.

In the five last years, our festival has shaped out its program and now is consistently implementing it. Each time, the festival starts with a first night of an Alexandrinsky Theater performance of a guest director – a major master of the Russian or world theater. The list of our partners includes Theodoros Terzopoulos (Greece), Khrystian Lupa (Poland), Yury Butusov (Russia), Andrey Serban (Romania), Oskaras Korshunovas (Lithuania). Major national theaters, such as Comédie Français, Deutsches Theater, Polish Theatr Narodovy, Theatro Piccolo from Milan, the Royal Drama Theater of Sweden, the Finnish National Theater, the Hungarian Joseph Katona Theater; this year, the famous Gesher Theater from Israel is coming to our festival. On our stage were shown performances of such great masters of the world theater as Giorgio Strehler, Luca Ronconi, Matthias Langhoff, Michael Thalheime, Tamas Aser, Valdemar Holm… Under the frames of each festival, creative meetings, symposiums, master classes were always taking place. We can say that the festival has already gained its rather rich history.

The present – Fifth – festival is continuing the well established tradition. We are happy to greet our foreign guests and hope that our own work will cause interest in this excellent ensemble. We are very glad that one of the most interesting and deep W. Shakespeare’s comedies was directed on our stage by Lithuanian director Oskaras Korshunovas, who is well renowned in the European theater and has inclination for philosophic apprehension of the very concept of theatricality. I am very much flattered to greet on the Alexandrinsky stage performance of a coryphaeus of the Polish stage direction Jerzy Yarotski with his new version of Slavomir Mrozhek’s “Tango.” I believe that appearance of the Israel Gesher Theater’s performance on the oldest St. Petersburg stage is very rightful: Yevgeny Arye, the theater’s director, has his own artistic roots in the St. Petersburg culture. The theater celebrates its jubilee this year which makes this visit even more significant. And, lastly, appearance of the legendary Comédie Français in the course of the year of cultural exchange between Russia and France continues our old tradition. We are exchanging our “Marriages” with the theatrical Paris: the Alexandrinsky Theater is bringing N. Gogol’s “The Marriage” to the stage of the Parisian Theater de Ville, while Petersburgers are welcoming “The Marriage of Figaro” by Beaumarchais.

But – most importantly – I believe that the festival will allow our public to understand and sense those problems and emotions which nowadays feed national theater cultures of various countries and help to build up that ideological and creative context in which our own national stage is also developing.

Artistic Director of
the Alexandrinsky Theater

People’s Artist of Russia,
State Award Laureate
Valery Fokin

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“I believe that the Alexandrinsky Theatre, being a national stage, should invite the best performances of different national theatres to St. Petersburg. That’s why we’ve made a decision to organize International Theatre Festival Alexandrinsky. I am convinced that the project can give unique experience to all of us and bring the answers to many questions, which the national theatres wonder about.  

For example the question of national stages development is already a complex problem. Today this question can shrink to the question: What` s next? Should we remain the museums of art and keep our traditions or should we change somehow? How can we get some status? What is the national stage nowadays? We have to answer those questions keeping in mind the whole theatre process which can sometimes be chaotic, crazy, fussy and, unfortunately, imagined. On the one hand, the national stage is a kind of quintessence of theatre culture, and on the other hand, new trends and influences make a challenge. Inviting such theatres as Piccolo, Norodowy, Finnish National Theatre or Maly Theatre to our Festival we hope to joint efforts and ”come closer” to the answers.

When organizing the Festival, we also reckoned that we should bring something new to St. Petersburg, something that our audience had never seen before. We shall say Theodoros Terzopoulos, whose performance (Oedipus Rex) is an opening one for the Festival, is a brilliant expert in Greek tragedy. That’s why we wanted our audience to see his approach and style. I believe that every performance of the Festival program will give our guests a chance to know something original. I am strongly convinced that such festivals as an opportunity to meet “another” theatre give a very useful emotional and aesthetic shake-up, bring the context insight and level up our creativity. It seems as if we all need it!”

Valery Fokin