The play "Peter and Fevronia of Murom" is a family musical. Its director and performers present an obsolete Old Russian tale by Hermolaus-Erasmus, a timeless story of triumphant sacrificial love in a light, fascinating and involving way. 

"I create my own version of Peter and Fevronia’s story through music. This version is based on tiny pieces of the original tale, which can be compared to using multiple tiny saints’ icons instead of a major image they frame. And that is what my performance is: short musical fragments construct a storyline concurrent to a bigger story, like field notes. That is to say, the music is self-sustained and used as an intermedium – a technique often exploited in today’s movies and theatre performances. One and the same subject is infold in different ways, each having its specific benefits of expression. I do not use these tiny pieces of music to force the "Russian" nature of the story through. Rather, this is a common method of ‘non-psychological theatre’, peculiar to Kathakali or Peking Opera to the same degree as to the Russian theatre before times of Peter the Great. We have two female voices to sing it all (lustrous Inna Sukhoretskaya and Arina Marakulina) and varied percussion (Petr Glavatskikh). The story of Peter and Fevronia is all-embracing - that is what I like about it. This tale is not about "some Russian saints", it is about love between man and woman." Aleksandr Manotskov.

"Firstly, I see this tale as breaking a stereotypical attitude to man-woman relationships. Secondly, I see a code encrypted within the tale of Peter and Fevronia, which is in fact he essence of being: man and women together are an inception of life. The enigma of living is stated here very clearly. It is a very simple enigma, but complex at the same time, like every simple thing." Svetlana Zemlyakova.

Svetlana Zemlyakova, graduated Samara State Academy of Culture and Arts; was an assistant intern at Voice and Speech Training Dpt., Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS); later she worked at Faculty of Directing and Faculty of Acting there. Her qualification exams at the GITIS Faculty of Directing (Professor O. Kudryashova) were ‘Viy’ (based on Nikolai Gogol’s novella), Euripides’ ‘The Trojan Women’ and a staging based on a short story ‘Na trave dvora’ by Assar Eppel. The latter won a major prize at the International ‘Raduga’ Theatre festival (St. Petersburg) and ‘Zolotoj Listok’ Festival.

Premiered on April, 2015

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