Vladivostok Theater

(full name, M. Gorky Primor’e Krai Dramatic Theater), founded in 1931. Actors invited from Khabarovsk and other cities joined the theater’s troupe, as well as young people who were active in the Vladivostok Theater of Working Youth. The directors, who headed the theater in various years—A. B. Nadezhdov, I. S. Efremov, N. A. Bondarev, A. A. Dobrotin, and N. I. Basin—played a significant role in the creative formation of the company.

The best plays of Soviet drama have been staged at the theater—Vishnevskii’s The First Cavalry Army and An Optimistic Tragedy, Pogodin’s The Kremlin Chimes and Man With a Gun, Arbuzov’s Irkutsk Story, Popov’s Family, Kirshon’s Bread and The Rails Are Humming, Lavrenev’s The Break, and Lavrent’ev’s The Man and the Globe.Russian classics have been performed (Gogol’s The Inspector-General, Lermontov’s Masquerade), as have been foreign classics (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Lope de Vega’s The Dog in the Manger). The Vladivostok Theater has performed most of the plays of M. Gorky, whose name was bestowed on the theater in 1932. (In 1955 the play The Counterfeit Coin was staged; this play had hardly been per-formed previously on the professional stage.) The theater actively works with such local playwrights as E. M. Bondareva, whose Sergei Lazo, The Crystal Key, and Gulls Over the Sea have been staged; V. A. Shavrin, whose Awakened Conscience and The Plakhov Family have been performed; and G. G. Khaliletskii, whose Storm Force Eight has been performed.

In 1970 the theater’s troupe included People’s Artists of the RSFSR G. I. Antoshenkov, P. G. Popov, and A. A. Prisiazhniuk and Honored Artists of the RSFSR N. V. Krylov, N. A. Mikheev, V. la. Mialk, E. A. Solov’eva, and E. M. Shal’nikov. The principal director is lu. V. Chernyshev (since 1970) and the principal artist is Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR and of the Georgian SSR B. V. Loktin (since 1950).