An Ordinary Story

"An Ordinary Story" is a play written by the Russian classicist Ivan Goncharov in 1847. It was first staged in 1966 at the Sovremennik Theatre in Moscow.

Just a year later it was staged in Belgrade at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre under the title Obična priča.

In 1969, the play was released as a film and broadcast on Belgrade television - several years earlier than a similar Russian production.

In 2015, Serebrennikov produced a modern staging of this play at the Gogol Centre in Moscow, moving the plot to contemporary Russia. The play became one of the theatre's most popular productions.

In 2023, An Ordinary Story returns to the Belgrade stage. The production features leading Serbian actors and actors from the Gogol Centre Theatre. The play will be performed in two languages and will be fully adapted for both Serbian and Russian-speaking audiences. The premiere of An Ordinary Story will take place on 31 October, 1 and 2 November 2023 on the stage of the Vlada Divljan Cultural Centre.

The performance features Alexander Manotskov's vocal cycle "Five Short Revelations" for two sopranos, low academic female vocals, piano and amateur synthesiser on the text of "The Revelation of John the Theologian".

The premiere in Moscow took place on 12 March 2015.

The premiere in Belgrade took place on 31 October 2023.

In 2023, the socio-cultural platform DrugDrugu started its activities in Belgrade. The main objective of the platform is to promote interaction and co-operation between the Russian-speaking society and the Serbian cultural environment. The DrugDrugu team is the production team of Aleksej Agranović and a public council of cultural representatives from Serbia and Russia.

The first DrugDrugu theatre event was the October premiere of Kirill Serebrennikov's play Ordinary History. This joint project of DrugDrugu and the Kirill&Friends Foundation is the first premiere of the Gogol Centre theatre after the closure of the theatre's physical space in Moscow in 2022.