"How Peter the Great…"

Voronezh Academic Street Theatre, or the VAS theatre for short, is a new creative team formed at the initiative of the Platonov Arts Festival. This is an unprecedented case in Russia when a cultural institution initiates the creation of a street theatre. The VAS theatre is the first street theatre in Voronezh. Among its participants are actors, musicians, artists, fire jugglers, dancers.

The VAS theatre was created within the framework of the street theatre laboratory, which started in February. There was a competitive selection of the participants and their training. The artists were mentored by Anna Shishkina (St. Petersburg), the artistic director of "Mr. Pejo's wandering dolls" theatre. She also became the director of the debut performance "How Peter the Great…"

"How Peter the Great…" is the comic and lyrical action, each episode of which is a short tale based on the stories about the emperor. In the performance Peter the Great will appear not as a real historical person, but as a character whose image is firmly rooted in folklore and national consciousness. Stories from the life of a fair, kind and even a little magical emperor will be told by jokers referring to the traditional culture of festivities and holidays. Allegorical and mythical characters will also be the heroes of the performance. The aesthetics of the lubok and the Russian carnival, in which the performance "How Peter the Great…" is staged, will not look archaic: the traditional forms of the folk theatre will be filled with modern meanings and be understandable to viewers of different ages.

"Despite the fact that we worked with folklore material, this performance is not a "souvenir performance". It is very lively and very "fixed", it relies on the tradition of the street carnival, on its texts, which are being created here and now. Despite the fact that the basis for its aesthetics was Russian lubok, folklore pictures, this is not an ethnographic performance. We composed the story about Peter the Great in the tradition of the carnival, but it is our own, modern one." Director Anna Shishkina