Leningrad V. F. Komissarzhevskaia Theater

opened on Oct. 18, 1942, during the siege of Leningrad. Before 1943 it was called first the Municipal Drama Theater and later the State Drama Theater. In 1959 it was renamed the V. F. Komissarzhevskaia Theater. During the Great Patriotic War the theater’s company included B. A. Gorin-Goriainov, P. I. Leshkov, A. P. Nelidov, F. M. Nikitin, and V. R. Streshneva. The theater staged Korneichuk’s The Front, Leonov’s Invasion, Simonov’s Wait for Me, and other military and patriotic plays.

In the postwar period the theater has had a diverse repertoire, including many Russian classics. Outstanding productions have included Resurrection, based on L. N. Tolstoy’s novel, Crime and Punishment, based on F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel, Gogol’s The Marriage, Gorky’s Somov and the Others and The Old Man, and A. K. Tolstoy’s Tsar Fedor Ioannovich. Plays based on works by O. F. Berggol’ts, L. M. Leonov, B. Brecht, N. Hikmet, E. Hemingway, N. Dumbadze, I. Dvoretskii, and L. A. Maliugin have been staged. As of 1973 the company included Honored Artists of the RSFSR N. A. Boiarskii, I. N. Konopatskii, G. P. Korotkevich, L. S. Liubashevskii, N. A. Medvedeva, S. L. Ponachevskii, M. S. Khrabrov, and A. I. Iankevskii and Honored Artist of the Byelorussian SSR V. I. Chemberg. Since 1966 the chief director has been R. S. Agamirzian (Honored Art Worker of the Georgian SSR).