Sugar Child (New Youth Theatre, Nizhny Tagil)
Director: Rinat Kiyakov
Production designer: Anastasia Kopylova
Director of Puppetry: Roman Boklanov
Actor:
“The Sugar Child” is a family-friendly play about the life of a child based on the story of contemporary writer Olga Gromova. It is based on the real events of Stella Nudolskaya's life.
The main character is five-year-old Stella, who, after her father is declared an “enemy of the people”, is taken from her warm, cozy, loving, and safe world into the realities of camp life in the 1930s and 1940s. In order to preserve her child's childhood and prevent her from falling into despair, her mother turns the hardships and deprivation into a kaleidoscope of the most unexpected and exciting stories from world literature, religion, music, mythology, etc.
This is a story about the true power of the human spirit, inner freedom, and human dignity told through object theater. On stage, audiences will meet not only the main characters of the play: mother, father, and daughter, but also 18 suitcases. Each of them contains whole worlds, made up of beloved objects, toys, old photographs…
The Old Man and the Sea (Baltic House Theatre).
Based on the novel of the same name by E. Hemingway
Tickets: [website]
Duration: 1 hour and 5 minutes
Age restrictions: 12+
Premiere: November 28, 2020
The play features:
Alexandra Momot
Staging author and director: Rinat Kiyakov
Scenography, costumes, video art: Anastasia Kopylova
Director of puppetry: Roman Boklanov
Choreographer: Rezeda Gayanova
Composer: Dinara Antonova
Lighting Designer: Nina Silenko
Executive producer: Margarita Piantina
“Having lost the miracle fish, left without oars and harpoon, having suffered a crushing defeat, the Old Man found something very important in this journey,” director Rinat Kiyakov says about the play. - And therefore, the lines of Hemingway himself take on special significance in the production: “Everything was old except his eyes, and his eyes were the color of the sea, the cheerful eyes of a man who does not give up…”.
An iconic role in our story is played by the boy Manolin. He is the little “anchor” who holds the boat with the Old Man and keeps it from perishing, from disappearing into the endless waves. Of the ocean? Of life?
So, what is the main idea of the play? The answer may be a line from a poem by the Welsh poet Thomas Dylan:
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Kashtanka (Theatre at Narva Gate)
Author - A.P. Chekhov
In the performance, take part:
Anastasia Bashkirova - Kashtanka
Anton Hateyev - Old Master
Pavel Moskaliev/Ruslan Balbutsiev - The New Host (aka The Clown)
Maxim Shabalin - The Cat
Innokenty Grab/Artem Bedrinsky - The Goose
Ludmilla Menshikova - The Pig
Tickets: [website]
Age restrictions: 6+
Premiere: September 26, 2020
Director: Rinat Kiyakov
Production designer: Anastasia Kopylova
Ballet master: Rezeda Gayanova
Composer: Dinara Antonova
Director of Puppetry: Roman Boklanov
“Life throws up not only problems and disappointments, but also chances. You have to be able to consider them. And react to them in the right way. Kasztanka had a chance to change her life for the better. But she chose the familiar instead of the better. And in this sense, we understand Chekhov's story as a parable about human slavery, about the eternal attachment to the notorious “comfort zone”. This is what we want to tell our audience of the age of six,” says stage director R. Kiyakov.
