Russian playwright Yuri Lyubimov quits theatre company after half a century

Russian playwright Yuri Lyubimov has left the theatre company he has led for nearly 50 years. Lyubimov, 93, founded Moscow’s Taganka Theatre in 1964 but fell out with its actors over pay during a Czech tour.

“I confirm I have taken my final decision – to leave the theatre,” Lyubimov told the RIA Novosti news agency on Saturday. “I have no intention of working with this troupe. Let them be led by their trade union. I’ve had enough of this disgrace, these humiliations, this lack of desire to work, this desire just for money.”

The dispute came to a head just before a performance of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Good Person of Szechwan, when the actors refused to rehearse unless they were paid first. One of the theatre’s leading actors, Tatyana Sidorenko, denied that she and her colleagues had threatened not to perform. “We just wanted to be paid for our work,” she told the Echo Moscow.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano’) about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia’ column for Dancing Times magazine.