Yesterday, October 13, 2008, a conversazione with Distinguished Artist of Russia Igor Volkov took place at the auditorium of the Russian Museum (Mikhailovsky Castle).  He performed a one-man-show “A Jolly Cemetery” after A. Chekhov’s writings.   

This performance had a long and thorny, but happy fate.  It was produced by an outstanding director and theater pedagogue Kirill Chernozemov back in the early 1990s at a modest theater basement in Malaya Morskaya Street (then yet Gogol Street), where at the time was located the Priyut Comedianta Theater (the Comedienne’s Shelter Theater). “A Jolly Cemetery” made Igor Volkov known to the entire theater Petersburg and the public speak about the young and talented actor. Volkov took part in many theater festivals with this performance; he harvested numerous awards and later was invited to work at the Alexandrinsky Theater.  After reorganization of the Priyut Comedianta Theater, this performance was shown on the Smaller stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater and later on it became a part of the “Room of Laughter” dilogy which also included O. Bogayev’s “The Russian People’s Mail,” a kind of a paraphrase after Chekhov’s themes.  In a while, this performance returned to the new stage of the Priyut Comedianta Theater, but presently it is not being performed anywhere.  This means that the students assembled together at the auditorium of the Russian Museum got a unique opportunity to see this legendary performance which gained well deserved success to its creators.   Igor volkov, who knows the theater province not by hearsay, created an image of a pilgrim actor who accumulated features of various Chekhov’s characters, actors of the century before last and modern impersonators. There are lots of aspects here: something funny and something sad, some irony and lyrics, awkward details of the theater everyday life and dedicated virtuosity; pettiness and sometimes commercialism, but at the same time, a true quixotism of the knight-errantry of the stage. Igor Volkov dedicated his performance to the memory of Josef Pruger, one of the enthusiasts of the provincial stage, with whom Igor had once worked many years ago. It was dedicated to the memory of an Actor – one of those thousands ever travelling around the broad vastness of the theater Russia.   

The Russian Museum Auditorium Director Natalya Borodina and Leader of the Student Club of the Russian Museum Anton Sheverdyayev made introductory notes prior to the performance.  After it, Igor Volkov answered questions from the audience, spoke about his numerous theater and cinema roles, and performances he directed at his actor course and which are now shown on the smaller stage of the Music Hall. The meeting was organized under the frames of the program of “Formation of the youth audience and the cultural theater media.”