Sverdlovsk Drama Theater

a drama theater in Sverdlovsk, opened in 1930 with a performance of Vishnevskii’s The First Cavalry Army. The original theater troupe included actors from the Perm’ Touring Theater and graduates of the Leningrad theater schools. The repertoire consisted primarily of Soviet plays, such as Fadeev’s The Nineteen (1934), Trenev’s Liubov’ larovaia (1934), Korneichuk’s Platon Krechet (1935) and The Destruction of the Squadron (1935), and Pogodin’s Man With a Gun (1938). The directors included A. I. Krichko, V. K. Tatishchev, and V. A. Chirkin; the actors and actresses included M. A. Betskii, M. S. Borin, V. A. Bure, V. A. Nel’skii, N. K. Petipa, V. N. Ratomskii, and N. I. Slonova. I. S. Efremov was artistic director from 1931, and E. A. Brill’ from 1943 to 1951; V. S. Bitiutskii was principal director from 1952 to 1967.

The Sverdlovsk Drama Theater’s productions include Popov and Stepanov’s Port Arthur, Korneichuk’s Wings, Mamin-Sibiriak’s The Mountain Nest and Privalov’s Millions, N. F. Pogodin’s Man With a Gun, The Kremlin Chimes, and Third Pathétique, and Shatrov’s July Sixth, in which B. F. Il’in and L. D. Okhlupin portrayed V. I. Lenin. It has also staged plays devoted to life in the Urals, such as Salynskii’s The Road of the Vanguard (1949) and Dangerous Fellow Traveler (1953) and Miachin’s The Quarrel (1955) and The Darling of Fortune (1967). In the 1950’s and 1960’s the theater’s leading actors and actresses were B. F. Il’in, E. K. Amman-Dal’skaia, M. A. Tokareva, Z. K. Malinovskaia, A. D. Berezkin, and B. Z. Molchanov. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s the theater presented L. N. Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness (1961), Shaw’s Pygmalion (1967), Vasil’ev’s And the Dawns Are Quiet Here (1971), Gorky’s Smug Citizens (1972), and Marcinkevičius’ Mindaugas (1972). In 1975 the theater troupe included People’s Artists of the RSFSR M. A. Buinyi, L. D. Okhlupin, and V. M. Shatrova, Honored Artists of the RSFSR G. P. Apitin, Iu. P. Vasil’ev, V. A. Voronin, G. E. Getsov, E. S. Zakharov, L. I. Kislovskii, V. I. Marchenko, G. N. Umpeleva, and V. D. Chermianinov, and Honored Artist of the Uzbek SSR K. G. Lamochkina. A. L. Sokolov has been principal director since 1967; V. S. Bitiutskii and E. I. Lifson are directors.