Anna Potebnya's play "Sentimental Journey", based on Viktor Shklovsky's novel of the same name, grew out of a sketch presented within the framework of the site-specific laboratory "Theatre beyond Theatre" of the project "The Year of Young Directing at the Alexandrinsky Theatre - 2025". The artistic director of the project and the laboratory is Nikita Kobelev, Artistic Director of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.

The first show took place on 23 September 2025 in the Ballroom of the Astoria Hotel. Following the results of the laboratory, the Alexandrinsky Theatre invited the director to continue working on the sketch at one of its venues.

This performance is Anna Potebnya's first work at the Alexandrinsky Theatre and the first translation into the language of the theatre of an autobiographical book by Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893 - 1984). "Sentimental Journey" he wrote in exile, the text was first published in full in Berlin in 1923. Shklovsky recounts the events that happened to him and his family in 1917-1922. The Civil War, starving Petrograd, Berlin. In the theatre, real biography grows into a poetic generalisation, and history is permeated with the interconnection of times.

"The plot, the plot... When she was asked why she took on Shklovsky, I thought the question was incorrect <...> but the director answered: because it's about us. And the truth is about us: about split time, shattered consciousness, shattered space, cruel reality, the terrible war testimonies that Shklovsky came across on the paths of his domestic and emigrant followings, fractional consciousness. About "life is a dream" (Shklovsky in Waiter's head or Waiter in Shklovsky's head - that's how all the characters are named). About escape, emigration, the desire to return to one's own language and work in it" - Marina Dmitrevskaya, St. Petersburg Theatre Journal.

Premiere - 6 May 2026