Description of the attraction
Theater "Saturday" was founded in Leningrad as a theater club on the basis of the Vyborg Palace of Culture in 1969 on one of the Saturdays (hence the name - "Saturday") at the initiative of a group of young people. The founder of the theater, its artistic director and chief ideologist Yuri Aleksandrovich Smirnov-Nesvitsky, professor, doctor of art history, theater critic, holder of the Order of Friendship. Yuri Alexandrovich gave a start in life to many famous theater and cinema figures.
In the early 1970s. the Saturday theater aroused a keen interest of representatives of the artistic intelligentsia and was actively supported by them. The theater is widely known for an artistic experiment that originated in the performances of "Saturday" in the 70s.
The repertoire of the Saturday Theater is distinguished by a unique feature - for the most part it consists of plays that are unknown anywhere in the world. They are based on compositions that were born and inspired by the acting family of the theater, written by them and brought to life on stage. Their own fantasies are also drawn from Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Remarque. The artistic director of the theater himself is the author of a number of plays. In addition, he wrote scripts based on dramatic and prose works. Many theatrical performances are imbued with the director's own statements through the lyrics of the songs he wrote.
The main authorship of the director is that he creates his own theater. Since the artistic thinking of Yuri Alexandrovich is not inclined to narration, he is not interested in plot development and intrigue, therefore the basis of his performances is the development of the theme. Hence, their own scripts, which are built as compositions from many episodes.
The main theme of the theater is love, its inevitability, trials and distortions. This theme has been developed by the entire theater troupe for several generations.
The repertoire of "Saturday" is very diverse, but it is all united by the theater's artistic program, the foundation of which is the comprehension of reality as a theater in its large-scale understanding. That is why in the theatrical productions of "Saturday" the relationship "hero-actor" acquires a new meaning - the actor himself becomes the hero of the performance, and the audience becomes accomplices in the game.
Talented graduates of theatrical universities, who have already earned prizes and diplomas from various competitions and festivals, work on the Saturday stage. Such famous creative personalities as Konstantin Khabensky, Grigory Gladkov, Semyon Spivak, Angelica Nevolina, Alexandra Yakovleva, Mikhail Razumovsky, Tatyana Abramova have emerged from the walls of this theater. At various times P. Kadochnikov, Y. Tolubeev, A. Mironov, O. Volkova took part in the theater's activities. K. Rudnitsky, A. Volodin, V. Sosnora, O. Efremov, M. Zhvanetsky, K. Ginkas, L. Dodin.
The playbill of the Saturday Theater never repeats that of the city. Modern and classical plays are staged here, but all of them are distinguished by a non-standard stage solution, a denial of all generally accepted theatrical norms and rules.
A significant part of the performances are plays by Yu. A. Smirnov-Nesvitsky. This is precisely the production of the play "Windows, Streets, Gateways", which has retained its popularity for over thirty years. Such performances also include "The City, Familiar to Tears …", "The Yearning of the Soul of Rita V." The play “Lunar Landscape. Pictures from Our Lives”, he reveals the nature of the theater as an aesthetic and at the same time existential phenomenon, tries to look into its secluded corners.
Stage compositions based on well-known literary works are a kind of free fantasies on a theme proposed by prose or play. At the same time, the director's intention and the goal of the performance is not simply to "present" the plot of the work on stage, but to reincarnate the actors into characters in the light of a certain director's concept. One of the main objects of study of the representatives of "Saturday" is themselves, their sensations, feelings and thoughts that arise as a reaction to the impulse transmitted by a literary work, theater, life itself.
Among the theater's classical productions, the most popular are: the philosophical parable “Jonathan Livingston The Seagull” based on the novel by R. Bach, “Three Comrades” based on the work of E.-M. Remark, “A Profitable Place” based on the comedy by A. Ostrovsky and many others.
