On December 22, Vitebsk /Olga Bogacheva - BELTA/. The premiere of the play "Bankrot" based on Alexander Ostrovsky's play "Our Own Folk - Let's Settle" will take place today on the stage of the Yakub Kolas National Academic Drama Theatre in Vitebsk, Svetlana Dashkevich, head of the theatre's literary department, told a BELTA correspondent. The play is directed by Honoured Artist of Russia Yuri Pakhomov. He has been collaborating with the Kolas Theatre since 1997. His productions of "The Taming of the Shrew" by W. Shakespeare, "A Plague on Both Your Houses" and "The Dybbuk" by G. Gorin, "He. She. Window. Deceased" by R. Cooney, and "The Mill" by A. Dudarev have won the sincere love of Vitebsk audiences. The scenography and costumes for the play were designed by St. Petersburg artist Andrey Pronin, and the dances were staged by renowned choreographer Diana Yurchenko. The leading actors of the theatre, Vyacheslav Grushov, Svetlana Zhukovskaya, Georgy Loyko, and others, are cast in the main roles of the play. "By including this comedy in the theatre's repertoire, we hope that the story told by the Russian classic will resonate with the modern audience, as times change, but the problems raised in it remain relevant," noted Svetlana Dashkevich. She also drew attention to the fact that the premiere of the play "Bankrot" coincided with the 150th anniversary of the first staging of A. Ostrovsky's play on the theatrical stage. The four-act comedy "Our Own Folk - Let's Settle" was written by Alexander Ostrovsky in 1849. It achieved great audience success after its publication in 1850 in the literary and art journal "Moskvityanin". However, its staging was under censorship ban for eleven years. It was first staged in 1861 on the stage of the Maly Theatre in Moscow. -0-

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