Press-release. On the 6th of September, 2011 on the Big stage of Saratov Kiselev Youth Theater the opening night of the performance on the play “The Imaginary Invalid” written by Jean Baptiste Molière will take place. Director — Anatoly Praudin.

Director — Anatoly Praudin (St. Petersburg),
Production designer — Anatoly Shubin (Yekaterinburg).
Lighting designer — Alexander Panasyuk (Moscow).

Saratov Academic Kiselev Youth Theater opens the 94th theater season with the performance on the play “The Imaginary Invalid” written by classical French playwright Jean Baptiste Molière. Director — famous theater director Anatoly Praudin (St. Petersburg), production designer — Anatoly Shubin (Yekaterinburg), lighting designer — Alexander Panasyuk (Moscow). The opening night will take place on the 6th of September, 2011 on the Big stage of the theater.

Jean Baptiste Molière (1622-1673) — is a great comedian, whose works determined the genre of the classical comedy and also an outstanding theater figure who managed to be an actor and theater manager at the same time. Molière began to write to still the repertoire hunger of his troupe he has been leading since 1650. His first drama pieces were farces and short comedy scenes, but he became a known playwright after his first two big comedies in verses. In 1658 his troupe gives a performance for King Louis XIV, who determined Molière’s future life – he gets his own theater in Paris, where he played and wrote for the next 15 years. Molière’s most famous comedies that convicted human vices and weaknesses and made him a real celebrity were written here: “Tartuffe”, “The Misanthrope”, “The Learned Women”, “The School for Wives” and others.

The last time Saratov Youth Theater turned to Molière’s play was in 1945, his comedy “The Bourgeois Gentleman” was among the first productions by Yury Kiselev in our theater. In the opening season theater is preparing a production of one of the most vivid and merriest Molière’s comedies – “The Imaginary Invalid”. The story of the play is paradoxical. Molière wrote it in his last years, he was gravely ill at the moment. Inspite of this he himself played Argan on the first performances. But on the forth presentation of the play he felt worse, the show was cancelled and after few days Molière died.

“The Imaginary Invalid” in Saratov Academic Kiselev Youth Theater is staged by the creative team known to the Saratov audience with “Galiera” production (play by M. Bartenev based on the novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez). Director – Anatoly Praudin graduated from St. Petersburg Theater Arts Academy, awarded with the RSFSR State Prize, worked in Yekaterinburg Youth Theater, from 1993 to 1996 was a main director of St. Petersburg Youth Theater, created his own “Experimental Stage” within “The Baltic House” Theater-Festival. Production designer Anatoly Shubin also graduated from St. Petersburg Theater Arts Academy, is a RF Merit artist, main production-designer in Yekaterinburg Youth Theater, he designed productions all over Russia and abroad – in Omsk, Riga, St. Petersburg, Sevastopol, Yaroslavl, Chelyabinsk, many of them together with Anatoly Praudin.

What is the nature of Argan’s illness? A.Praudin’s production offers new interpretation of the “imaginary” disease of Molière’s character. Could it be that all the medicine and essences for Argan are a part of some kind of experiment he conducts on himself? A challenge declared by Argan or dying Molière himself against his own body doomed for aging and suffering from diseases? And what if true nature of the imaginary invalid’s suffering is in the spiritual thirst for the unreachable power over illness and death?

Actors participating in the performance: RF People’s Actor Yu.P. Osherov, RF Merit actress E.V. Vovnenko, RF Merit actor V.N. Emelyanov, RF Merit actor A.D.Fedorov, RF Merit actor I.B. Volodarsky, theater actors T.Chupikova, A.Krivega, A.Karabanov, E.Egorov, V.Konev, A.Sosedova, O. Loginova, A.Bogdanova, M.Luchkova and others.