Duration 1 hour 10 minutes

Director Maxim Didenko

Premiere took place on 29 November 2018

Creative team

Author Valery Pecheykin

Set and costumes by Galya Solodovnikova

Composer Louis Lebee

Video Oleg Mikhailov

Lighting designer Sergey Vasiliev

Idea Anna Rublevskaya

Producer Alexandria Markvo (Bird&Carrot)

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CAST

Alisa Khazanova

Aleksey Rozin

For the first time, stars of Russia’s theatrical new wave are showing a production to Russian-speaking London before Moscow gets to see it. This isn’t classical theatre but the new kind that, in recent years, turned Moscow into one of the most fashionable theatre capitals in the world.

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The piece is about the Soviet actress Valentina Karavaeva (1921–1997). Her first starring role, in the film “Mashenka,” won her the Stalin Prize, in 1943; then a car crash disfigured her face, and she never worked in film again. She lived for a time in England, married an Englishman, returned to the U.S.S.R., and died forgotten and poor. In her last years, she filmed herself at home with a movie camera—for years. A selfie before selfies? That chapter of her life, a precursor of today’s video blogs, became the production’s main source.