Board of Trustees of the Moscow Art Theater. M. Gorky terminates cooperation with the theater, according to the official message of the council with reference to its chairman, commercial director of the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC) Igor Kudryashkin. The text of the appeal is at the disposal of Vedomosti. According to Kudryashkin, relations with the trustees “were based on a creative policy, which was formulated and carried out by the artistic director of the theater, Eduard Boyakov.”
Boyakov became artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater in December 2018. He replaced Tatyana Doronina in this post, who became the president of the theater. On November 1 of this year, Boyakov announced on his Facebook page that he had written a letter of resignation. This happened after the general director of the theater was replaced. By the decision of the Ministry of Culture, which is the founder of the Moscow Art Theater, on October 27, Vladimir Kekhman replaced Oleg Mikhailov in this position. The new director general of the theater, according to Boyakov, invited him to write a letter of resignation of his own free will.
“I did it despite the fact that I have a five-year contract. It is not in my rules to arrange opposition or opposition in a situation where the leadership does not want to work with me. The reason voiced by Kekhman is my attitude towards Doronina, “Boyakov wrote on his Facebook page, refusing to comment on” other aspects of communication with Kekhman. “
According to the charter of the Moscow Art Theater, the artistic director of the theater is appointed and dismissed from the position of the Ministry of Culture. Earlier, a representative of the Ministry of Culture told Vedomosti that the dismissal of the theater’s artistic director was “an absolute surprise” for the ministry. Now, according to him, the director general of the Moscow Art Theater must agree on a new candidacy for artistic director with the ministry as the founder of the theater: “And we, in turn, will discuss this candidacy with the professional community.”
The Moscow Art Theater Board of Trustees was created in 2020 on the basis of the Institute for Cultural Policy Foundation, as indicated on the theater’s website. It includes UMMC CEO Andrey Kozitsyn, Rostselmash chairman of the board of directors Konstantin Babkin, Synergy corporation president Vadim Lobov and others. The council’s tasks are to raise funds and support new productions and theater tours. For the 2020/21 season, about 150 million rubles were raised for these purposes, as indicated in the statement of the board of trustees. These funds were used to produce the performances The Nuremberg Waltz, Laurel, The Prime Minister Has Few Friends, The Pink Dress, Pinocchio, and the performance of The Forest in St. Petersburg. The Moscow Art Theater received almost 545 million rubles from the Ministry of Culture in 2020, it follows from the SPARK-Interfax database.
The board of trustees of the Moscow Art Theater today does not know the plans of the new general director, and this, among other things, is due to the decision to end relations with the theater, the words of Kudryashkin are quoted in the official statement of the council. In an interview with Izvestia on November 6, Kekhman said that the search for a new artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater would begin no earlier than January 2022. Speaking about the theater management strategy, he noted that the goal is now one: to return Doronina to the theater. Vedomosti sent inquiries to the Ministry of Culture and the Moscow Art Theater.
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