Tabakerka Theatre
1a, Chaplygina, 1А/ ул. Чаплыгина, 1а, стр. 1
Metro Chistye Prudy
In 1978, a dim bulb above the cellar door of a respectable house on Chaplygin Street lit the way into seemingly ‘anti-theatrical’ premises sought out by Oleg Tabakov and planned by scene-designer David Borovsky. The wet walls of the cellar, that had long stored coal grit and all kinds of waste, were scraped down and painted black by Oleg Tabakov’s students and colleagues in the State Drama School. The cement floor was boarded and also painted black. The tiny theatre proclaimed “Young Actors’ Studio” could house only a dozen rows of benches, so only the lucky few could obtain the tickets after queuing for hours.
Only in December 1986, almost a decade later, the theatre was finally authorized as “the Moscow Theatre directed by Oleg Tabakov”. By this time the theatre had managed to conquer even the most prejudiced Moscow theatre-goers, who were convinced that the theatre guided by an actor, be it Tabakov himself, was doomed. However, even in the times of “directorial theatre” the young team aimed at cultivation of actors’ skills found themselves in the first flight of theatrical life.
This group of like-minded enthusiasts had teamed up in the Baumansky House of Pioneers, where by the autumn of 1974 Oleg Tabakov had cast over 3,500 fourteen-year-olds eager to attend a drama club. He chose 49 most promising teenagers. The subjects for their education were typical rather of a curriculum in a school of acting than those in a drama club: Acting, Movement, Voice, Sketches, Accumalating Visual Impressions. The students got to know what semesters and, moreover, expulsions are… The teachers, A. Leontyev, K. Raikin, V. Fokin and others, boosted their aspiration through encounters with intellectuals: writers, actors, and theatre historians.
Two years later, on Oleg Tabakov’s invitation, the most talented students became first-years at the State Acting School (Oleg Tabakov’s class). It was them who formed the backbone of the Tabakerka Theatre.. The team organized the newly-acquired place on Chaplygin Street in accordance with their vision: they fixed the light bulb over the door and introduced the regulations which they all had to obey.
For years the theatre troupe was replenished with O. Tabakov’s students from the Moscow Art Theatre Studio School, which he headed in 1985. The turn of the new century was marked with an appointment of a new director – Pyotr Fomenko’s student, Mindaugas Karbauskis, who worked for the theatre from 2001 to 2007.