Saturday Theater, St. Petersburg: repertoire, actors, artistic director

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Young gifted soul has original impulses. The cultural capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, is known for numerous cases of creating creative associations, eager to express ordinary things in an unconventional way. Such a group is the theater "Saturday".

The idea of creating the theater "Saturday"

1969 Leningrad. The city, famous for the first volley of the Aurora cruiser, remained true to revolutionary thoughts in the future. Creative youth became a special inspiration for the city. Having once gathered in the theater club of the Vyborg Palace of Culture, a team of young lovers of Melpomene was imbued with the idea of creating their own theater. One March morning in 1969, the Theater Club was born.

Why does the theater have such a name

Created on a Saturday March morning, the theater-club did not remain without a name for long. The craving for everything original and at the same time simple prompted the founders to name their brainchild plainly - "Saturday".

The founders of the troupe

A theater critic andartistic director of the amateur theater studio Yuri Alexandrovich Smirnov-Nesvitsky. Subsequently, Alexander Volodin, Viktor Sosnora, Mikhail Zhvanetsky became his like-minded people.

Over time, the theater began to cooperate with such authors as Vladimir Abramov, Pyotr Smirnov. Young stage directors also appeared, in particular Andrey Korionov and Tatiana Voronina, who impressed the audience with their acutely social outlook on life. We can say that the modernist theater of St. Petersburg is a product of the imagination of the whole team.

Short biography of director

The permanent artistic director and ideological inspirer of the theater "Saturday" Yuri Alexandrovich Smirnov-Nevitsky this year celebrated another anniversary. Despite his 85 years, the founder of "Saturday" to this day manages a large creative team. It seems that he cannot imagine his life without what he loves.

Yuri Alexandrovich was born back in 1932 (February 23) in the city of Leningrad. Despite the difficult military childhood, the boy from an early age strove for the beautiful and sublime. As a result, in 1956 the young man graduated from the Leningrad State Theater Institute named after A. N. Ostrovsky. The knowledge gained at the theater department was useful to the young man in his future profession. Active participation in the created workshop of directing and acting at the same faculty already inspired Yuri Alexandrovich to create an unusual reading of world classics. However, forthe young enthusiast lacked the experience to bring bold ideas to life.

According to the state distribution of young professionals in 1956, Smirnov-Nesvitsky went to the city of Chelyabinsk, where he held the position of teacher of the speci alty "Fundamentals of directing" at the city school of culture. After working for a year, Yuri Alexandrovich creates the City Amateur Theater and begins working as a literary employee in the editorial office of the Chelyabinsk Rabochy newspaper.

In 1960, Smirnov-Nesvitsky returned to his native Leningrad, where he immediately entered the graduate school of LGITMiK. The personal experience of the author of the play A. N. Arbuzov "Irkutsk History" was chosen as the object of the dissertation research on the topic "Style searches for modern Soviet directing". The work was defended in 1965. Seventeen years later, a doctoral thesis was defended on the topic “V. V. Mayakovsky and the Soviet theater.”

For more than twenty years, Yuri Alexandrovich worked as a senior researcher at the Research Institute of the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography, and in 1985 he took the position of head of the same university.

Yuri Alexandrovich Smirnov-Nevitsky successfully combined scientific activity with creativity. In the eighties of the last century, he was an active participant in all the seminars on directing Pyotr Fomenko and Anatoly Efros.

Since 1990, the professor has been Deputy Director for Research at the Russian Institute of Art History

From 2006 to this day, Smirnov-Nevitsky has been working as the chief researcher of the theater sectorRIII.

Throughout his scientific career, Yuri Alexandrovich studied the history of the Russian theater and was engaged in theater criticism. Among other scientific interests, one can single out a passion for the work of V. Mayakovsky, E. Vakhtangov, I. Bunin.

Yuri Alexandrovich Smirnov-Nevitsky was lucky to learn from such masters of Russian dramaturgy as Vsevolod Uspensky, Lydia Levbarg, Mikhail Portugalov, Leonid Vivien, Rebekah Averbukh. It was they who instilled in the future professor a thirst for deep knowledge of the subject of the history and theory of the theater. From the pen of the scientist came out a lot of monographic works, among which are “On the variety of stage decisions”, “One more life”, “Vakhtangov”, Ivan Bunin and cultural paradigms.”

