On March 10, actress Liya Akhedzhakova wrote a letter of resignation from the Moscow Sovremennik Theater of her own free will. She told Novaya Gazeta about this.
In February, Sovremennik canceled the play The Gin Game with the participation of 84-year-old Akhedzhakova, as a result, there were no productions with her participation left in the theater where the actress had worked since 1977. Prior to this, Sovremennik also filmed the play The First Bread, where the artist played the main role.
Akhedzhakova, who speaks out against the war in Ukraine, said that the director of the theater, Yuriy Kravets, called her and said that he was forced to remove The Game of Gin from the repertoire. He explained that he was “literally inundated with angry letters” addressed to the artist.
The secretary of Kravets, when asked by Novaya Gazeta when it would be possible to watch The Gin Game, answered: «Never.» Now Akhedzhakova is planning a tour and is not going to leave Russia yet.
At the end of June, the Moscow Department of Culture changed the management of three metropolitan theaters — the Gogol Center, the School of Modern Play and Sovremennik. Then the former artistic director Kirill Serebrennikov wrote about the «murder» of the Gogol Center.