Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is expected to pay a visit to the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theatre in St Petersburg (BDT) today. The renovation of the run down theatre is finally underway, after Putin intervened. Izvestia stopped by the theatre to assess the scale of the project.
We asked the director of the theatre, Boris Kontrebinsky, to show us the cracks in the walls and the ceiling. "They're everywhere, both nside and outside," he said in dismay. It must be rather painful for theatre lovers to see the famous building on Fontanka Street all covered with cracks. Worse yet, the theatre will be closing for renovation for at least 18 months, and spectators will be forced to watch their favourite actors perform on a different stage. The theatre's new venue has yet to be determined.
As previously reported, the BDT premier actress Alisa Freyndlikh informed Prime Minister Putin of the theatre's dire condition when he congratulated her on her birthday. Soon afterwards, repair work at the theatre got under way. Incidentally, the theatre was originally scheduled for renovation three years ago, and funds were made available for the project. Under the plan, the theatre was due to reopen in February of this year!
"Essentially, Alisa has accidentally set in motion a process that had been at a standstill since September 2006," Boris Kontrebinsky said. At the time, the Culture Ministry's board, meeting at the Governor's residence in St Petersburg, approved the theatre's renovation and allocated 1,500,000 roubles for the project. The funds are still available..."
According to Kontrebinsky, why the work never started is a separate issue. One of the reasons had to do with the fact that the funds were allocated only for the repair work, meaning they didn't cover the project design, which would have then required additional financing. Although the Culture Ministry was expected to provide the outstanding amount, the process has dragged on ever since.
The last time the building saw renovations was in the 1950s. Thirty years later, in the 1980s, the theatre underwent extensive repairs and restoration. Yet, cracks reappeared on the building's facade. The tests commissioned in 1995 to determine the cause of the cracks showed that the foundation under the building's façade, which overlooks the Fontanka River, was sinking at a rate of 4 millimetres per year.
"This is mainly due to the increase in traffic along the waterfront," Kontrebinsky said. "With that in mind, the theatre's renovation should include a reinforcement of the foundation."
The foundation was in fact reinforced in 2001, but only under the building's facade. Now, thanks to the prime minister's intervention, the entire building is being examined by experts from the Emergencies Ministry. "I didn't know they had equipment like that!" Kontrebinsky said. According to him, it won't take more than a week to determine what is causing the cracks and how to fix them.
Irina Tumakova