Statuses of the theater "Saturday"

Being once a small group of theater lovers, in 1969 the team began to be called the theater-club "Saturday". The first productions presented by the young troupe brought her the popularity of innovative theater.

In 1987, the theater "Subbota" in St. Petersburg began to be called the studio theater. Work on finding your own style continued.

To the twenty-fifth anniversary of the collective, the theater received the status of a state theater. Now the poster of the theater "Saturday" has a proud name: the State Drama Theatre.

Main repertoire

Founded in the early seventies, the theater "Subbota" in St. Petersburg immediately gained fame as a non-standard team. The plays, seemingly familiar from childhood, look radically new in the interpretation of modernist productions. All this is notcould not arouse the keen interest of the creative intelligentsia.

However, the main repertoire of "Saturday" - these are plays, hitherto unknown to the general public. The performances are based on the theatre's own experience, presented in an original manner.

Even classic literary works are embodied in stage life in addition to the personal fantasies of the script writer. Many classical works are reworked by the artistic director himself - Yuri Alexandrovich Smirnov-Nevitsky. The screenwriter often puts his thoughts and views into the mouths of the characters. The performances are accompanied by unusual songs and melodies, also created by the brilliant leader.

Author's theatrical plays sometimes do not have clearly stated dialogues. But they all consist of allegorical compositions that each viewer can interpret in accordance with their experiences. Often during the scene there is a dialogue between the hero-actor and the spectator-accomplice. Visitors, sometimes against their will, are involved in the game. Improvisation not only does not interfere with the production, but also helps it to become special, tuned specifically for this audience.

Famous people from the innovative theater of St. Petersburg

The team of the theater "Saturday" mainly consists of young actors. Creating his offspring, Smirnov-Nevitsky sought to select people with new, open-minded views, who would not be afraid to follow the path of trial and error. The first performances were staged in the spirit of artistic and socialexperiment.

Many famous personalities today were given a start in life by the theater "Saturday". The actors who came out of there are now popular not only in Russia, but also abroad. Among the stars, it is worth remembering Konstantin Khabensky, Semyon Spivak, Grigory Gladkov. At various times, Anzhelika Nevolina, Alexandra Yakovleva, Mikhail Razumovsky, Tatyana Abramova served in the theater.

The artistic director of "Saturday" invited actors from other creative teams to cooperate. Andrei Mironov, Oleg Efremov, Olga Volkova, Mikhail Zhvanetsky, Pavel Kadochnikov - this is an incomplete list of well-known partners of the former theater club. The posters of the theater "Saturday" always amazed with the constellation of famous actors.

Where is "Saturday"

The Saturday Theater in St. Petersburg held its first rehearsals on the stage of the Vyborg House of Culture at 15 Smirnova Street. However, soon the team was forced to change its "registration". Now it is located in its own premises on Zvenigorodskaya street, 30.

The theater "Saturday" can be immediately noticed, thanks to the non-standard design of the entrance. The main stage shares the building with the Social Hotel for Minors. The theater occupies the first floor of the building. The address of the theater "Saturday" is known to a wide range of lovers of theatrical art.

Reviews about the theater "Saturday"

At different times, well-known critics and art historians spoke about the activities of the collective. A person who once visited a theater production"Saturday" in St. Petersburg, cannot refrain from expressing the feelings and emotions caused by the performance. The most memorable reviews belong to the theater expert Mikhail Shvydkoy, the director of the Moscow Theater Yevgeny Tabachnikov, and the critic Lyudmila Klimova. All of them noted the originality and uniqueness of the theater productions. Yevgeny Tabachnikov proposed to come up with a special term that would denote the essence of the brainchild of Smirnov-Nevitsky. Lyudmila Klimova noted the ability of the actors to “feel the theater in themselves.”

And playwright Alexander Volodin noted the unique ability of the team to be friends and interact with each other on stage and outside the theater. “Stay like that in your work and in life,” wished an old friend and admirer of the theater “Saturday”.