Saint Petersburg Lensoviet Theatre

Lensovet Theatre, officially Saint Petersburg State Academic Lensoviet Theatre (in , literally St Petersburg Academic Theater of the Leningrad City Council), also known as Lensovet Academic Theatre and Lensoviet Theatre, is a theatre and theatrical troupe in Saint Petersburg, Russia. History of the theatre company The resident company was founded as the New Theatre in 1933, under V. E. Meyerhold student Isaac (Isaak) Kroll. As Stalinist repression arose against "Meyerholdism" in the mid-1930s, Kroll was dismissed and actor, director and teacher Boris Mikhailovich Sushkevich appointed. Sushkevich brought his disciples with him to the company. It was later renamed Leningrad Soviet Theatre. The troupe's first home was in a building acquired by the Lensovet on Nevsky Prospekt, which formerly housed a Dutch church; however, this was destroyed by fire. In 1936 the city authorities gave the city council a new premises on Rubinshteina Street (which now houses a children's theatre, Through the Looking Glass). When the war broke out in 1941, most of the theatre troupe (then New Theatre), was on tour in the Soviet Far East; the others joined them there to escape the siege of Leningrad by the Germans.