April 18, 2019 in the Taganka Theater will be held the premiere of the tragicomedy “The Neighbor” based on the play of the playwright Pavel Pryazhko - the laureate of the first prize of the “Competition of Competitions” at the Golden Mask Festival. The performance is staged by Lera Surkov - the director of “Pagans” at the Theater.doc and the film of the same name, released in 2018, as well as performances at the Gogol Center and the Meyerhold Center.

“The Taganka Theater regularly appeals to contemporary authors. We already have performances based on works by Vladimir Sorokin, Yaroslava Pulinovich, Joel Pomr, and now we are going to present the play by Pavel Pryazhko - one of the main modern Russian-language playwrights, says the director of the Taganka Theater Irina Apeksimova. “This will be the fourth premiere of our anniversary season, which has turned out to be varied and bright.”

In 2018, the reading of the play “Neighbor”, staged by Lera Surkova, was presented at the festival of young drama “Lyubimovka”. According to the plot, two neighbors in the cottage, young and old, meet by chance. Between them there is a conversation about the little things - funny and sad at the same time. The leading actors of the theater Alexander Rezalin and Semyon Shkalikov will play the roles in the play of Taganka.

Pavel Pryazhko gained fame after the release of the play “Pants”, for which in 2007 he received the Grand Prix of the Free Theater competition. Ivan Vyrypayev, Mikhail Ugarov, Dmitry Volkostrelov, Philip Grigoryan, Marat Gatsalov worked with the texts of the playwright, and the performances of his plays were shown in the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, Theater of Nations, Theater.doc, at the Golden Mask, Territory and New drama. Works Pryazhko translated into Polish, German, English, French and Finnish.

"Neighbor" will be the second work of Lera Surkova on the stage of the Taganka Theater. The actress and director studied with the masters of Russian theater and cinema: Oleg Tabakov, Vladimir Khotinenko, and Marina Razbezhkina, and today she is staging performances in Russia and Europe. Surkov works a lot with modern drama: on her account productions based on plays by Mikhail Durnenkov, Evgeny Kazachkov and Maxim Chernysh.

Olga Nikitina, a graduate of Dmitry Krymov and a nominee for the “Golden Mask 2017” will become the artist of the performance. She worked with the performances of Viktor Ryzhakov "Sasha, take out the garbage" and "Unmatched concert" in the TsIM and "Illusions" in the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater.

In April 2019, the Taganka Theater will be 55 years old, and the production of “The Neighbor” will be the fourth premiere of the jubilee season. Prior to this, in the season 2018–2019, the plays “Eight” by Sergey Chekhov, “The Hoffman Effect” by Yana Tumin and “Tellurium” by Konstantin Bogomolov were released here.