This year, the Children's Weekend at the Golden Mask is held under the motto "new texts and new forms" - there will be many works of unusual format: a chat show, a lecture show, a comic strip show, as well as new and not overwritten works on stage.
Moreover, most of the performances are addressed to adolescents - the most problematic audience, which is usually difficult to lure into the theater.
And before the performances, there will be a program of master classes from leading publishers dedicated to new children's books.
Theater critic and curator of the Children's Weekend Marina Shimadina told in detail about each performance.
MY NAME IS Lek
Age: 3+
The only show in the program designed for the little ones. An amazingly beautiful production by Alexander Yanushkevich and the Perm Puppet Theater, whose "Fat Notebook" last year received several "Masks" at once. The plot of the life of insects is told by a single actress using funny and inventive dolls that resemble objects of modern art. Tatiana Nersisyan's scenography is also similar to a light installation. But the message of the play is deep and wise: life is short, do not exchange it for trifles and have time to find the most important thing.
March 17 at 11.00 and 14.00
Theater them. Pushkin branch
THE SNOW QUEEN
Age: 6+
The performances of the Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater and choreographer Vyacheslav Samodurov have long taken the place of the headliners of the Golden Mask, but for the first time they present a ballet for children at the festival. However, there are several levels in this work: children will see a beautiful fairy tale about Gerda's journey to the kingdom of the Snow Queen, balletomanes - graceful quotes from the classics, and adults - the story of a frozen soul that lacked warmth, love and attention. At the same time, the directors deliberately moved away from "childishness" and "puppetry", using the techniques of modern theater, which are interesting for the adult audience.
March 16 at 19.00
New stage of the Bolshoi Theater
SLEEP SCHOOL
Age: 6+
The directors Slava Ignatov and Maria Litvinova also have children, and more than anything they do not like to be bored. Therefore, the parents created a performance where you do not need to sit on an armchair and listen carefully, but you can jump, run, laugh and even throw pillows. The audience will find themselves at the seminar of Professor Khrapanyan, who will lull them to sleep by all methods known to science, but will only amuse them even more. Children and parents will count sheep, listen to fairy tales, massage each other, and in the end they will all settle down together under a huge blanket and enter the kingdom of Morpheus.
March 17 and 18 at 12.00 and 16.00
Center for Drama and Directing on Begovaya
OPHELIA'S SHADOW THEATER
Age: 9+
The performance of the Novokuibyshevsk theater "Fringe" is like an amazing music box: you open it and you will find the second bottom, and behind it there is another one. In the production based on a short fairy tale by Michael Ende, director Denis Bokuradze uses puppet theater, shadow theater, and a nativity scene in the form of a medieval town with small houses. The story of the old prompter Frau Ofelia, who loved theater very much, is told in a quiet whisper, like a bedtime story. And it seems to the audience that they are present at the birth of a real miracle.
March 17 at 12.00, 15.00, 18.00 and 20.00
Small stage of the Theater of Nations
SAVE THE SUPER WHITE
Age: 8+
The American writer Kate DiCamillo is already well known in our country thanks to the translator Olga Varshaver. Her "Rabbit Edward" has already been shown in several Russian theaters. Director Yekaterina Korabelnik presents another fairy tale by this author. "Flora and Odysseus" is the story of the adventures of a teenage girl and her squirrel friend, whom she endows with super-powers in her imagination. The play is staged in the original genre of comics - the actors play against the background of drawn objects and themselves become characters of the "cartoon" world.
March 18 at 18.00
Center for Drama and Directing on Sokol
ALIEN INVASION MUSEUM
Age: 12+
This performance-walker participates not only in the Children's Weekend, but also in the main competition "Golden Mask" in the category "experiment". Spectators enter the space of the museum dedicated to the invasion of aliens on Earth in 1989, classified by the Soviet authorities. They are presented with eyewitness testimonies, documents and artifacts, photographs and sketches, so that by the end of the tour, even the most hardened skeptics begin to believe in the existence of UFOs. And then it's time to think about how ready we are for a meeting with extraterrestrial intelligence and whether we are able to meet guests without fear and xenophobia.
15 - 18 March at 16.00 and 19.00
Boyar chambers
LESOSIBIRSK LOYS
Age: 12+
Another performance-nominee in the category "experiment" from the Lesosibirsk theater "Poisk". A young teacher comes to a distant taiga town and brings confusion to the heart of a schoolgirl, local Tatyana Larina. The plot is generally banal, but there is one thing: the whole action takes place in the VKontakte chat, where most Russian teenagers live, communicate and solve their problems today. The theater is adopting new technologies to talk to a new generation of teenagers in their language about what really matters to them. The play is based on stories from local schoolchildren.
March 16 and 17 at 19.00
Meyerhold Center
SKELLIG
Age: 12+
The performance of the Cannes Drama Theater is based on the novel by David Almond, which became the basis for the film of the same name with Tim Roth in the title role. This is the story of a teenager from Alabama who finds a strange old homeless man in his garage, who turns out to be an angel. Almond's style is called "magic realism" - he knows how to "package" ordinary teenage problems in an exciting form of fantasy. And the director Maxim Sokolov adds percussive musical numbers and bright theatricality to this. Actors from a Siberian town seem to be playing a distant America, painting their faces in different colors.
March 16 at 19.00
I WANT TO SCHOOL
Age: 12+
The books of the writing duet Zhvalevsky and Pasternak are so popular today among teenagers that it’s even strange why they haven’t been staged until now. And it is not surprising that the RAMT performance based on the story “I want to go to school” quickly became a hit. Claims may arise against him about posterity and simplification of the plot, but it is important that he will raise the issue of modern education in the theater, which is very acute today (take at least the recent scandal around the Tubelsky School of Self-Determination). At the play, teenagers for once recognize their lives on stage and think about what a new school might be like.
March 16 at 19.00
This text was originally published on the site of the "Theater for Children" project. We publish it with the permission of the publisher.