Imagine walking around the city on a warm June evening, passing by Magnezit Cultural Center and suddenly noticing something interesting at the main entrance. You get curious. You quickly climb the main stairs and...

“This year, Magnezit Cultural Center turns 70!” you hear the words of the guide who, as it turns out, holds a free guided tour for everyone. “The construction of the center began in 1948 by the decision of the director of the Magnezit Mill Alexey Panarin under the project of the architect Theodor Erwald. Take a look, friends: our cultural center is built on the most prominent land part and is the dominant, the center of the urban ensemble! The building is almost floating above the city, the park and the street! The Magnezit employees hurried along this road to the center for dances, concerts, plays. The cultural center has united all the residents of Satka. And they, the residents, were directly involved in the construction. It was indeed constructed by the local people!”

The guide continues the story by attracting the attention of the audience to the center’s facade, its majestic colonnade, stucco cornices. He notes that the overall appearance of the building is discreet because the architect moved main decorative elements into the interior, and invites to go inside “to get a view of the molding, paintings, chandeliers — the architectural elements that truly transform the building into a real palace of culture.”

“We are the heirs of those times when the palace was just started to be built, it was in 1948,” the guide is interrupted by a teenage girl with a bucket filled with something pure white appearing in the way of the tour group. It is when everyone understands that something is going wrong here. The girl, whose role is performed by Ulyana Buzmakova, explains that her name is Olga and she rushes into the main hall of the cultural center with a solution for the huge chandelier to be mounted. “They brought it from Leningrad. There is a crystal plant there, you know. They brought it in a truckload with a large trailer. There are these boxes, each figure, everything is packed separately. We’ve been sitting on this chandelier for 4 months. We’ll put it together soon now...”

Thus began the “In Between” promenade performance based on the stories of the older generation of Satka residents, including Magnezit veterans. The audience who has just begun a tour around the cultural center suddenly becomes a part of the documentary story. While moving from one chapter to another, they are taken to a different space between the past and the future, between different generations and destinies, touching and tragic stories...

Gradually, they become witnesses to the first visit of Victor Avdyushev (played by Yury Shumkov) to Satka. They hear his opinion about the city in the early 1990s when he moved here with his family and the next decade; about his life credo, which is perfectly reflected by the phrase said by the veteran in the final of the play, “Everyone makes their own destiny: sow a thought and reap an act, sow an act and reap a habit, sow a habit and reap a character, sow a character and reap a destiny.”

Love stories were the touching highlights. For example, a story of the meeting and previous experience of Alexander Levchenko (by Akim Morozhenov) and Svetlana Kornienko (by Maria Maximova):

“Time heals. Do not get stuck on bad emotions, it is necessary to live for something positive... We met at the bazaar near the museum. I just got my pension. I was 55-56 years old and Sasha was 60. Remember how we met, do you? What you said to me then?”

“Oh, it turns out you know how to smile!”

“And why I shouldn’t smile, I just got my pension. I go to the choir, sing there...”

“What kind of choir?”

“Here, there’ll be a performance on October 3, come,” that is how we met. “Now, I’ve to run to a rehearsal...”

Magnificent poems by Valentina Sarafanova have become a true gem of several scenes of the play; songs performed by the project participants; dances to the brass band headed by Viktor Gareev; video trip of Olga Taranina to her dearly beloved mill shop where “everything has changed so much, where there’s practically no manual labor, everything is beautiful, automated, clean and comfortable”; exhibition of personal belongings of veterans and recorded stories about them... Moreover, there was a meeting of the project participants and the audience in the great hall of the cultural center. The first emotions and exchange of views with a cup of tea... All this was to complement and intensify the impressions of the project, which became the result of the “In Between” documentary theater laboratory. The result of the great work done by the participants of the laboratory in a very short time and to be certainly continued. The premiere of the video version of the play will be at the closing of the photo exhibition “Focus on Human” in the Ural Branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Yekaterinburg already in the beginning of July. All project participants will get one. In addition, the organizers plan a demonstration for a wider audience and will inform on it later.

Source: Magnezitovets. Photo by Vasily Maksimov.

The video documentation of the promenade performance can be viewed at the link.