The Week of the Red Cat

Lev Efimovich Ustinov (1923–2009). In 1941 he was drafted into the army. He fought in the war. For a time he worked on construction sites in Central Asia. In 1949 he studied at the Litterature Institute (LitIn). In the early 1960s, together with Oleg Tabakov, he created for the Moscow theatre “Sovremennik” the fairy tale “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” However, Glavlit unexpectedly issued a verdict at the last moment: “No right to be shown for adults.” These words determined the entire fate of the playwright—despite the fact that his plays cannot be called exclusively “children’s,” he remained a writer only for children. Lev Ustinov is the author of children’s fairy tales such as “The Forest Song,” “The Great Chase,” and others. In the 1960s and 70s, Ustinov was the most frequently performed children’s dramatist; his plays “A Barrel of Honey,” “An Island Half-and-Half,” “The Great Froglet,” “The Choosy One” were staged not only in Russia but also in Greece, America, and Africa. For primary school age.