The First International Ranevskaya Drama Festival "The Great Province"

May 16-22, 2008: the First International Ranevskaya Drama Festival "The Great Province" will be held in Taganrog. The event is dedicated to the memory of the outstanding Russian actress Faina Ranevskaya (1896-1984) who was born in Taganrog.

The Festival is aimed at selecting and supporting gifted young actors and directors of the provincial drama theatres. "The Great Province" is also supposed to strengthen the contacts between the theatres of Russia and former Soviet republics. Furthermore, attracting theater figures to Taganrog is supposed to popularize the city as the theatrical center of the resort zone.

The People's Artist of Russia, actor of the Moscow Mossoviet Theatre Yevgeny Steblov is the President of the Festival.

"The Great Province" Festival has an exceptionally interesting program including the rich spectrum of cultural events. Russian and foreign theatres will give their performances on the stage of Chekhov Drama Theatre.

The list of the participants includes:

• the Drama Theatre of Lipetsk with the play "Platonov Passions" (based on the works by A. Chekhov);
• the Moscow Regional State Ostrovsky Drama Theatre (Moscow) with the play "Leningrad";
• the Young Spectator’s Theatre of Yekaterinburg with the play "Kashtanka",
  the State Russian Drama Theatre of Sterlitamak with the play "Uncle Vanya",
• the Theatre of Zagreb (Croatia) with the play "The Dissipated Dreams";
• the Youth Theatre of Volgograd with the play "Fans";
• the Studio Theatre GITIS (Moscow) with the play "Three Tall Women" (The People’s Artist of Russia Eugenia Simonova is the protagonist).

Opening of the photo gallery "The Well-Known Provincials", workshops on the stage speech (conducted by Natalia Voloshina, Workshop of the Moscow Art Thearte) and the stage movement (Alena Srurova, St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions), the workshop on Michael Chekhov method (Vyacheslav Kokorin, the Young Spectator’s Theatre of Nizhny Novgorod) are on the agenda of the Festival.

Every day of the Festival the press club will be working giving journalists the opportunity to discuss the performances with the participants and guests of "The Great Province".