The Organizing Committee of the International Theater Festival "Melikhovo Spring" presented the festival program for 2024. It includes 21 productions by theater companies from Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Algeria. The festival, which is held annually in Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's Melikhovo estate near Moscow, will last ten days, from May 17 to 26.

Applications for participation in the XXIV Melikhovo Spring Festival were accepted from September to November 2023. In total, more than 120 applications were submitted, of which the Expert Council of the festival formed the final poster. It includes performances based on works by Anton Chekhov, or about Chekhov himself. In addition to the above, as part of the Chekhov+ program, we also invited theaters with performances based on the works by Alexander S. Pushkin, great Russian poet, whose 225th anniversary is celebrated by the whole world this year.

The Melikhovo Spring Festival is hosted by the Anton Chekhov Museum-Reserve Melikhovo with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Moscow Region.

Irina Kaklyugina, Vice-Governor of the Moscow Region:

"The main events will traditionally be held at Anton Pavlovich's estate, where the writer lived for more than 7 years.  We will technically improve the main stage of the Melikhovo Spring 2024, and we plan to create an atmosphere of a theatre house in the middle of the manor nature. The auditorium itself will be able to accommodate up to 400 spectators. The performances will also take place on the chamber stage of the Melikhovo Theater Yard and on the stage of the Serpukhov Musical Drama Theater."

The foreign part of the festival program in 2024 will be composed of the Yakub Kolas National Academic Drama Theater from Vitebsk, Belarus,

Maxim Gorky State Academic Russian Drama Theater from Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, the Djelfa Theater from Algeria and the Azerbaijani State Academic Russian Drama Theater from Azerbaijan, Baku.

Vasily Kuznetsov, Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Moscow Region:

"Last autumn, we received more than 120 applications for participation in the Melikhovo Spring 2024. We are very happy that a significant part of them were applications from foreign theaters. Chekhov is always modern, he is understandable and convincing all over the world, because he speaks honestly and piercingly about life, about people, about their eternal experiences and hopes. Listening to Chekhov in different languages is a real pleasure and at the same time it’s a proof of an obvious fact: the language of culture has no borders."

In addition to foreign groups, theater companies from Russian cities are also going to come to the XXIV Melikhovo Spring Festival. This year we expect: Moscow (School of Dramatic Art, Moscow Pushkin Drama Theater, Roman Viktyuk Theater), St. Petersburg (Maly Puppet Theater), Omsk (M.A. Ulyanov Northern Drama Theater), Petrozavodsk (National Theater of Karelia), Novocherkassk (The Don Drama and Comedy Theater named after V.F. Komissarzhevskaya), Vladikavkaz (Academic Russian Theater named after E. Vakhtangov), as well as drama theaters from Michurinsk and Serpukhov and Youth Theaters from Kostroma and Zarechny (Penza region).

Leo Tolstoy Lipetsk Drama Theater is one of the founders of the Melikhovo Festival. This year, as part of the special program "Chekhov +", it will bring to the Chekhov estate two performances based on the works by Alexander S. Pushkin.

In addition to performances staged by professional theaters, the festival's poster includes productions by theatrical universities: students of the Russian Institute of Theatrical Art GITIS and the Institute of Culture and Arts of the Moscow State Pedagogical University will show their dramatic skills.

In 2024, the cooperation of the Melikhovo Museum-Reserve and the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, closely linked by the personality of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, will continue to grow.

Konstantin Khabensky, as the festival's advisor, took part in the development of the program.

Konstantin Khabensky, Artistic Director of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater:

"Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is like a guardian angel for the Art Theater. It’s the name, we need every time to check ourselves with. The years of friendship with the Moscow Art Theater coincided with the last years of Anton Pavlovich's life. His letters show how the writer tried to spiritually nourish the theater, which had brought him international theatrical fame, how he tried to be able to help it in time with everything he could: with advice, arranging artists, friendship with them, recruiting new authors for his beloved Moscow Art Theater, making sensation around a new private company. We have agreed that the Art Theater will curate the Melikhovo Spring Festival, which is important for us. The theater and the manor museum culture are interdependent: the theater can help the museum with new ideas of exhibiting, and the museum, the estate, its peace, its beauty, and smells make the actors feel the nature of the author more subtly, to say more specifically, - the amazing Chekhov music."

A special event of the festival will be the concert program of the People's Artist, beloved by millions of viewers, Svetlana Kryuchkova, whose career began on the stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater. She is preparing a dedication evening for the 100th anniversary of Bulat Okudzhava for the festival. Her performance will take place on May 25. 

The day before, on May 24, here will be held a traditional evening in memory of Oleg Efremov, director, actor, artistic director of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, and a teacher, who brought his students to Melikhovo more than once. In memory of Oleg Nikolaevich, students of the Institute of Culture and Arts of the Moscow State University will show a performance based on the works of various authors of the XX century, many of whom were contemporaries of Oleg Efremov. 

It is noteworthy that in parallel with the preparation of the Melikhovo Spring program, the Melikhovo Museum is also launching its new website, created in the concept of this amazing place, “ChekhovSadmelikhovo” (“ChekhovGardenMelikhovo”).

Anastasia Zhuravleva, General Director of the Anton Chekhov Museum-Reserve "Melikhovo":

"Melikhovo is not just a site of memory, but a living soil saturated with creative energy, on which the Chekhov Garden has been blooming for more than 130 years. The concept of "ChekhovGarden" enriches the familiar words "Melikhovo Museum" with new meanings and sets a new form of perception of the museum space. Chekhov's Garden - is all the variety of material and creative heritage that the great writer and a man left behind. The mission of the Melikhovo Museum-Reserve is to preserve, tame, cultivate the Garden of Chekhov's heritage and share its fruits. And every year this mission finds its brightest and most vivid embodiment in the international theater festival, dedicated to Chekhov and his work, which sets against the background of his blooming and inspiring garden."

For reference.

Anton Pavlovich lived in the village of Melikhovo near Moscow for seven years and created more than 40 of his works. In the program of the Melikhovo Spring Festival, which originated in the writer's estate at the end of the XX century, in addition to classical productions, one can find chamber performances, large-scale stagings, and avant-garde versions. Several thousand spectators attend our festival every year.