#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. After the war start, the supply of the settlement – forced labor camp dropped sharply: Norilsk experienced a deficit of everything – food, fuel, spare parts and building materials. The housing shortage was also acute. What cultural centers could be there?!
And really – what? By 1941, only four of the plant’s enterprises had red corners. In large camp departments there were clubs, often combined with canteens. The House of Engineering and Technical Workers (DITR) was under construction. And until it opened, the only cultural center for civilians was the Miners’ club, also known as the Trade Union’s club. Geographically, it was located at the intersection of Gornaya and Zavodskaya streets. The Miners’ club housed a mobile cinema, a trade union library, and the First Polar theatre was also hosted there when it came on tour from Igarka in 1939 and 1941. Next to the club there was the canteen of the second camp department. It became the first stage when Norilsk got its own theatre, called the Second Polar theatre. At first, it shared service premises with the Miners’ club. And in 1944, the former camp canteen was significantly expanded, with a stage and dressing rooms added.
In 1946, the Norilsk theatre became a mixed theatre of drama and musical comedy. But there were also warning signs: the former canteen building began to deform. The fight against subsidence continued for several years, but to no avail. The stage sank, and a new home was urgently found for the theater: they remodeled the cinema hall – the DITR’s branch – on Sevastopolskaya street, 20. In a matter of weeks, they added a foyer, dressing rooms, made a stage, and a balcony. On November 6, 1953, the first performance – Song of the Black Sea Fleet – was staged on the new stage. The theater was located in this building for more than three decades. It completed Sevastopolskaya street, making it the cultural heart of the city, the Norilsk Broadway. This historical building did not survive to this day. On February 23, 1987, when the move to a new building was already in full swing, a fire broke out in the old one.
The search for a new, third, theater building took more than thirty years. Back in the 1940s, a place was allocated for it in the area of today’s Dzerzhinsky street. The plan for the first stage of Norilsk construction showed a wide ceremonial passage leading to the Theatre square. They wanted to place the theatre building right in the center of this passage. As a result, in the early 1960s – when Dzerzhinsky street was born – it was first called Theatre passage. But the theatre building never arrived, and the street and the square were given another name – that of Iron Felix (Dzerzhinsky).
Meanwhile, other options emerged for where to build the Melpomene temple. In the mid-1960s, the Norilsk press wrote that it had been decided to place it on the future Metallurgov square, which was just awaiting its construction. “The new cultural and social center of our city, which will be built in a new microdistrict, will organically complete the panorama of the handsome Lenin avenue. The future center will house a drama theatre for 800–1400 seats with a transformable auditorium…” The construction was supposed to start “any minute now”, and the project was ready. But the plans remained on the drawing board. Another 20 years passed before the construction of the theater finally began: not on Metallurgov square, but on Dzerzhinsky square, which was later renamed Teatralnaya eng.: Theatre). On April 2, 1983, at 11 a.m., a meeting began there in honor of the start of construction. The Norilsk combine’s construction department head Valery Karavayev lowered a commemorative medal under the first pile.
The project of the building, designed for 600 seats, was completed by a team of authors from the Norilskproekt institute as the specialized design institute Giproteatr asked for a lot of money for its work and set a deadline of about three years. The Norilsk projectors had no experience in designing theaters, but there was a group of young architects headed by Anatoly Chernyshov. They completed the project in a year and a half.
The construction of the theater lasted four years: at first they wanted to finish it by the golden anniversary of the Norilsk combine in 1985, then by November 7, 1986. There was even a calendar Time left until the completion of the drama theater… As a result, the state commission accepted it with an excellent rating on December 31, 1986. The first performance, Special Assignment, was performed on January 8, 1987. And the first spectators were the builders and designers.
In the History Spot’s previous publication, we told where films were shown in Norilsk.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Olga Zaderyaka, Norilsk residents and Nornickel Polar Division’s archives
