MOSCOW, April 15. The Sovremennik Museum, which presents unique photographs and materials from the theater archive, opened in a building on Chistoprudny Boulevard.
“The main thing I wanted to do in this exhibition was to prove the viability of a grandiose idea, born during the Thaw period by people who believed in it, translated it onto ethical and aesthetic lines. The exhibition is divided into two parts. One is dedicated to the first 14 years of the theater’s existence, when it was directed by Oleg Nikolaevich Efremov. The second reflects the two years when the theater was led by the board, and 47 years of the leadership of Galina Borisovna Volchek,” said the author of the idea of the museum, from 1995 to 2020 the Sovremennik Theater will be run by Evgenia Kuznetsov.
She noted that the museum was created so that each visitor independently, without a guide, could walk through the exhibition and understand its content by reading the materials on the walls.
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Since the founding of Sovremennik, the theater's employees have collected, stored, and studied documents related to its history and modernity. An extensive archive has been formed. The museum's collection includes minutes of discussions of performances and meetings of the artistic council, copies of plays, posters and programs for all productions since 1956. The collection contains photographs of artists, rehearsals and scenes from performances.
“I would like to say thank you to the founders of Sovremennik for starting to create this museum in 1956. They had a presentiment that the idea would be grandiose, but in those days when all theaters were created only by decision of the Council of Ministers, it was utopian to think that one could come up with and create a theater from below. How this happened is precisely described in the exhibition,” added Evgenia Kuznetsova.
The museum also displays today’s theater posters, printed using perforation. Each visitor can tear off a piece from them and read wishes or predictions on the reverse side.
The museum was created with the support of the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives as part of the project “Contemporary”: Planet Volchek,” which the theater launched for the 90th anniversary of Galina Borisovna Volchek. 
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