Sovremennik Theatre

The Moscow Sovremennik Theatre stands on Chistoprudny Boulevard — a drama stage that emerged as a symbol of the renewal of Soviet theatre during the Khrushchev Thaw. The company was founded in 1956 by young graduates of the Moscow Art Theatre School who rejected the rigid principles of their older colleagues, and within two decades the theatre had become one of the country’s leading stages.

The theatre’s birth date is considered to be April 15, 1956 — the premiere of Ever Alive (Vechno Zhivye), based on the play by Viktor Rozov that later became the basis for the film The Cranes Are Flying. Among the studio’s founders were Oleg Yefremov, who became its leader, along with Galina Volchek, Igor Kvasha, Yevgeny Yevstigneyev, and Oleg Tabakov. The company officially received the name “Sovremennik” (“Contemporary”) in 1958, and its first building — near Mayakovskaya Square — only in 1961, thanks to the support of Culture Minister Yekaterina Furtseva. The theatre staged pointed plays by contemporary authors, avoiding the classical repertoire, for which critics wryly dubbed its method “whispered realism.”

The current building on Chistoprudny Boulevard dates from 1912–1914: it was designed by architect Roman Klein as a cinema called the “Colosseum,” and later housed a Proletkult stage and a trade-union drama company. After film screenings ceased in 1970, the building underwent major renovation and was handed over to Sovremennik in 1974, connected by an overhead passage to the neighboring building used for administrative and rehearsal purposes.

The year 1970 proved a turning point for the theatre, when Yefremov took over the Moscow Art Theatre and took part of the company, along with the entire portfolio of future productions, with him. Galina Volchek, elected artistic director in 1972, saved Sovremennik from the brink of closure: under her leadership the theatre found a new style, staging Chingiz Aitmatov’s The Ascent of Mount Fuji without sets or makeup, and later the legendary Steep Route. Volchek led the company for nearly half a century, until her death in 2019; during this time the theatre toured successfully in the United States, became the first foreign winner of the Drama Desk Award after performances on Broadway, and later staged productions in London.

From autumn 2016 to December 2018, the main stage on Chistye Prudy was closed for major restoration: restorers recreated the lost stucco decoration of the former “Colosseum” facade, the lighting, and the brickwork, while the auditorium received new equipment and seven hundred seats. After Volchek’s death, the theatre was briefly led by Viktor Ryzhakov, and then by a collegial artistic council of the company — a situation echoing, in many ways, the one at the start of the 1970s.

In under seven decades, Sovremennik has journeyed from a short-lived student studio to one of Russia’s leading drama theatres, while preserving the historic former cinema building as part of its identity. The combination of the acting school established by the Yefremov and Volchek generation with early-20th-century architectural heritage makes the theatre on Chistoprudny Boulevard one of Moscow’s landmark cultural addresses.