Press-release. On the 12 of October, 2010 on the Big Stage of Saratov Academic Youth Theater the opening-night for the performance «The Curse of the Starving Class» of the play by American playwright Sam Shepard will take place.

Director — Lee Breuer (USA),
Production-designer — Emil Kapelush (St. Petersburg),
Costume designer – Yana Glushanok (St. Petersburg),
Lightning designer – Denis Zavyalov (St. Petersburg).

With the support of
The U.S.A. Department of State
and United States Embassy in Russia

At the very beginning of the 2010-2011 theater season a unique event awaits all Saratov theater-goers. On the 12th of October the Saratov Academic Kiselev Youth Theater presents a premiere performance production of the play by the famous American playwright Sam Shepard “The Curse of the Starving Class”.

The director 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, 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).

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. Eleven productions by this master have been bestowed the Obie Award – the leading professional theater prize in the USA. Mr. Lee Breuer graduated from The University of California, Los Angeles, took part in the acting workshops in San-Francisco. He is one of the most bright representatives of contemporary American theater, known all over the world by his adaptations of classic works.

Sam Shepard is a distinguished American playwright, famed actor, author of the various screenplays and theater plays. He has worked with almost all kinds of visual and dramatic arts, including cinema, television and theater. Shepard is an honored playwright, whose plays - “Buried Child” (Pulitzer Prize for Drama), “Simpatico”, “True West”, “The Curse of the Starving Class” and “Fool for Love” - were bestowed by several prestigious awards.

The play “The Curse of the Starving Class” was written by Sam Spehard in 1976.  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. 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. 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 the centre of attention in the play “The Curse of the Starving Class” there is a common American family – the Tates: drinking and dreaming father, suffering mother, rebel teenage daughter and son-idealist.  It’s a story of relationships between the Tates family members, where in the struggle for owning the farm they all live in the vain longing of freedom, safety and eventually of finding the meaning of life is revealed. Shepard’s play as Chekhov’s plays says about the lost ideals and forgotten origins, when a person by ruining his Home looses “the ground under his feet”.

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. Saratov Kiselev Youth Theater received a grant from the US State Department and United States Embassy in Russia for Lee Breuer’s production of “The Curse of the Starving Class”. The production of “The Curse of the Starving Class” will be the major cultural event not only in Saratov and region, but an important step in strengthening the international cultural bonding between Russia and the USA.
Among invited guests to the opening-night of the performance on the 12th of October are well-known theater critics from the USA, Russia, Great Britain, France, Poland, theater directors from France and Bulgaria, representatives of the cultural and public organizations.

Actors, participating in the performance: RF Meritorious Actress, RF State Award Laureate Elena Vovnenko, Atem Kuzin, Alexey Chernyshev, Vladimir Egorov, Andrey Bykov, Alexey Karabanov, Vladimir Konev, Anastasia Beskrovnaya, Alexandra Karelskix, Alexey Varenov, Ruslan Divlyatshin and others.