Mahmud Galyau (Mahmud Gilyautdinovich Marjani) is one of the major representatives of Tatar literature of the first half of the 20th century. He was born in 1886 in the village of Tashkichu, not far from Kazan, and studied in the madrasah "Marjaniya", named after his great relative - the Tatar theologian and educator Shigabutdin Marjani.

In the late 1920s, M. Galyau wrote a four-part epic of folk life under the general title "Blood Marks", which was to reflect the history of Tatar society from the eighties of the 19th century to the October Revolution of 1917. Galyau managed to translate into Russian and print only the first two parts of the epic: "Dark Years" and "Muhajirun" (1931 and 1934), and the remaining parts were lost after his arrest (1937).

The new theatrical project of the Kamala Theater, based on these important texts for Tatar culture, will present the Tatar world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, experiencing historical upheavals associated with the famine that swept the Volga region in the 1880s and the first general census of the Russian Empire in 1897. The authors of the performance will try to find points of contact between the text of a century ago and today's man, who, as centuries ago, is looking, waiting, striving to be happy! ?

Happiness is joy, success, prosperity, love, hope, faith...? Are precise definitions of this all-encompassing, all-absorbing, all-forgiving state, feeling, category of life possible...? Is Man able to find answers to his questions? Or is it in this eternal search that the meaning of human existence, his happiness?

The play is performed in Tatar with simultaneous translation into Russian