Shizgara

A benefit performance featuring immediately 10 actresses, telling about the fates of their heroines, was held in the play “Shizgara,” based on Yulia Voznesenskaya’s novel “Women’s Decameron.” The premiere took place on December 21, 2013 at the Academic Theater named after Vera Komissarzhevskaya.

The script adaptation and staging were done by Roman Smirnov, a student of the outstanding director of the Soviet era, Georgy Tovstonogov, who showed the audience a small slice of Soviet society. The roles include a shipbuilding plant worker, an engineer, a doctor of biological sciences, an employee of the city executive committee, a flight attendant, a music teacher, a woman with no fixed place of residence, the wife of a dissident, a theatrical director, a secretary.

The song “Shizgara” has stayed in the memory of a generation as a hit of the era of stagnation. In this once popular and in essence meaningless word—there is the whole absurdity of the time, with its dreams and disappointments, despair and betrayal, fake slogans and sincere hopes. The heroines of the play speak about love and hatred, about jealousy and betrayal, about frightening and wonderful moments, about tests and the ability to survive—things that also make up the content of our life today. The actresses Elena Andreeva, Olga Arikova, Olga Belyavskaya, Margarita Bychkova, Kristina Kuzmina, Elizaveta Nilova, Nelya Popova, Nina Petrovska, Elena Simonova, and Alexandra Sydoruk created the images of the heroines.

Yulia Voznesenskaya has a difficult fate. She was an active participant in the circles of informal art, was convicted for “anti-Soviet propaganda,” and later emigrated from the Soviet Union with her children. Since 2002 she has lived in Berlin. The writer is an editor of the sites “You Will Win!” “Memoriam.” She helps unfamiliar people survive difficult life circumstances.