YOUNG to the YOUNG!Performance of the First Studio of the Vakhtangov Theatre

A prominent Italian writer, poet, playwright, philosopher and thinker, Nobel Prize winner ‘for creative courage and resourcefulness in the revival of dramatic and scenic art” Luigi Pirandello was chosen by the First Studio of the Vakhtangov Theatre not by mere chance. The young are characterized by audacity, courage and indomitable desire to show what they can do. One of the most difficult plays for staging among the world repertoire “Six characters in search of an Author” has found new life in the studio and turned into a theatrical fantasy on themes suggested by the great Italian author.

From the very first moments of the performance the audience is involved into the world behind the scenes and finds itself present at a rehearsal in one of the most famous theatres. The property-master taps with a hammer on the stage, the young actress rustles the sheets of her new role. A director rapidly storms into the audience hall and it seems the mystery of play creating is about to begin. But a moment later some strangers come onto the stage and assure the director that they are the characters who have lost their author. The director is confused, but they do not give up. They persuaded the director to devote them some attention so that they could tell the story of one family, where love and cruelty, vice and holiness, hatred and pain are so closely intertwined that mother, father, younger daughter, stepdaughter and eldest son could no longer understand each other and eventually got lost in family relations. But “Six Characters in search of an Author” on the stage of the First Studio of the Vakhtangov Theatre is not a common story. The young actors have tried to solve the most mysterious of Pirandello’s plays and act out the story of how art is inextricably linked with life, of how people sometimes without realizing it, wear a mask and turn into puppets while fictional characters take on flesh and blood.