The performance of the play was held as part of the joint project of the Russian State Art Library (RSAL) and the Guild of Russian Playwrights ‘DramaChai on Dmitrovka’.
This time, the Guild of Russian Playwrights decided to acquaint audiences with the famous American playwright Don Nigro’s play The Great Gromboolian Plain, translated by Victor Weber.
In recent years, Weber has translated much of the famous writer and screenwriter Don Nigro’s work. He believes that Don Nigro, who knows Russian culture well, often writes plays with the expectation of staging them in Russian theatres. Of the 400 plays Nigro has written, Weber has translated 370.
The premiere stage version directed by Alena Kazantseva was played by actors of the Freedom Art Theatre.
A seemingly chance encounter in a psychiatric clinic of a patient named Magellan and the daughter of a recently deceased famous author turns into a detective investigation, a melodrama with fantastical time travel….
The play sparked lively discussion in which the audience, theater artists, theater critics, members of the Guild of Russian Dramatists, and translators took part. One of the topics was the problem of translating the play into stage language.
