From June 9 to June 11, 2017, at the Yasnaya Polyana estate, on four open-air stages, the country's leading theaters will present their interpretations of the works of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Also, for the first time, the program includes productions based on works by other authors that are in tune with the writer’s work.
In total, about 20 theatrical events - performances, storytelling, discussions - will be held on the territory of Yasnaya Polyana over three days, for which the estate itself will serve as the setting.
The participants of the festival will be the Moscow Academic Musical Theater named after. K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Sevastopol Academic Russian Drama Theater named after. A. V. Lunacharsky, Moscow Academic Theater named after. Vl. Mayakovsky, Theater-festival “Baltic House” from St. Petersburg. Famous artists from other countries will also take part in Tolstoy Weekend.
Compared to last year, the program for young spectators has been significantly expanded. Children's performances will be shown at the capital's Center. Sun. Meyerhold, as well as the Theater of Young Spectators from Nizhny Novgorod.
The Tolstoy Weekend festival is held in the open air at the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate. The idea of the festival belongs to the governor of the Tula region Alexey Dyumin. The first Tolstoy Weekend took place on September 9-11, 2016 and attracted more than 3,000 spectators, becoming one of the main cultural events of the year in the Tula region.
festival program
21.00 Musical and dramatic composition “War and Peace”. Moscow Academic Musical Theater named after K. S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko.
10.00 Storytelling “Stories for children L.N. Tolstoy." Center named after Vs. Meyerhold.
14.00 Performance “Adolescence”. Drama Theater "Wheel" named after G. B. Drozdov.
15.00 Performance “How a man was happy...”. Theater for Young Spectators (Nizhny Novgorod).
15.00 Discussion “The influence of Russian culture on Polish theater.”
17.00 Storytelling “Stories about history.” Workshop of Dmitry Brusnikin.
21.00 Monopoly performance “Sevastopol in December”. Anastasia Boshenkova.
21.00 Performance “Fathers and Sons”. Moscow Academic Theater named after Vl. Mayakovsky.
11.00 Storytelling “Stories for children L.N. Tolstoy." Center named after Vs. Meyerhold.
12.00 Performance “Green Stick”. Liquid Theatre.
14.00 Performance about family values “There is no Tolstoy.” Active theater.
15.00 Performance “Green Stick”. Liquid Theatre.
15.00 “Tolstoy’s fairy tales and children’s stories.” Alexandra Islentyeva.
18.00 Storytelling “Stories about history.” Workshop of Dmitry Brusnikin.
18.00 Performance “Family”. Theater-festival "Baltic House".
20.00 Performance “Green Stick”. Liquid Theatre.
21.00 Performance “Anna Karenina”. Sevastopol Academic Russian Drama Theater named after A.V. Lunacharsky.
Entrance to the festival territory is free (there is a fee for entering the territory of the museum-reserve). Some performances require purchasing tickets. .
On June 9–11, the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate will host the Tolstoy Weekend theater festival. It will be held in our region for the second time on the initiative of Alexey Dyumin. This time the festival is planned to welcome over five thousand guests and spectators.
As Tatyana Rybkina noted, the festival received support from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and is included in the calendar of significant creative events this year in Russia.
Compared to last year, the number of theater groups has been expanded from 7 to 12. Performances will be held at five different venues: the main and small stages, the apple orchard, the Volkonsky House and Klina Park.
The festival opens on Friday the 9th of June, musical and dramatic composition of the Moscow Academic Musical Theater named after. K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, based on arias from Sergei Prokofiev’s opera “War and Peace”. The production is being prepared by the theater's artistic director Alexander Titel specifically for the Tolstoy Weekend festival.
The next day on the Small Stage Drama Theater "Wheel" named after. G.B. Drozdova from Togliatti will present the sketch play “Adolescence” based on the story of the same name by Leo Tolstoy.
On Sunday in the afternoon, everyone will be able to take part in a public discussion with the German playwright and director Armin Petras, who created the stage versions of the novels Anna Karenina and War and Peace. And in the evening, on the Small Stage, the Baltic House Theater-Festival from St. Petersburg will present the chamber play “Family”.
Also, over two days - Saturday and Sunday - an unusual performance will take place, covering the entire territory of Yasnaya Polyana. The Moscow LIQUID theater and actors from Tula theaters will present an immersive performance-journey around the Green Stick estate, specially designed for Tolstoy Weekend.
The festival will close with a large-scale production of “Anna Karenina” by the Sevastopol Academic Russian Drama Theater named after A.V. Lunacharsky.
This year the festival is also significantly expanding children's program. It will be free. In the apple orchard of the estate, the Theater for Young Spectators from Nizhny Novgorod will present the play “How a Man Was Happy...”.
Actors of the Moscow Center named after. Sun. Meyerhold, in the genre of storytelling, will present children's stories by the classic of literature: “Filippok”, “Father and Sons”, “Kostochka”, “Old Grandfather and Granddaughters”, “Liar”, “How a boy told about how a thunderstorm caught him in the forest”, “Bird”, “Shark”, “Jump”.
