Bolshoi Theatre of Drama

Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre

Большой драматический театр имени Георгия Товстоногова
BDT (БДТ)
The Bolshoi Drama Historic Stage, Fontanka Embankment, St. Petersburg
Address	Fontanka Embankment, 65 Saint Petersburg Russia
Opened	1919
Website
http://bdt.spb.ru/

Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater (Russian: Большой драматический театр имени Г. А. Товстоногова; literally Tovstonogov Great Drama Theater), formerly known as Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theater (Russian: Большой Драматический Театр имени Горького) (1931–1992), often referred to as the Bolshoi Drama Theater and by the acronym BDT (Russian: БДТ), is a theater in Saint Petersburg, that is considered one of the best Russian theaters. The theater is named after its long-time director Georgy Tovstonogov. Since 2013, Andrey Moguchy is the artistic director of the theatre.

The theater is also encountered in literature as the Great Drama Theater or Great Dramatic Theater of Leningrad.

The main people behind the establishment of the theater were Maxim Gorky, Maria Andreyeva, Alexander Blok and Anatoly Lunacharsky.

Already by 1914, before the October Revolution, actress Maria Andreeva—common law wife of Gorky from 1903 and Commissar for Theatres and Public Spectacles in Petrograd from 1918 to 1921—had participated in a theater initiative, including actor Yury Yuryev, with the aim of returning to the "classics". In 1918 Yuryev staged some works in Leningrad.

Gorky, Blok, Adreeva and Lunacharsky—who was People's Commissar of Enlightenment after the revolution—had similarly worked towards the aim of staging the classics for the masses. Eventually they merged with Andreeva's other endeavor.

In January 1919, the government sponsored the staging of Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector.