#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Rehearsals have begun for a play based on the story The Side Where the Wind Blows by Vladislav Krapivin. Director Yegor Vitko himself wrote the dramatization, the set designer Svetlana Puzyreva worked on the set design, and Yuri Kuramshin will set the lighting. The team of directors are “familiar strangers” for the Norilsk audience.
On the one hand, they say at the theatre, they are really coming to Norilsk for the first time to perform, on the other hand, they represent the Omsk theatre Galerka, with which they had an exchange tour in 2023. So Norilsk residents have seen their work, they have already applauded them, they say at the Polar drama theatre:
“And if you remember that the founder and artistic director of the Omsk Galerka Vladimir Vitko (Yegor’s grandfather) was an actor at the Norilsk drama theatre, it’s clear that they are our own people”.
Returning to the production, we note that the famous Soviet and Russian children’s writer, screenwriter, and teacher Vladislav Krapivin created about a hundred stories and novels, but it was his early story The Side Where the Wind Blows that made him famous in the USSR and beyond. It has a tangible romanticism of the 60s, a tender, reverent attitude toward childhood with a slight touch of nostalgia.
“The charm of Krapivin’s stories about boys was obvious to Norilsk theatergoers back in the 70s and 80s of the last century, when the play Riders from the Rosa Station (the premiere took place in 1978) was staged, directed by Isaak Dubov. We will try to continue this repertoire tradition with a production based on an earlier story The Side Where the Wind Blows, published by the author in 1965-1967. The story of several friends growing up in a town by a large river is written with a subtle understanding of child psychology, in correlation with the logic of adults’ actions, with concern for defenseless souls in a world of increasing anxiety”, the theater explains.
Let us add that the performance stars honored artist of Russia Nina Valenskaya, actors Alexander Zhuykov, Anastasia Zhukova, Nikolay Kachura, Alexey Kovrigin, Alexander Nosyrev, Alexander Petryaev, Yaroslav Surzhenko, Evgeniya Hitrina, Anastasia Cherkasova.
The premiere will take place on February 21 on the theater’s main stage.
Earlier, This Is Taimyr wrote that the Krasnoyarsk puppet theater will come to Norilsk again.
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Text: Maria Sokolova, Photo: Denis Kozhevnikov
