Early Years
The theater was organized in 1918 by the order of Maria Andreeva. The original name of the theater was Osobaya Drammaticheskaya Truppa (Special Drama Company). The theater was organized by merging the Theater of Tragedy led by Yury Yuryev and the Theater of Art Drama led by Andrey Lavrentyev.
During the first year of its operation the theater performed on the stage of the Great Hall of the Petrograd Conservatory. The chief director of the theater was Andrey Lavrentyev and the Chairman was Alexander Blok. The first performance of the new theater was Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos on 15 February 1919. In 1920 the theater moved to the building, at 65 Fontanka Embankment, of the former Suvorin Theatre also known as Maly Imperial Drama Theater.
The main actors of that period were Yury Yuryev and Nikolay Monakhov. Many brilliant painters worked for the theater including Alexandre Benois, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Vladimir Shuko, Nikolay Akimov; among the composers working with the theater were Boris Asafiev and Yuri Shaporin. The theater produced mostly classical Romantic Dramas like: Don Carlos (1919), Othello (1920), King Lear (1920), Twelfth Night (1921), Ruy Blas (1921), The Robbers (1919), Le Médecin malgré lui, 1921, etc. Since mid 1920s the theater adds to its repertoire plays of German expressionists including Gas by Georg Kaiser, Virgin Forest by Ernst Toller and influenced by expressionism Machine Mutiny (Bunt Mashin) by Alexey Tolstoy.
Read more about this topic: Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater
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