The renowned Georgian director – who doubles as Artistic Director of Griboyedov State Academic Russian Drama Theatre, Tbilisi – Avtandil Varsimashvili has staged a highly original adaptation of one of Gogol’s most famous works “The Overcoat”. Demolishing established stage clichés, the play's ad hoc spontaneous dynamic has the audience encountering not the classical Gogol characters, but virtuoso actors performing the absurd story of The Overcoat here and now. The performance is a strange fairy-tale fantasy, a dream seen through a magical prism, with Love as its central theme. The protagonist Akaky Akakievich Basmachkin is not a worn-out, clumsy little man, but a creative personality - an artist of belles-lettres who, instead of dreaming of an overcoat, yearns for love. And just when he seems to have found it, this love is stolen from him...
Section: SYNERGY World Festival
Georgian director Avtandil Varsimashvili is one of Georgia’s most famous directors. He is Artistic Director of the State Academic Griboedov Theatre and “Liberty Theatre”. He has received the Georgian State National Award, the Kote Marjanishvili Theatre Excellence Award, the Mikheil Tumanishvili Award. He won the Grand Prix of “Zolotoi Vityaz” Festival and of Golden Lion Festival, Lviv, Ukraine. He has received Georgia’s “Order of Honour”. He is President of the Georgian national office of the International Theatre Institute (ITI). He is a full Professor at the “Tbilisi Theatre and Film University”, teaching directors’ master classes in and outside Georgia. He has directed over 60 plays, one film, 4 TV films and 14 documentaries.
Griboedov State Russian Drama Theatre in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, is the first professional theatre company in the Caucasus and the oldest Russian-language theatre in the post-Soviet region, with a history stretching back some 180 years. The company was founded in 1845 by the Governor of Russia in the Caucasus. Many prominent theatre artists have worked at the Russian theatre, including Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, Georgi Tovstonogov and the founder of modern Georgian theatre, Kote Marjanishvili. Avtandil Varsimashvili has managed the theatre since 1999.
