A young actress from Russia has joined the Hrodna Drama Theater. The theater has staffing problems
23-year-old Russian actress Anastasia Abrashkina will work at the Hrodna Regional Drama Theater. She moved to Hrodna from Moscow. Earlier, director Alina Sarokina from Smolensk started working here. Meanwhile, the theater continues to look for artists and other employees, and the position of chief director has remained vacant for six years, Hrodna.life writes .
Abrashkina spoke about her move and the start of her work on Instagram.
“My path in the acting profession began with moving to another country. This decision completely changed my life,” she wrote.
Back in May, the aspiring actress said that she saw a vacancy at the Hrodna Drama Theater and came for an audition.
“I saw a vacancy, came, and immediately fell in love: with the city, with the theater, with this incredibly strong energetic space,” Abrashkina wrote.
In the same May post, the girl said that she was preparing documents for the move.
And already in September, the actress wrote that she was working at the Hrodna Drama Theater.
However, she is not yet mentioned in the troupe list on the institution's website.
Studied in Moscow in Yuri Chernov's workshop
Abrashkina graduated from the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art, where she studied in the workshop of People's Artist of Russia Yuri Chernov.
ISM is a non-governmental university, opened in 1992. Among the teachers of the theater faculty are actors Ivan Okhlobystin, known for his role as Dr. Bykov in the TV series "Interns," Mikhail Gorovoy, Anatoly Gorachev, and Elena Tsyplakova. The Department of Theater Arts is headed by Dmitry Pevtsov, and Olga Drozdova works as the dean of the faculty. All of them actively support the war in Ukraine unleashed by Russia with the support of the Lukashenka regime.
"But ask where the former artists are": what was written in the comments
Under Abrashkina's post, users wished her creative success and promised to come to the performances.
"Unexpectedly. And in Hrodna too. Very happy for you," one commentator wrote.
Others asked about the former troupe.
"Very cool, congratulations. But ask where the former artists are," one of the comments stated.
Another user asked:
"The only question is, where have the local artists gone, that people are coming from abroad?"
One of the participants in the discussion wrote:
"With all due respect, it pains me to hear this... This place belongs to other people. It was their home. Their walls. Their air..."
In response, Abrashkina wrote that she passed the selection by the director and artistic director and got the job thanks to her professionalism and attitude to her work.
"I fought for this place, I didn't just come to a ready-made one. The theater needed actors, so it wasn't for nothing, and the management conducted a selection," she wrote.
To the question about local artists, the actress replied that actors from Belarus also work in the theater.
Abrashkina was also asked about her knowledge of the Belarusian language. She said that she is currently learning it:
"Most performances are performed in Russian, but I want to perform plays in Belarusian."
Hrodna Theater has been looking for employees for several years
The position of chief director at the Hrodna Drama Theater has remained vacant for six years. The theater is also looking for a deputy director for administrative and economic activities – this vacancy is posted on its website.
The deputy director has been sought since September 2024. At that time, Dmitry Chilik, who held this position, was put on trial for bribery, and information about him disappeared from the theater's website. Later, Chilik was sentenced to five years in a penal colony for receiving a large bribe – under Part 2 of Article 430 of the Criminal Code.
The theater is also looking for a chief artist, lighting designer, power engineer, fire safety engineer, stage machinist, and cleaner. Vacancies for chief accountant and lighting technician are marked as promising.
Two job advertisements for drama artists at the Hrodna Drama Theater are also posted on the website of the State Employment Service. In both ads, a full-time position and a salary of 950-1000 rubles are offered. The required education is secondary specialized.
In total, 222 artist vacancies across Belarus are published on the State Employment Service website, 29 of which are in the Hrodna region. Employees are sought, in particular, by the "Belyya Rosy" ensemble, the Hrodna Capella, and the regional philharmonic.
In 2020, directors were fired after announcing a strike
On October 27, 2020, chief director Gennady Mushpert and production director Sergei Kurylenko were fired from the Hrodna Drama Theater. Earlier, they had announced their joining the strike. As the directors told Hrodna.life, they were fired for refusing to perform their official duties.
Mushpert had worked at the theater for 26 years by then, Kurylenko for 40. Two weeks before his dismissal, Mushpert received two reprimands for not submitting a production plan for the following year on time.
In September of the same year, actor Igor Ulanov was fired. Earlier, he refused to sign an explanatory note regarding a performance stopped on September 20.
After Kurylenko's dismissal, director Sergei Yaskevich came to the theater from Slonim.
In December 2025, it became known that Alina Sarokina, a director from Russia, started working as a production director at the Hrodna Drama Theater. She graduated from GITIS and worked for ten years at the Smolensk Drama Theater named after Griboyedov before moving.
In the summer of 2025, Sarokina spoke with theater director Olga Bogdanovich and decided to try herself in Hrodna. Her first production here was "The Nutcracker."
In future performances, Sarokina wanted to focus on history and portray it in a way that would be understandable to the audience, "taking into account the mentality and cultural characteristics."
Comments