Year of Culture: Yakub Kolas Theater in Vitebsk celebrates 90th birthday

The Yakub Kolas National Academic Drama Theater marked the 90th anniversary of its founding on 21 November with a performance Theater Landed in Vitebsk staged by director Mikhail Krasnobayev. The production presented the history of the Vitebsk-based theater, one of the oldest theater companies of Belarus, with a brilliant mixture of drama, comedy, music and dance.

90 years ago, on 21 November 1926, the Belarusian drama studio in Vitebsk, Marc Chagall’s birthplace, was turned into a theater. The drama studio was once part of the Gorky Moscow Art Theater. In 1944 the Vitebsk theater was named after Belarusian poet Yakub Kolas to honor his contribution to the national culture. The Vitebsk stage has seen many talented actors, including Alexander Ilinsky, Pavel Molchanov, Fyodor Shmakov, and many more.

Today it is the country’s only regional theater with the national status. The theater’s long-running play, Nesterka, is 75 years old. To mark the anniversary, which falls on the Year of Culture in Belarus, the theater prepared a number of new projects and premieres, including White Angel with Black Wings, The Shadow of Our Thoughts, High Wire Act, The Curious Savage, and also an exhibition based on the theater’s archive materials of the 1930s…