Kazakhstani Directors VS the Classics

The debate over whether to modernise the classics has been raging for decades. Yet there are directors who successfully marry timeless material with contemporary interpretation, and the result resonates harmoniously with a broad audience. Almaty is home to no shortage of such directors, each of whom has developed their own distinctive approach to the classics.

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Perhaps one of the most striking examples of such innovation is Natasha Dubs, director and artistic director of the Republican Academic German Drama Theatre. One need look no further than her work from last year — the so-called "masculine" trilogy And All About…. Across three consecutive productions, some of the most significant figures in world literature took to the stage: the soldier Woyzeck, King Lear, and Eugene Onegin. Though that last claim is not quite accurate — there was no Onegin to speak of. In his place stood Tatyana — thirteen of them, no less. The director quite literally upends the notion of masculinity in art, removing the central male figure and leaving the audience amid the chiming of a baker's dozen of kokoshniks.

Dubs's productions are intensely visual and richly metaphorical. In Woyzeck, the audience is plunged into a military barracks rife with hazing, thundering heavy rock, and a cross-sectional model of an enormous human figure. In Lear, we find ourselves peering around a corner at a frail and deranged king who can no longer distinguish the walls of his own castle from those of a psychiatric ward. In Onegin, we are transported to an enchanted forest on the threshold between dream and waking, in the company of a bear and singing old women. And yet, within Woyzeck, one may quite readily catch a monologue from Barash of the animated series Kikoriki, while in Lear, the royal retinue gives way to towering chess pieces.

Source: Photo: Olga Li

Consider another example. At the same German Theatre, A Midsummer Night's Dream has been playing to considerable success for several years now. It captivates from the outset by virtue of its genre alone: "a club night in the style of Shakespeare." The production was created by six directors working together as part of the German Theatre's laboratory — an experimental space in which performers and emerging directors may test their abilities. And the word "party" in the genre description is no mere affectation.

This is, in every sense, a production staged as a nightclub, where audiences are welcomed with cocktails before the show begins, and the entire action unfolds simultaneously in the present day and in Shakespeare's enchanted forest. Lysander and Demetrius settle their rivalry in a rap battle, while Hermia broadcasts live on Instagram.

Classics for Grown-Ups

Another leader in unconventional readings of the classics in Almaty is the Gabit Musrepov Kazakh State Academic Theatre for Children and Young People. Its walls have been graced by a variety of directors, and their perspectives on the classics differ entirely. A telling comparison can be drawn between Hamlet. Soңғy Künder (Hamlet. The Final Days) by Dina Zhumabayeva and Shiye Baғy (The Cherry Orchard) by Rachi Makhataev, staged just a matter of months apart.

Zhumabayeva's production is vivid, provocative, and at moments verges on the absurd. Hamlet and Laertes forgo their duel in favour of a ping-pong match set to the immortal strains of Kiss, while Rosencrantz repeatedly glides onto the stage on roller skates. Here one finds an almost biblical crucifixion alongside dervishes and Eastern carpets serving as the principal scenic element. This life-affirming spectacle makes for a compelling contrast with Rachi Makhataev's sombre and unsettling interpretation of Chekhov's classic. In the latter, the scenic design is built around coffin-like crates and withered saplings. Grotesque mingles with noir: Charlotte Ivanovna, the circus performer, contorts herself across a table spinning hoops, while all around her the other characters sink into despair. And when the cherry orchard is sold at auction, the exaggerated thunder of the hammer blows reverberates through the entire auditorium.

To the growing treasury of fresh productions at the theatre for young audiences, one must add Gulnaz Balpеisova's Ulpan, based on the eponymous novel by the doyen of Kazakh literature, Gabit Musrepov — the very figure after whom the theatre is named. The story of a formidable steppe woman who endures a succession of trials is, quite unexpectedly, accompanied by a soundtrack drawn from the repertoire of Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Michael Jackson. And if a bathhouse burns in the novel, why not render that moment with full theatrical realism by setting a wooden log structure alight on stage?

