The Golden Mask is a Russian theatre festival and the main national theatre award, established in 1994 by the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation. The award is given to productions in all genres of theatre art: drama, opera, ballet, operetta and musical, and puppet theatre. The festival takes place every spring in Moscow and presents the most significant performances from theaters all over Russia. The Golden Mask also includes annual tours of the best Russian productions all over the country and abroad, an online broadcast program, the "Golden Mask in cinema" initiative, and man
The Golden Mask is a Russian theatre festival and the main national theatre award, established in 1994 by the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation. The award is given to productions in all genres of theatre art: drama, opera, ballet, operetta and musical, and puppet theatre. The festival takes place every spring in Moscow and presents the most significant performances from theaters all over Russia. The Golden Mask also includes annual tours of the best Russian productions all over the country and abroad, an online broadcast program, the "Golden Mask in cinema" initiative, and man
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The Golden Mask (Russian: Золотая маска, Zolotaya maska) is a Russian theatre festival and the main national theatre award, established in 1994 by the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation. The award is given to productions in all genres of theatre art: drama, opera, ballet, operetta and musical, and puppet theatre. The festival takes place every spring in Moscow and presents the most significant performances from theaters all over Russia. The Golden Mask also includes annual tours of the best Russian productions all over the country and abroad, an online broadcast program, the "Golden Mask in cinema" initiative, and many more.
2013–2021
By 2013, the festival included competitive and non-competitive programmes. The competitive part included such sections as Drama, Puppetry, Ballet, Opera, Dance, Musical, Opera, and New Names. The non-competitive program included the sections MaskaPlus, New Play, Context (for foreign plays), Mariinsky's Premieres, and many more. In 2016, the festival spanned three months, from the beginning of February to the end of April. The management team grew to 30, while the number of participants exceeded 5000.
Nomination of the scandalous Tannhäuser staged by Timofey Kulyabin in Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre sparked anoth
The establishment of the award was announced by Mikhail Ulyanov and Vladimir Urin at a press conference at the Union of Theatre Workers of Russia on the 14th of December, 1994. Georgy Taratorkin became the award's president (he served in this post until his death in 2017). The award was meant to be non-commercial, with the winners receiving only the trophy mask and a diploma. Ulyanov believed that it should be an independent professional award, given for theatrical achievements, "from colleagues to colleagues". Initially the award was focused only on Moscow theatre; the first awards (seven masks for the 1993–94 season) were presented in 1995.
The award was designed by Oleg Sheyncis in 1993. As stated by the artist, he took inspiration from masks of the Carnival of Venice and added to it an element of Russian state symbolism, the double-headed eagle. Sheyncis created the first seven pieces in papier-mâché for the first ceremony. Each mask took him a month to craft; later the masks were made of ceramic.
In 1996, Eduard Boyakov took over the management of the festival. As recalled by Natalia Nikolaeva, the award's director of public relations from 1998 to 2005, Boyakov was the main figure behind the future success of the Golden Mask. In 1996, drama, puppet theatre, opera and ballet were included in the award. During the 1998 Russian financial crisis, a team of only 10 people worked on sheer enthusiasm, organizing the award without any sponsorship or government support.
In February 1996, the Union of Theatre Workers announced the expansion of the award to an all-Russia level. However, it seemed impossible for the jury to attend the plays in remote areas of the country, while 250 premieres took place in Russia in the 1996–97 season alone. The management therefore decided to select all-Russian nominees for the award among the winners of regional and thematic festivals and from the repertoire of the Theatre of Nations. The results of the 1997 Golden Mask sparked a major scandal among critics, theatre professionals, and all parties involved, including the Ministry of Culture: four awards in main nominations went to The Woman in the Dunes by Omsk State Academic Drama Theater. The ceremony itself caused a wave of criticism. The idea of the ceremony, designed by Vladimir Mirzoyev, was "the funeral of the theatre in the 20th century". The hosts, Yuliya Rutberg and Sergei Makovetsky, were dressed as gravediggers, while Oksana Mysina delivered monologues on behalf of the ghost of Alisa Koonen. In an interview with the newspaper Izvestiya, Alexander Kalyagin, Chairman of the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation, admitted the fiasco with the 1997 ceremony but stressed that the Omsk theatre play had merited the awards it received. He said that he wanted "the Golden Masks to go further and further away from Moscow, and not only to settle in the capital's theatres. I wish that there would be discoveries, new names of talented artists, directors, and painters... I am sure there are such names in our vast country". Despite all criticism, in 2006 Boyakov confirmed that he considered the 1997 ceremony the best in the Golden Mask's history: after ten years everyone still remembered it and talked about it.
In 1999, the Operetta/Musical category was added, and a year later, Contemporary Dance. In 2001, the competition of dramatic performances was divided into Large Form Performance and Small Form Performance. With time, the award became the most important event in the Russian theatre world. In the 2000s and the 2010s, it was completely independent and equally distanced from the government, ministerial, sponsoring circles and the Theatre Union.
In 2002, Sberbank became the festival's general sponsor. For the only time, in 2003 the ceremony was held outside Moscow: in honour of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, the Mariinsky theatre was chosen as the venue.
In 2005, Boyakov left the team and was succeeded by Maria Revyakina, whom he chose himself as a long-time colleague who shared his vision. Under Revyakina, the Golden Mask kept growing. The budget for the ceremony in 2005 reached $100,000. In 2007, the Ministry of Culture became a co-operator of the Golden Mask and put forward the requirement to include its candidates on the expert committee. In 2008, a nomination for lighting and costume designers was added to the competitive program. In 2013, a nomination for supporting roles was introduced. In addition to the spring Moscow festival and the award ceremony, the Golden Mask included annual tours of the best Russian productions all over the country and in the Baltic states, occasionally reaching other European countries like Poland and Israel.
