From 20 to 27 May 2017, the Melikhovo Museum-Reserve of A.P. Chekhov will host the Melikhov Spring Festival for the 18th time. The programme traditionally includes performances based on Chekhov's works and about Chekhov, which will be brought to the writer's estate by theatres from different countries.

The international part of this year's festival programme will include productions from Germany, Bulgaria, France, Greece; in addition to them, the playbill includes productions by theatres from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Krasnodar, Veliky Novgorod, Lipetsk and Krasnodar. The Donetsk Academic Musical Drama Theatre will also take part in the festival.

The concept of the Melikhov Spring festival remains unchanged - to show all the variety of stage interpretations of the great writer's works. In addition to classical productions, the playbill still features chamber performances, large-scale dramatisations and avant-garde versions. This approach, according to the idea of the organisers, presents the audience modern theatre in all its diversity. The main feature is that the programme invariably includes The Seagull - this world-famous play was written by Chekhov in Melikhov, and the festival began with it.

A number of special events will take place as part of the 2017 festival. These include a screening of the feature film Joker, based on stories by Antosha Chekhonte, a traditional Melikhov tea party on the day of O.N. Efremov's memory on 24 May, and a photo exhibition dedicated to the festival performances of different years.

The programme "Visiting Chekhov" has once again been added to the poster of the forthcoming Melikhov Spring. The plays in this programme are not staged productions of Chekhov's works, but these productions or the fates of their authors have interesting links to Anton Pavlovich's work. In 2017, the special programme is called "Tolstoy Visiting Chekhov". As part of the programme, the Moscow Drama Theatre on Malaya Bronnaya will present the play "Princess Marya", and the Lipetsk State Academic Drama Theatre named after L.N. "Tolstoy Visits Chekhov" will present the play "Knyazhna Marya". The Lipetsk State Academic Drama Theatre named after L.N. Tolstoy will show "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".

It is worth noting that Lipetsk residents, as the founders of the festival, regularly take part in the Melikhovo Spring. In 1982, on the initiative of Y.K. Avdeev, the director of the Melikhovo Museum, and V.M. Pakhomov, the chief director of the Lipetsk Drama Theatre, the actors of this very theatre played The Seagull on the veranda of the main house for the first time in the history of Melikhovo.