This project, encompassing two years, was of a diverse nature: artistic, investigative, and educative. The programme consisted of performances by widely known directors as well as by young beginners. It also included master classes, lectures, and discussions with audience participation.

The 2003-2004 season opened on the 15th of September with the premiere of Oedipus Rex, staged by the well-known director and actor Aleksey Levinsky, within which texts by Sophocles and Beckett were combined with Meyerhold’s biomechanics. The work was of a laboratorial, educational nature. Side by side with actors Ivan Volkov and Vera Voronkova, the ensemble consisted of beginning directors, studying for their master’s degrees within a program created between the Moscow Art Theatre School and The Meyerhold Centre with the support of the Mayor of Moscow. These young directors, coming from Georgia, Lithuania, Moldavia, and Estonia, as well as from Moscow and Bashkortostan, continued on to work in theatres throughout Russia’s neighbouring republics after having completed their studies.

In November, the Chairman of the International Committee of Theatre Olympics, director Theodoros Terzopoulos (Greece), premiered Aeschylus’ Persians, which also included the graduate directing students.

The world premiere of another project was held in the summer of 2004 at the Theatrical Olympiad in Greece: Nikolai Roshchin’s staging of Philoctetes.

The Antiquity programme was not an excursion for inquisitive and idle souls, having glanced accidentally into the storehouses of ancient times, but an attempt to draw together the actual and the eternal.

Performances:
Philoctetes