Press-release. News about the 93rd Theater Season at the Saratov Kiselev Youth Theater.

At the very beginning of the 2010-2011 theater season a unique event awaits all Saratov theater-goers. The Saratov Academic Kiselev Youth Theater will launch a performance production of the play by the famous American playwright Sam Shepard “The Curse of the Starving Class.”

The leader of the project is the famed American director Lee Breuer – one of the founders and artistic director of the New York avant-garde theater Mabou Mines.

Eleven productions by this master have been bestowed the Obie Award – the leading professional theater prize in the USA, founded in 1955 by the New York weekly paper “The Village Voice” for inspiring innovation and achievement in the field of theater.

Mr. Breuer visited Russia in 2009 and took part in the International Theater Forum, “Theater: Time of Changes” organized by Russian Federation Theater Union. He also conducted master-classes in GITIS, the St. Petersburg Maly Drama Theater, Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, and in Moscow staged his famous production of “A Doll’s House,” based on the play by H. Ibsen. The production of Sam Shepard’s “The Curse of the Starving Class” will be the first performance staged by Mr. Breuer in Russia.

The set designer for the project is the distinguished theater artist from St. Petersburg, Emil Kapelush, known to Saratov audiences through performances of “The Cherry Orchard” by A.P. Chekhov, and “Three Comrades” (a play by N. Skorokhod based on E.M.Remarque’s novel).

The unprecedented uniqueness of the project is also owing to the fact that, until now, the play “The Curse of the Starving Class” had not been translated into Russian, although the play itself is well-known not only within the USA. The play’s first performance took place at the New York Shakespeare Festival on the 2nd of March, 1978. An exclusive Russian adaptation has been completed by Sergey Gordeev, a translator who lives in New York and has already numerous times worked with Sam Shepard’s texts.

In 1994 the play “The Curse of the Starving Class” was adapted for the screen by the director Bruce Beresford with a remarkable cast starring James Woods, Kathy Bates, and Randy Quaid. This movie has not been translated into Russian.

The American director Lee Breuer will stage Sam Shepard’s play as part of the collaborative project developed by the Bilateral Presidential Commission created on the 6th of July, 2009, by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama. The aim of the Commission is the strengthening of cooperation between our countries. In order to enhance mutual understanding between the Russian and the American people, the Commission attempts to expand our cultural connections – Mr. Breuer’s production is just one of these examples.
The theater wishes to express special thanks for providing support for the project to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and personally to Ms. Maria Shustina.