The performance is timed to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great director and theater reformer V.E. Meyerhold. The text of the production is based on the transcript of the general meeting of the staff of GosTIM (Meyerhold’s State theatre) in December 1937, following the article by P. M. Kerzhentsev "Stranger’s Theater" published in the newspaper Pravda. 

Today we know that it was this article that signaled the beginning of the destruction of the Meyerhold Theater, and then the Master himself. But the play shows the starting point of this path - the collective discussion, and, in fact, the condemnation of the director by his troupe and all the employees of the theater. Personal grievances, wounded egos, disagreements of a creative nature - all these motives are the basis for the claims (both ridiculous and ridiculous, and reasonable and well-founded), which are expressed directly, unabashedly in the Master's face. 

Real dialogues of almost a century ago, it would seem, should immerse us in documentary, testimonial theater. But in the dense fabric of everyday, acutely characteristic theater, Valery Fokin masterfully wove scenes of memories and fantasies of Meyerhold himself. Thanks to this, the conflict ceases to be domestic, but rises to generalizations, touching upon eternal questions: the relationship between the artist and society, the possibility of compromise between creative necessity and human justice, the measure of the artist's responsibility to himself and to those who followed him.... 

Premiere - February 10, 2024