Moscow has known for three years that Marat Gatzalov is a talent to watch. His productions of Life is Grand at Teatr.doc (with Mikhail Ugarov), Trash at the Playwright and Director Center, and Exhibits for the Prokopyevsk Drama Theater, which won a Critic's Choice Golden Mask award this April, have marked him as a major emerging talent.

But now the United States, or, to be exact, a small group from Yale University's School of Drama, is learning about Gatzalov as well.

Along with fellow director Mikhail Milkis and Russian playwrights Nina Belenitskaya and Marina Krapivina, Gatzalov traveled to New Haven, CT, last October and November to spend a week working at the Yale University School of Drama. They found the experience so rewarding that they returned home with the idea of hosting Yale playwrights and their professors in Moscow.

Gatzalov, who runs a project called Workshop on Begovoi at the Playwright and Director Center, wasted no time putting the plan into action. He enlisted financial help from the Moscow Culture Department, Yevgeny Mironov's Fund for Small Cities*, and the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission through the United States embassy in Moscow, and organized a weeklong playwriting workshop for four young playwrights currently studying at Yale.

Young Russian directors who are currently studying at the Moscow Art Theater School and at the Russian Academy of Theater Arts are showing barebones productions of the four plays this weekend after five short days of rehearsals. Amelia Roper's She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange was presented by director Aleksandr Sozonov on Saturday evening. The remaining three plays go on display Sunday beginning at 5 p.m.

For those who are interested, admission is free and all comers are welcome. Only make sure you arrive at the Playwright and Director Center early, because all of the events this week, including master classes led by Yale professors David Chambers, Joan Channick and Kenneth Prestininzi, have been packing the house.

The three works that will be shown Sunday are Martha Jane Kaufman's The Other Grace, Martyna Majok's The Friendship of Her Thighs, and Meg Miroshnik's The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls. ...


*SITE NOTE: Presumably, this is a reference to Yevgeny's National Theatrical Incentives Fund.