Provincial Anecdotes

«Provincial Anecdotes» - a play in two acts, based on Alexander Vampilov's plays «The Story with a Metrunner», «Twenty Minutes with an Angel», stage director - V. Drozdetsky, production designer A. Trushkova. Drozdetsky, production designer A. Trushkova. Before you is a story with a clear proportion of nostalgic Vampilov's notes and quite modern humour. The first merits of the production, noted by the audience, are its atmosphere and tempo: the action here develops dynamically, and there is a wonderful sense of partnership between the characters. Witty and laconic elements of scenography create the image of the performance. «Goodnight, little ones» here sounds both as a clear marker of the epoch of the action and as a clue to the director's decision: anecdotes are essentially the same as fairy tales, only for adults, so the characters are also detached from reality - they are the heroes of fanciful fairy tales.

About the director: Drozdetsky Vladimir Vladimirovich graduated from the State Academy of Arts named after T. Zhurgenov of Almaty in 1992. Since 2004 he has been working in Temirtau Theatre for Children and Youth. From 1992 to 2014 he was the Artistic Director of the youth theatre studio of Temirtau.

He performs staging of performances in the theatre as a stage director. During his work in the theatre Vladimir has staged 17 productions, which were worthily presented at regional, republican and international festivals, where he repeatedly became a diploma winner or festival laureate.

About the playwright: VAMPILOV, ALEXANDER VALENTINOVICH (1937-1972), Russian Soviet playwright, prose writer, publicist.
Vampilov's early works were based on strange, sometimes funny incidents and anecdotes. Heroes of stories and sketches, getting into these strange situations, came to reassess their views. In 1964-1965 Vampilov published his stories in the collective collections The Wind of Wanderings and Princes Leaving Fairy Tales. In 1965 he graduated from the Higher Literature Courses at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. During his studies he wrote the comedy Fair (other name Farewell in June, 1964), which was highly appreciated by playwrights A. Arbuzov and V. Rozov. Its hero, a cynical student Kolesov, came to the idea that money is not all-powerful, and tore up a dishonourable diploma. In the play, the image of an angel, which is a cross-cutting theme in Vampilov's dramaturgy, reappeared, and the encounter with him transformed the hero. The presence of a higher power in the world was a constant theme in Vampilov's work. Evidence has been preserved that he suffered greatly from his inability to believe in God. Together with Provincial Anecdotes, the play Farewell in June formed a satirical cycle. Vampilov intended to write another play Belorechenskie anecdotes, but the realisation of this plan was prevented by his early death.

Returning to Irkutsk, Vampilov continued to work as a playwright. His plays were published in the magazines «Theatre», «Modern Dramaturgy», «Theatre Life», and were included in the repertoire of the best theatres of the country. Critics spoke of «Vampilov's theatre» and saw in the characters of his plays, uncommon people capable of a high spiritual rise and at the same time weak in nature, heirs of the classic heroes of Russian literature Onegin, Pechorin, Protasov, Laevsky. They also represented modern «little people» (Ugarov, Khomutov, Sarafanov, etc.) and female types.
In 1967 Vampilov wrote the plays Eldest Son and Duck Hunt, which fully embodied the tragic component of his dramaturgy. In the comedy The Eldest Son, within the framework of a masterfully written intrigue (the deception of two friends, Busygin and Silva, Sarafanov's family), there was a speech about the eternal values of existence, the succession of generations, the severing of soul ties, love and forgiveness of close people to each other. In this play the «theme-metaphor» of Vampilov's plays begins to sound: the theme of home as a symbol of the universe. The playwright himself, who lost his father in early childhood, perceived the relationship between father and son particularly painfully and acutely.
In the drama Last Summer in Chulimsk (1972) Vampilov created his best female character of Valentina, a young provincial tea shop worker. This woman strove to preserve the «soul of the living» with the same persistence with which throughout the play she tried to preserve the palisade, which was trampled on time and again by indifferent people. Vampilov's work was cut short by a tragic accident. Vampilov drowned in Lake Baikal on 17 August 1972.