History of the Myth in three chapters

Chapter I, “Myth”
Director Maxim Didenko
Chapter II, “Document”
Director Dmitry Egorov
Chapter III “Life”

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This isn’t an adaptation of the famous Soviet novel but an inquiry into how myths are made—historical myths, cultural myths, myths that feed on human lives. How did the heroic tale that inspired millions come about, and what did the real story look like? What do we know about the teen-age resistance fighters of the small mining town of Krasnodon, and what do we want to know? What actually happened to them, and who killed them so brutally, and why? And how did the survivors go on living—inside life, and inside the myth?

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The first part is Maxim Didenko’s physical rendering of the myth itself: pathos, heavy music, larger-than-life figures. There are almost no words; it is nearly a ballet of sculptural groups come to life. As tragedy requires, the audience passes through terror and pity toward catharsis.

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The second part is built from documents: archival papers, museum holdings, old photographs, the recollections of younger relatives of the Young Guard. Dmitry Egorov reconstructs the history of the Krasnodon underground and the making of its myth—scraping off the textbook varnish, prying the bronze loose, pulling living people out of the monument: young people who loved, feared, hoped, and hated, rather than heroic images. People whose tragic fate became the backdrop for an uplifting legend, and whom we really know only through that legend. It is an attempt to look at the history of the Young Guard by the means of documentary theatre.

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The play uses documentary materials from the archives of Young Guard Museum (Krasnodon), “To the Memory of the Dead” (Rovenki), Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, Russian State Archive of Literature and Art

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The play features the songs by J. Lennon, P. Ortega, O. Feltsman with lyrics by Robert Rozhdestvensky, V. Basner with lyrics by M. Matusovsky, V. Soloviev-Sedoy with lyrics by S. Ostrovoy, choruses and arias from the opera by Yu. Meitus “Young Guard” (libretto by A. Malyshko, translated by M. Isakovsky).