Romen Moscow Theater

Romen Moscow Theater 

a professional gypsy theater that was organized in 1931 from a studio of the Central Administration for the Arts of the People’s Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR. Presentations at the theater have included Germano’s Among the Fires (1934), I. I. Rom-Lebedev’s Encampment in the Steppe (1934) and Daughter of the Steppes (1935), an adaptation of Mériméé’s Carmen (1934; second version Carmen From Triana, 1962), an adaptation of Pushkin’s The Gypsies (1936), Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding (1939) and The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife (1941), an adaptation of Gorky’s Makar Chudra (1941), an adaptation of Cervantes’ Little Gypsy (1944), Grushen’ka (1948, based on Leskov’s The Enchanted Wanderer, 1946), and Khrustalev’s Broken Whip (1948).

Performances in the 1960’s and early 1970’s included Hot Blood (1960), an adaptation of Kalinin’s The Gypsy (1962), Rom-Lebedev’s By the Road (1965), Khrustalev’s I Am a Gypsy (1966), Cherkashin’s Camp Without a Guitar (1973), and Grushen’ka (1973).

Plays at the Romen Moscow Theater have been presented in Russian since 1940. The theater was under the management of M. M. Ianshin, P. S. Saratovskii, and others. The acting company has included M. K. Mikhailova, M. V. Skvortsova, and L. Chernaia. S. M. Bugachevskii has arranged the music for many of the performances.

In 1974 the company of the Romen Moscow Theater included the Honored Artists of the RSFSR T. S. Agamirova, S. I. Andreeva, V. F. Bizev, S. S. Zolotarev, A. N. Kononova, O. I. Petrova, I. I. Rom-Lebedev, N. A. Slichenko, I. V. Khrustalev, and O. E. Iankovskaia. The theater’s principal stage director is Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR S. A. Barkan (1958–63 and since 1967).

A. IA. SHNEER