MTYuZ

MTYuZ or Moscow Young Generation Theater/Московский ТЮЗ

Mamonovskiy per., 10с1

Metro Tverskaya or Chekhovskaya

The Moscow Young Generation Theater – one of the oldest theaters of the current Russian era – began its history in 1920. It was the first in a long line of Soviet theaters given the impersonal name of TYuZ, an abbreviation for Young Spectator Theater. Over the course of its history the theater has known successes and failures, but the contrived Soviet notion of a theater created only for a young audience strictly limited the repertory and, accordingly, the creative aspirations of directors and actors. The most talented among these artists naturally aspired to freeing themselves of the notion of “children’s” theater as quickly as possible.

This changed in 1987 on the day that the theater’s new chief director Henrietta Yanovskaya unveiled the premiere of her first production at MTYuZ: Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Heart of a Dog.” It not only heralded the beginning of a new era at MTYuZ, it signified the rebirth of freedom in Russian theater at large. After many long, difficult decades, during which the best theater artists were compelled to work underground to one extent or another, Yanovskaya’s production symbolized Russian theater once again speaking freely and openly. It was a voice, thanks to triumphant tours of “The Heart of a Dog,” that was heard in Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Israel and Turkey. As Henrietta Yanovskaya says, this simple “children’s” theater had now become a “theater for people.” And it became famous beyond Russia’s borders, each of its new productions invariably attracting the attention of the international theater community.