The Theatre of Cultural Shock

No discussion of the reimagining of classical material would be complete without mention of Almaty's foremost theatre of cultural shock — ARTiSHOK. One of the theatre's greatest hits is The Musketeers. Perdeler, based, as one might readily surmise, on the novel by Alexandre Dumas. The production's director, Galina Pyanova, described its genre as "Kazakh baroque" — a pointed irony directed at our own mentality, whereby the glitter of pseudo-opulence so often blinds us to real and pressing concerns. The defining conceit of the production, announced in its very title, is curtains ("perde" in Kazakh meaning curtain). These soft, mobile scenic elements allow characters to migrate in an instant from the pomp of Versailles to an Almaty flea market. 

ARTiSHOK has developed an entire strand of productions that reimagine the classics within the genre of "artist's theatre." These are the work of the theatre's principal designer and set decorator, Anton Bolkunov. His portfolio now encompasses a substantial collection: One Hundred Years of Solitude, after the novel by Gabriel García Márquez; Crime and Punishment, after the novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky; The Raven, after Edgar Allan Poe; and the most recent addition, The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, which premiered in July 2026.

Source: Photo: Alina Bagautdinova

This is a classic that quite literally needs no introduction or preamble. Almost all productions are performed without text. The principal expressive element is the visual — set design, stage devices, and music. In Günter Grass's novel The Tin Drum, for instance, the protagonist could shatter glass with his voice, and the actors on stage employ various extreme vocal techniques. Another hallmark of Bolkunov's artist's theatre is the language of the body — the naked body, which appears in one form or another in every production.

And whilst the productions listed above require no prior re-reading of the original novels, the situation with ARTiSHOCK is quite the reverse — the performances are built to a considerable degree on precise detail. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, for example, even the auditorium is drawn into the action, as the production opens with the execution of Colonel Aureliano Buendía. Audience members in the front rows are handed raw eggs, which they are expected to hurl at the character.

Another case in point is Crime and Punishment. The detective Porfiry gnaws endlessly on celery, whilst Svidrigailov shaves with obsessive frequency — and shaves his wife along with himself (all the more provocative given that Arkady Ivanovich is played by a woman). One returns to the novel and realises that the former is attempting to give up smoking under the strain of a nerve-racking profession, whilst the latter married for money, a circumstance that has given rise to a perverted obsession. These may appear to be inconsequential details, yet it is precisely they that illuminate the artistic dimension of the production.

Source: Photo: Maria Gordeeva

Do such interpretations provoke resistance in the very audience we spoke of at the outset? Of course they do. Yet the theatre takes upon itself the vital task of educating its audience and discovering new artistic forms through which it can speak to them of timeless concerns. And so stories two hundred years old become genuinely, urgently relevant.

Could it be made any clearer?

Another natural question arises: where in Almaty might one see a more "conventional" production of the classics, if such avant-garde approaches to art are not to one's taste? This can readily be done at the city's two principal dramatic theatres — the Kazakh National Academic Drama Theatre named after Mukhtar Auezov and the National Russian Drama Theatre named after M. Yu. Lermontov. These venues, too, stage productions of considerable variety, and visiting directors occasionally bring something quite unexpected. On the whole, however, these dramatic theatres handle the classics with care, rendering them accessible to any audience.

Moreover, there are perennial stories that can be seen in different interpretations across several theatres at once. A striking example is Gogol's The Government Inspector, which not long ago could be seen on the stage of the Lermontov Theatre in a classical rendering, then encountered at the German Theatre in a more noir, European variation, and finally rounded off with a production by the Uyghur Theatre, which transformed The Government Inspector into a delightfully playful stylisation of an Eastern toy celebration.

Source: Photo: Irina Pisaryuk

The classics, then, can be found in Almaty's theatres to suit every taste. The only question is whether the audience is ready for their more unexpected dimensions.