Moscow's Theater of Nations, headed by the famous Yevgeny Mironov, is winning the hearts of the foreign public on its tour. Recently its show based on Shukshin's stories enjoyed success in France. Poland is to host the theater next at the Lodz Festival. Yevgeny Mironov talked with a VoR correspondent about arts and theater.

All the theater's performances become a hit in Russia. Many believe this is Yevgeny Mironov's merit but he disagrees.

"The Theater of Nations takes a fresh new look at art, thus, its priority is to reveal young talents and show them the world in its entirety. For this purpose we give them festivals, foreign exchange and training with great masters."

This approach is based on Mironov's own experience of taking part in large European projects.

"I'm happy, as I've seen the world. I've tried different theater schools, worked with different directors, including Moscow's Valery Fokin, Lithuania's Eimuntas Nekrošius, Britain's Declan Donnellan and Peter Stein of Germany. All of them represent different schools, which need to be profoundly explored and mixed with your own experience. Synthesis is a must for modern theater. There are "museum" theaters like Moscow's Maly Theater or the French Comédie-Française, but not all museums are the same. Moscow's Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, headed by Irina Antonova, is like cultural quicksilver. Art is all about searching for something new."

This season the Theater of Nations presents many performances, including several joint projects with foreign directors, Yevgeny Mironov says.

"We continue working with the very talented Bulgarian director Yavor Gyrdev, who has already staged a psychological detective story The Grönholm Method and now he's working on an American play Killer Joe, Tarantino-like black comedy noir. It's an experiment, even for our theater. We are also working on Caligula with Eimuntas Nekrošius. It will be shown in January. Next we're having Andrei Moguchii from St. Pete who'll stage Don Quixote with a woman playing the main part. We also hope to stage Miss Julie with Germany's Schaubühne Theater".

Evgeny Mironov will play the starring role in Caligula, and he has just finished filming in Vladimir Khotinenko's series about Dostoevsky, where he played the writer. It was an even bigger challenge than understanding the character of Dostoevsky's "idiot" Prince Myshkin, whom Mironov played before.

"We've been filming for 8 months, as I was not happy with the script. Khotinenko and I used literature about Dostoevsky and his letters to make it right. I don't know the result but I hope it will be great, as we fell in love with Dostoevsky. My interpretation of his character is an attempt to understand his personality, even though I find it unethical to interfere in another person's life. But Dostoevsky's life is so interconnected with his works and characters that I needed to trace it minute by minute. Still, we left some areas untouched. I feel very sorry for Dostoevsky, he was so talented but had such a difficult life, and found harmony only at the dusk of his life when he met his second wife Anna Snitkina and paid off the debts of his gambling brother."

Evgeny Mironov turns 44 on November 29. He is a great actor and an influential political figure, being a member of the President's Council for Culture, promoting the development of theater both in Moscow and in the regions.