Over the past 26 years, the Spring of Melikhovo International Theater Festival has grown from a small regional theater event into a prestigious cultural gathering that many theaters around the world aspire to participate in. The number of foreign theater groups is increasing every year, and this spring's festival will feature an unprecedented number, namely - six theater companies from abroad. Companies from Vietnam, Serbia, Belarus, Iran, Abkhazia, and Kazakhstan will come to show their theatrical experience on the Chekhov Stage.

The Zoran Radmilovic Cultural Center, which is one of the most leading theaters in eastern Serbia with over 70 years of history, will present its play named Chekhov's Room to our public.

As directed by Nikola Zavisic, we see several completely different stories by Chekhov that are intertwined with one another. These stories cover a wide range of themes varying from very intimate ones and minor events, such as "A Woman's Revenge", "She Left", and "The Soft-Hearted One", to large and noisy collisions, like "Carelessness", "The Chameleon", and "The Death of a Government Clerk". This is a stage and musical journey into the Chekhov dimension created by the authors through their vision of the production.

"First of all, the whole team dared to challenge in interpretation of Chekhov's short stories. For me, there is nothing more exciting than reading his stories. We can say that we have "reshaped" Chekhov anew in order to convey as much of his tenderness, rudeness, humor, absurdity, satire, and deep emotion to the audience as possible”, noted the director of the play, Nikola Zavisic.

The theater group of the Belarusfilm National Film Studio (Republic of Belarus) will be performing the play "Uncle Vanya" at the festival. The artistic director of the collective, People's Artist of Belarus, Alexander Yefremov, said: "I am really looking forward to meeting a new audience with our theater. We are not aware of how they will perceive, react to or what they will say about our production of "Uncle Vanya", as we have never visited Melikhovo before. I really want to visit the museum and see the school that Chekhov built for local children, as well as the teacher's apartment located in the same building. I would love to breathe in the atmosphere of Melikhovo, and I can imagine that the visitors to the Melikhovo museum would recognize our Chekhov as a real person."

The Republican Academic German Drama Theater (Kazakhstan) will present its staged version of "Three Sisters" here in Melikhovo. It is directed by Natasha Dubs.

The State Russian Drama Theater named after Iskander (Abkhazia) will present his interpretation of the famous "The Seagull" directed by Roman Kocherzhevsky.

An unexpected performance of the famous play "The Seagull", the play "Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev", will be presented by the international theater group "The Seagull" from Iran. The group was founded in 2008 in Tehran by Dr. Esmail Shafi. This performance will be presented to the Russian public for the first time. While based on Chekhov's play, the production combines Russian themes with the music and culture of southern Iran. Three actors of the group's members are from Iran and one is from Russia.

The Le Ngoc Theater from Vietnam will also present "The Seagull", directed by Bui Nhu Lai. In the Vietnamese stage adaptation of "The Seagull", the play is not only a theatrical experiment, but also a case study in the intercultural understanding of literature. In such of interpretation, a sort of "translation" of Chekhov's artistic world which is highly psychologically saturated, static and introspective is transformed into another aesthetic system so as to make it closer to the Vietnamese viewer. This is achieved through the organic incorporation of elements of Vietnamese folk culture, such as music, rhythms, and traditional stage space.

"Today I have to emphasize that the number of applications submitted to take part in the festival, is growing every year", says Anastasia Zhuravleva, director of the Melikhovo Museum—Reserve. — And today, we can speak not just about participation of individual countries in this event, but about a full-scale international festival program. We are also pleased to note that the popularity and attractiveness of our festival are increasing, and Chekhov's works continue to bring people together, despite differences in language and national culture."