Ticket sales for Tolstoy Weekend start in the end of April on the website tolstoyweekend.ru, as well as at the ticket offices of the city of Tula and the museum-estate of L.N. Tolstoy "Yasnaya Polyana". About a quarter of the total will be allocated as a social quota, which will help people, regardless of income, enjoy acting. The museum-estate will additionally work out the issue of transport support, so that festival guests can conveniently get there both by personal and public transport.
The program of the international festival Tolstoy Weekend has been announced
The program of the international theater festival Tolstoy Weekend has been announced, which will take place on June 9 – 12, 2018 at the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate. On May 18, ticket sales for the festival started. In the year of the writer’s 190th anniversary, leading Russian and foreign theaters will show productions based on the works of L.N. Tolstoy, as well as other writers. Tolstoy Weekend is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the government of the Tula region and the Rostec State Corporation.
The festival will be opened by the Kolyada Theater from Yekaterinburg - the most famous private theater in Russia, tickets for performances of which, if they are shown in Moscow, are sold out in a few days. Nikolai Kolyada is staging a story that is rarely seen in the theater, “False Coupon” - a play about personal choice, responsibility for actions and the mechanism of evil.
The Moscow Theater of Oleg Tabakov will also present a story, very rare for the stage, “The Devil” - the main role in the play is played by Maxim Matveev. Paired with The Kreutzer Sonata, which will be shown at the festival by two theaters - the Valmiera Drama Theater from Latvia and the Ballet Moscow Theater - these works represent Leo Tolstoy's thoughts on the themes of gender and marriage. Two versions of “Adolescence” are presented by two famous regional theaters of Russia - the Perm and Saratov Youth Theaters.
All performances for Tolstoy Weekend were chosen by the program director, theater critic Pavel Rudnev. According to him, spectators can expect performances of different genres and styles: here are both classical traditional theater and experimental laboratory productions: “It is fundamentally important that this year the geography of the festival has been expanded, many more regional performances are taking part in it. In addition to communicating with the audience, any festival is also about communicating with each other. For example, the sketches made by theaters from Yelets, Kaluga and Ryazan will be seen by other theaters - and, I’m sure, this will spur them to create creativity based on Tolstoy’s ideas. The short plays “Peter Khlebnik”, “The First Distiller” and “Take All Qualities Away” are wonderful literature, but recently they have not been performed at all on the Russian stage. There is a lot of simplicity and naivety in them. But this is not only a spectacle, but also an acquaintance with material that is not often played on stage.”
Of particular importance is the audio play-walk “War and Peace”, made by the young Tula director Evgeny Malenchev. The play based on eight volumes of Leo Tolstoy's diaries was written by the young playwright Yulia Pospelova, and the composer was Grigory Polukhutenko. Also, especially for the festival, the independent Moscow theater LeCirqueDeCharlesLaTannes prepared the storytelling “Who Killed Anna.”
Among the festival’s foreign productions is a synthesis of drama and puppet theater “Kholstomer” from the Slovenian Maribor and the above-mentioned play from Valmiera.
On the closing day of the festival, June 12, at the Yasnaya Polyana House of Culture there will be a meeting with the creators of the film “The Story of a Destination,” which tells about a little-known episode from the life of Leo Tolstoy. Its premiere will take place in early June at the Kinotavr festival. In Yasnaya Polyana, excerpts from the film will be presented by director Avdotya Smirnova, scriptwriter Pavel Basinsky and Evgeniy Kharitonov, who plays the young Tolstoy.
Traditionally, Tolstoy Weekend will feature children's performances based on stories by Tolstoy and contemporary authors. Especially for the festival, the Moscow Storytelling Workshop, beloved by children, prepared its own versions of Tolstoy’s children’s stories.
The first Tolstoy Weekend was held in 2016. The idea of the festival belongs to the governor of the Tula region Alexey Dyumin. In 2017, the festival acquired international status. The festival site was visited by over 5,000 guests, including more than 100 representatives of federal and regional media, who called Tolstoy Weekend the main summer theater event of the year.
Address: State Memorial and Nature Reserve Museum-Estate of L.N. Tolstoy Yasnaya Polyana, Tula region, Shchekinsky district, p/o Yasnaya Polyana.
This year marks the 190th anniversary of the birth of Leo Tolstoy, so everything that happens in Yasnaya Polyana takes on special significance.
For four days, June 9-12, 2018, guests of the Tolstoy estate witnessed and took part in the grandiose holiday -. Russian and foreign theaters showed fifteen performances based on the works of L.N. Tolstoy and other authors. The event took place outdoors at several venues.
