“St. Petersburg Theatre Seasons” Festival will show 5 Petersburg performances to a worldwide audience.

On September 20, 2022, the sixteenth annual cross-cultural festival “St. Petersburg Theatre Seasons” stars, which is meant to build and develop cultural relations between St. Petersburg and other cities and art centers in the world. Annually, we show the most interesting performances of St. Petersburg theatres, and  the audience gets to know their art directors and art professionals who work in the cultural capital.

The Festival has been working since 2007. During these 16 years the performances of “St. Petersburg Theater Seasons” have been shown in Prague, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Marseille, Milan, Athens and many other cities. In different times the most prominent theatres of the city took part in the festival. These were Alexandrinsky Theater, Lensoviet Theatre, “Priyut Komedianta”, Bolshoy Puppet Theatre, Tovstonogov Bolshoi Theatre and many others.

Since 2020 the Festival goes online.

Aleksey Smokotov, the General Producer of the Festival: “When the festival moved to the Internet in 2020 for reasons that are well known,  it has revealed certain advantages: this format incredibly  has broadened our geographical outreach. If earlier we used to come to one European city and show performances to people in the only region, now we can broadcast St. Petersburg theater projects in real time to the world. Each production is created by a filmmaker who assembles footage shot by shot. It is a kind of symbiosis of live broadcast and teleplay. As a consequence, the viewer will be able to  take a closer look at a scenery and expressions in every detail that would not have been possible if he had bought a ticket at the back. Finally, it is very difficult to make people leave their houses, so they are able to watch the performances of our festival at home with families.”

In 2022 the festival will show:

• “An Optimistic Tragedy. A Farewell Ball”, directed by Victor Ryzhakov.

National Drama Theatre of Russia - Alexandrinsky Theatre;

• “Dreams of Love, or the Marriage of Balzaminov”, directed by Grigory Kozlov.

The St. Petersburg Masterskaya Theatre;

• “King Lear”, directed by Lev Erenburg. Nebolshoi Drama Theatre.
• “Wolves and Sheep”,  directed by Andrzej Buben. Theatre-Festival “The Baltic House”.; 
• “Uncle Vanya”, directed by Evgeniy Serzin. The State Drama Theatre “Priyut Komedianta”

  Every show closes with an online post-show discussion with the production team who will answer the questions of our spectators after the performance screening. Online meetings with the

actors will be delivered with simultaneous interpretation in the English language.

Together with the online sessions leading teachers of Russian State Institute of Performing Arts will teach master classes in the field of dramatic arts, and the presentation of RGISI opening its departments (Kaliningrad, Kemerovo, Vladivostok) will be arranged within the “St. Petersburg Theater Seasons” Festival .

All events will be streamed live on the festival website https://petersburg-theatre.com and community of the Festival on Vkontakte —  https://vk.com/spbtheatreseasons. 

The Festival is organized with the support from the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg.