St Petersburg state marionette theatre named after E. S. Demmeni

St Petersburg Marionette Theater. E. S. Demmeni – the first professional puppet theater in Russia was organized in 1918 by a group of Petrograd artists led by Lyubov Vasilievna Shaporina-Yakovleva and was called the Petrograd State Puppet Theater. His curtain first rose April 12, 1919: viewers saw the “Tale of Tsar Saltan” Alexander Pushkin and “Vertep” M. Kuzmin. In 1930, “Theater of Petrushka” Evgeni Demmeni joined with the puppet theater Shaporina-Yakovleva and became known as the “Leningrad State Puppet Theater under the direction of ZA. The RSFSR Evgeny. Demmeni. ”

Evgeni Sergeevich Demmeni led the theater for about half a century. Eugene Schwartz and Samuel Marshak wrote their first plays for the theater. Here, the country’s first puppets performances were produced on the works of Servantes, Shakespeare, Moliere, Swift, Anatole France, Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov, Maeterlinck. The theater team took part in the creation of the first in the history of Russian and European cinema of the puppet film “Max and Moritz” (1920s). In 1939, the country’s first television puppet film “School in Paradise” was created here in G. Saks.

In 1927 on the basis of the theater the first courses in the country for the training of professional directors, actors and artists of the puppet theater were created. A high heroic sense filled the theater during the Great Patriotic War. The theater team continued to work in the year of the Great Patriotic War until the end of January 1942, until the lights and water were turned off.

The work of the puppet theater under the leadership of E.S. Demmeni had an undoubted influence on the development of this art form in Russia. With the participation of E. Demmeni theaters were opened in Nizhny Novgorod, Sverdlovsk, Kharkov, Odessa, Tbilisi, Nezhin and other cities. There were such great masters as E. Kruglikova, E. Janson-Manizer, T. Bruni, E. Yakunin, I. Pavlovich, M. Artyukhova and many others working on the theater performances. Puppets from the theater were exhibited at international exhibitions in Paris, Warsaw, Bucharest. And the puppets of M. Artyukhova for the performance “School in Paradise” at the World Exhibition in Brussels were awarded a silver medal.

In the 1920s, a unique collection of theater puppets began to form in the theater – the author’s works of remarkable sculptors and woodcarvers. Among them – puppets purchased from folk puppeteers and hand puppets of the late-19th-century French theater, bought by Demmeni in the commission shop, which were played in his first productions – “Harlequinade” and “Kiss of Columbine”. Over 1000 magnificent puppets are an invaluable treasure kept in the theater.

At present, the theater’s repertoire includes performances created by works of Russian and foreign authors, different in styles and genres. In performances almost all known types of dolls are used: puppets, parsley, dolls on canes and others. The theater toured, participates in international festivals in Canada, South Korea, Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Finland, Denmark, Israel, Bulgaria and other countries.