One more Shakespeare festival has been born in the world. A new international project dedicated to the world's most famous playwright was launched in Moscow.

The Shakespeare Festival was initiated by the Moscow Theater of Nations, headed by famous Russian actor Yevgeny Mironov. His "Shakespearean plans" resulted in only four productions. "This is just a preliminary project of the International Shakespeare Festival," Mironov said. "I hope that eventually its program will be really extensive, and the Russian audiences will have a chance to see the world's best productions of Shakespeare's plays."

This will definitely happen, as Yevgeny Mironov has invited the world-famous Russian Shakespeare expert, Aleksei Bartoshevich, to select productions for the Festival. Opening the project, Bartoshevich said: "Shakespeare is not just another foreign classic for Russia and the Russian audiences. He is a tool of self-recognition, a means for Russian culture to understand itself in different moments in time. Shakespeare is staged in Russia mostly in an attempt to identify the purpose of our life. If you want to understand the evolution of the Russian culture, Russian intellectuals, Russian philosophy and aesthetics in all their twists and turns, you should know how people interpreted Hamlet at different times, beginning from the middle of the 18th century. Shakespeare's plays in general and Hamlet in particular are more than masterpieces in Russia."

Two productions of Hamlet were deliberately chosen for the "pilot" version of the Festival. The first production is presented by the Tel-Aviv Chamber Theater; the Israeli play will be running from the 5th to the 7th of October. The second Hamlet will come later from Lithuania. Both productions have already gained success on international stages and received good critical reviews. Russian theaters will present two new productions, a drama version of King Lear from Nizhny Novgorod Theater and the rock opera Romeo and Juliet by the Theater of Nations. These productions are enough to give an idea of Shakespeare in the new Russian format.

The need for a Shakespeare festival in Russia was emerging in different cities, as Shakespeare's plays are staged across the country . According to Bartoshevich, Shakespeare in Russia can be compared only to Chekhov in Britain. As Russia tries to understand itself through Shakespeare's plays, the English culture has been seeing itself and its moral suffering for a century in Chekhov's plays.