Farid Bikchantayev staging Hungarian play in Turkey

Kamal Theatre’s director Farid Bikchantayev is rehearsing a play in Turkey. The premiere of The Murder of Gonzato will be take place in the Ankara State Theatre in early October. Bikchantayev made it to the international level thanks to Nowruz festival.

With Skomorokhov

The Murder of Gonzago was written by Bulgarian playwright Nedyalko Yordanov. The play is based on Hamlet and shares ideas of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard but talks about actors the prince invited to Elsinore Castle to show a play.

Interestingly, his permanent coauthor and the theatre’s art director Sergey Skomorokhov also travelled to Ankara besides the director. Bikchantayev went to Turkey on 20 August.

“The actors here are amazing, they easily accept to the director’s proposals and are ready to experiment,” says Bikchantayev. “Though we are working with an interpreter, in general we understand each other. Mr Skomorokhov offered an interesting visual image: for instance, some costumes will be designed in graffiti style. The work is coming to an end, and I want to believe that the play will stay for long and we will probably see it at the next Nowruz Festival.”

In fact, it became possible to set up contact with Turkish colleagues thanks to the International Turkic People’s Festival held in June 2023 for the 16th time.

Bikchantayev who made his debut as a director with House Elf drama by Mansur Gilyazov’s play on the stage of the Kamal Theatre in 1989 and chaired it in 2002 worked in other theatres too. He started working in 1995 with Ufa’s Nur theatre staging Autumn by Gayaz Iskhaki and Free Hearts, or How Many Days Left to the Wedding? by Ilgiz Zayniyev 10 years later.

At the Kachalov Theatre, he rethought Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys in 1996. In 2001, he staged Don Juan in the Youth Spectator Theatre. In the Almetyevsk theatre in 1999* he presented White Kalfak by Mirkhaydar Fayzi. However, his favourite theatre is Bashkir, named after Mazhit Gafuri. He he showed different things: The Dog in the Manger by Lope de Vega, My Wife’s Name is Maurice by Raffy Shart, Antigone by Jean Anouilh.

The Ankara Theatre was founded in 1949. It is peculiar because its stagings are presented on different stages in different regions of the city.

It should be noted this is not the only work experience of Tatarstan directors abroad. Rashid Zagidullin staged Karim Tinchurin’s Faded Stars as Tinchurin Theatre director in the Ankara Drama Theatre. Sergey Skomorokhov also worked with him, Salima Gabdrakhmanova was the choreographer

Tufan Imamutdinov who replaced him before moving to Kazan worked in a Romanian theatre in Târgu Mureș city, staged Gogol’s Wedding, Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin’s Tarelkin’s Death and Albert Camus’s Caligula working both in Romanian and Hungarian.