Samarkand Regional Puppet Theatre

A theatre in a historic building

This building on Alisher Navoi Street went up in 1895 as the Public Assembly House, designed by the architect Georgy Svarichevsky, who had earlier built the girls' gymnasium. It was the cultural heart of the city's European quarter, with a 200-seat hall for balls, musical evenings, exhibitions and lectures. In the 1920s it housed the People's Commissariat of Education; it then passed to the Russian drama theatre, and when that company moved to new premises the puppet theatre took over.

A stage for children

The theatre opened on 1 September 1978 with “Little Ali” by G'ayratiy, performed by a troupe of 18 young graduates of the theatre and art institute. Its production of “Lazy Dadavoy” has been staged more than a thousand times. Today shows are given in Uzbek and Russian, from “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” and “Kolobok” to “Winnie-the-Pooh” and “Aladdin's Magic Lamp”. The set designer Nikolay Sultonov also leads short tours of the theatre's small puppet museum.

Did you know?

In 2002 the theatre won a prize at a festival of puppet theatre and street performance in Daejeon, South Korea, held to mark the football World Cup, with its show “The Adventures of Hoji Tamtam”. The company still has separate Uzbek and Russian troupes.