Description of the attraction
Taganka Theater - The Moscow Drama and Comedy Theater on Taganka - was founded in 1946. Its chief director was A. Plotnikov. His first troupe included actors from peripheral theaters and graduates of Moscow theater studios. The first staging of the new theater was the play "The people are immortal" based on the novel by V. Grossman. In the early sixties, it was an unremarkable theater that had problems attracting audiences. In 1964 A. Plotnikov resigned.
The main director of the theater was a famous actor from the Theater. Vakhtangov - Yuri Lyubimov. Lyubimov brought his students from the Shchukin School to the theater. Their graduation work was the performance "The Kind Man from Sesuan" by B. Brecht. This is how the names that later glorified the theater appeared: Alla Demidova, Boris Khmelnitsky, Anatoly Vasiliev, Zinaida Slavina.
Lyubimov renewed the theater troupe. It was attended by Inna Ulyanova, Veniamin Smekhov, Valery Zolotukhin, Nikolai Gubenko. Young actor and director R. Dzhabrailov. Separately, we can note the arrival of Vladimir Vysotsky at the theater. Performances with his participation enjoyed extraordinary success. Among his famous roles is the role of Hamlet.
The troupe was constantly replenished with young actors, graduates of the Shchukin School. In the early seventies, actors came to the troupe: Leonid Filatov, Ivan Bortnik, F. Antipov, V. Shapovalov and others.
Lyubimov added “on Taganka” to the former name of the theater. Soon the audience called it simply "Taganka Theater". Under the artistic direction of Yuri Lyubimov, the theater quickly gained popularity among the audience. Taganka gained fame as the most avant-garde theater of that time in the country.
The theater stage did not have a curtain. Decorations were almost never used to decorate the performances. They were replaced by unusual stage designs. Various stage techniques were used in the performances: pantomime, "shadow theater", music. In the mid-seventies, the Taganka Theater became the most visited theater in the capital.
The theater's repertoire was dominated by poetic performances - "Listen!" V. Mayakovsky, "Antiworlds" by A. Voznesensky, "Comrade, believe …." A. Pushkin, "Under the skin of the Statue of Liberty" E. Yevtushenko. Later in the repertoire of the theater appeared staging of prose works: "Mother" by M. Gorky, "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" by B. Vasiliev, "House on the Embankment" by Y. Trifonov, "The Master and Margarita" by M. Bulgakov.
In the 1980s, the theater experienced a number of crisis situations and the departure of Y. Lyubimov from the USSR. In 1992 the theater was divided into two parts. Part of the theater troupe joined N. Gubenko. So a new theater was formed - "The Commonwealth of Taganka Actors". The Gubenko Theater took over the new building of the Taganka Theater. The second part of the actors, together with Lyubimov, remained in the old theater building. The building was rebuilt into a theater in 1911. The author of the project was the architect G. Gelrich.
In 2011, after a conflict with the actors, Yuri Lyubimov left the Taganka Theater. Until March 2013, the artistic director of the theater was Valery Zolotukhin. Today, the director of the theater is Vladimir Fleischer, who previously headed the Meyerhold Center.
