My Way to the Old Women of the Small Theater. Diaries. Conversations

People's Artist of Russia, Laureate of the State Prize Lyudmila Petrovna Polyakova kept diaries from 1956 to 1963 and from 1975 to 2012. She decided to publish them unedited. A unique testimony of the time has become the property of... the reader. The Little Prince, Solomka, Genius, Maestro – all these names will be deciphered, and you will find out who Lyudmila Polyakova is calling this way. You will visit the K.S. Stanislavsky Theater and the Taganka Theater, the Maly Bronny Theater and the Small Theater, and meet outstanding directors – the departed Andrei Goncharov, Leonid Varpakhovsky, Boris Lvov-Anokhin, Larisa Shepitko, and those living in our city – Anatoly Vasilyev, Adolf Shapiro, Andrei Smirnov. You will be on stage and behind the theater curtains, see the first plots in everyday life, not just in roles. With a caveat: it is not always possible to tear the artist away from their work. Judging by the diaries of Lyudmila Polyakova, this is difficult: I woke up and inwardly felt the image of the mother in 'The Children of Vanyushin'... I want everyone to feel good. I am going for everything, for all the expenses, and I get my face slammed into the table, I stand up, wipe myself and go on, holding no grudges. And I only ask for strength from Him to endure and move on. I forgive everyone, having no claims. But at the same time, I preserve my self.