It is noteworthy that this year the main stage was placed in the very place where the Tolstoys loved to play with the whole family. The first to attend was the private theater "Kolyada-Theater" from Yekaterinburg with a performance based on the unfinished work of Leo Tolstoy . Director Nikolai Kolyada unfolded before the viewer an action that was depressing with the number of sins. Almost all characters do them. And the coupon is just a catalyst for a chain reaction of evil.
One of the most “delicious” events of the second day was the performance of the Oleg Tabakov Theater based on the story of the same name by Leo Tolstoy, largely autobiographical. The main role (landowner Evgeniy Irtenev) was played by the actor of the Moscow Art Theater Maxim Matveev.
In addition, the performance featured People's Artist of the Russian Federation Boris Plotnikov and Honored Artist of the Russian Federation Roza Khairullina, who amazingly played the role of Irtenyev's mother-in-law.
The debut directorial work of Mikhail Stankevich, a student of Sergei Zhenovach, was highly appreciated by the Minister of Culture of the Tula Region, Tatyana Rybkina.
Also on the main stage was shown based on the story of the same name by Leo Tolstoy. She was brought to the festival by the Ballet Moscow theater.
As experts say, the Ballet Moscow theater is a unique troupe, combining the best traditions of classical Russian ballet and modern trends in choreography. Canadian choreographer Robert Binet made the most of these opportunities.
The ballet “Kreutzer Sonata” was first presented to the capital’s public exactly a year ago - in June 2017. The conditions of the Yasnaya Polyana festival, which were not adapted for ballet, became another baptism of fire for the production. One can only admire the dancers who agreed to perform on the open stage.
Regular guests of the festival noted the unique opportunity to observe the development of a new theatrical genre of storytelling for Russia.
A storytelling performance based on Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, created specifically for the festival, was brought to Yasnaya Polyana by director Alexey Rozin, a member of Le Cirque De Charles La Tannes. The 700-page novel was told and acted out at arm's length by Marina Vasilyeva, an actress from the Brusnikina Workshop. She called her story (premiere from the series “In a Nutshell”).
The most famous Tolstoy story gave another reason to talk about this brilliant work.
The kindest performance was brought to the festival by guests from Slovenia. - this is the name of Tolstoy’s story about the old gelding Kholstomer in Slovenian.
Of course, in their homeland, Sebastian Horvath and Andreja Kopac play in Slovenian, and in Yasnaya Polyana they presented the performance to bilinguals. The audience heard that the Slovenian and Russian languages are very close to each other. They look like siblings, and in some places they completely coincide, because the Slovenian language is involved in the most ancient layers of Russian culture.
Every year, the Tolstoy Weekend festival prepares a special project, which, after its completion, continues to live in the estate. In 2018 it became Tula director Evgeny Malenchev. Its action is based on diaries, letters, memoirs of Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sofia Andreevna, as well as fragments of the novel “War and Peace”.
The exhibition includes works by nineteen contemporary Greek painters. Especially for this exhibition, over the course of two years, the artists re-read the works of Leo Tolstoy in order to show their completely non-standard view, first of all, on the female images he created.
On the veranda of the Tolstoy House there was an exhibition of costumes that were used in the film “The Story of a Single Destination.” The meeting with its creators was the final event of the Tolstoy weekend.
Director Avdotya Smirnova, the author of the original source and co-writer of the film's script Pavel Basinsky, as well as the leading actor Alexey Smirnov came to Yasnaya Polyana.
Film at the Kinotavr festival has already won two prizes, but the start of wide release in Russia is scheduled only for September 6, 2018. Therefore, at the meeting in the Yasnaya Polyana cultural center, only episodes permitted by the distributor were shown. In general terms, they opened up the storyline and provided an opportunity to evaluate a number of techniques used in the film. It also became clear that the story of how Leo Tolstoy defended a military clerk sentenced to death in court and lost, carries a very important social message.
“It’s sad to say that the festival is closing. It became a bright and big event not only in the life of the Tula region, but throughout Russia.”, says the director of the Yasnaya Polyana museum-estate, Ekaterina Tolstaya.
Tolstoy Weekend has already been named a cult event of the year and a significant phenomenon in the theater world.
“This is the implementation of the idea of a “fair for the future” - directors and artists stay, as a rule, for all three days and watch the rest of the works. Perhaps the sketches made for the festival will not be able to be realized specifically in these theaters, but someone else can look at the sketch and take it to another theater.
The theater arsenal constantly plays 6-8 Tolstoy works. The purpose of the festival is to draw attention and show that this list can be expanded. I believe that Tolstoy asks for a lot on stage.
By the way, we have very few personalized festivals in Russia. And when he appears, he creates an endless amount of motivation for theaters.”, - told our correspondent .
“It is very important that modernity meets the tasks that Tolstoy set for art, that in modern culture there is a response to Tolstoy’s word”, - the theater critic also noted.
It is impossible to cover the entire festival and retell it! Yasnaya Polyana is amazing, both on weekends and on weekdays. At any time of the year and in any weather you want to come back here again and again.
