The play based on the story by Leonid Dobychin, written in the 1930s, was directed by Boris Pavlovich. Dobychin's story is a coming-of-age chronicle that can be classified as a Bildungsroman. The main character, a boy, lives in a small town in the west of the Russian Empire and narrates what surrounds him. The tiniest details, naively captured through the hero's eyes, provide a detailed portrait of the era. On one hand, the book inherits the traditions of Gogol, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin. On the other hand, it is a literary experiment in the innovative modernism of the early 20th century, which led Soviet censorship to condemn the book for formalism, causing it to be long forgotten. Director Boris Pavlovich and the actors of the Small Dramatic Theatre attempted to bring the story to life on stage and transport the audience back a hundred years. You can find even more performances in St. Petersburg on our website in the theater section.