Literary director on the scale of the theatre’s history

In this article, in the form of a dialogue, there are analyzed the nuances of the profession of the profession of the theatre’s literature department head and his role in the development of an artistic strategy. Deputy Artistic Director of the Maly theatre of Russia, rector of The Mikhail Shchepkin Higher Theatre School (Institute), professor Boris Lyubimov reflects on the theatre in the era of social and political changes. The theatre’s repertoire policy is based not on the principle of fashionable plays, but as an addressing to “its contemporary author”. The question of artistic strategy nowadays, apparently, is not a key one even for those directors who accept the offer to lead this or that troupe. The artistic credo is not an object of attention for either critics, or theatre managers, or the founders of theatres – ministries and departments of culture. This fact contradicts with the tradition of the country’s great theatres, whose creators built their repertoire. The creative duets of the director and the artist, and their joint work, when the director’s will was confirmed by the choice or advice of the head of the literature department, allowed to form the repertoire as a single conceptual thing. Such literary directors are nowadays called the greatest, – P. A. Markov for the Moscow Art Theatre, D. M. Schwartz for G. A. Tovstonogov and BDT, G. B. Bogolyubova and then E. I. Kotov for Sovremennik, N. M. Skegin for theatrical searches of A. V. Efros. In the history of the Academic Maly Theatre of the late 1980s – 90s, in certain plays in the playbills and directors who determined the face of the theatre for years to come there was such a person also. Boris Nikolayevich Lyubimov became the most important figure as a literary director. He came to Maly almost simultaneously after Y. M. Solomin was elected to be the artistic director. For the first time, the article presents some key episodes of the theatre life of that time, in particular, the appearance in the repertoire of the Maly Theatre A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s play – “The Feast of the Winners”and performances about the tragic fate of the Emperor Nicholay II. Fundamental changes were taking place in the country and around the world, and the oldest theatre in the capital tried to express itself at these topics.