Qualla: Volkov Russian State Academic Theatre

Volkov Russian State Academic Theatre: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sergey A. Demidov, CC BY 4.0. It started with the smell of hides. In 1750, in the tannery belonging to his stepfather, the merchant Polushkin, a young man named Fyodor Volkov staged Jean Racine's Esther for an audience of brothers and friends in Yaroslavl. He had translated the play himself. Within months he had outgrown the tannery, built a proper "theatrical chamber" on Nikolskaya Street, mounted Alexander Sumarokov's tragedy Khorev with costumes and scenery, and assembled a permanent repertoire. Word reached Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in Saint Petersburg. In January 1752, she summoned the Yaroslavl players to the capital by imperial decree. Fyodor Volkov never came back.

Image: Sergey A. Demidov | CC BY 4.0

Volkov Russian State Academic Theatre: The Tannery and the Decree

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sergey A. Demidov, CC BY 4.0. The first documented performance took place on July 10, 1750. What made it remarkable was not the quality -- we have no reviews from a tannery audience -- but the ambition. Volkov was the son of a Kostroma merchant, raised in Yaroslavl, and he chose to stage not a folk entertainm...

Image: Sergey A. Demidov | CC BY 4.0

Volkov Russian State Academic Theatre: Dancing in a Circle

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sergey A. Demidov, CC BY 4.0. The theatre Yaroslavl has today owes its existence to a 1909 architectural competition. Nikolai Spirin won with a design he called "Dancing in a Circle," inspired by the Gilardi Pavilion in the Kuzminki estate near Moscow. Construction was completed in 1911, and the building was ...

Image: Sergey A. Demidov | CC BY 4.0

Volkov Russian State Academic Theatre: The Provincial Stage as National Stage

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Николай Васильевич Белавин, CC BY-SA 4.0. During the Soviet decades, the Volkov Theatre earned a reputation as one of the strongest provincial companies in Russia. Its peak came in the 1960s and 1970s under artistic director Firs Shishigin, a People's Artist of the USSR and State Prize laureate. Shishigin assembled a rem...

Image: Николай Васильевич Белавин | CC BY-SA 4.0

Volkov Russian State Academic Theatre: 250 Years of Russian Theatre

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sergey A. Demidov, CC BY 4.0. In May 2000, the Volkov Theatre hosted a celebration that claimed something larger than itself: the 250th anniversary of Russian professional theatre, dating the tradition to Volkov's 1750 tannery performance. The country's leading companies arrived for the first Volkov Theatre F...

Image: Sergey A. Demidov | CC BY 4.0