One of the obligatory conditions for the participants of the walk is shoes without heels. This is the rule for visiting the observation deck on the roof of the Tatar State Academic Theater named after G. Kamal, on which the approved action ends with the muses. But we start “from the stove”, or rather from the hanger, because, as Konstantin Stanislavsky aptly formulated, the theater begins with it. A new tour starts at the Literary Museum of Gabdulla Tukay. Our group of journalists was drawn into the world of theater by Lena Tyabina, a senior researcher at the museum. The classic of Tatar poetry loved and deeply understood the theater. We will not talk about all the connecting threads of Tukay and the theatrical scene. Let the joy of new knowledge illuminate you yourself during the tour. Let us just quote four lines of the poet: “The theater is both a spectacle and a school for the people, / Awakening the hearts of people is what its nature is! / He does not let us turn to the unrighteous path, / He leads us to the light, opening the right path for us. Leaving the hospitable museum, we walked around the Old Tatar settlement. We pass by the bust of the educator Shigabutdin Marjani and learn that this innovator was the first of the Tatar theologians to take a picture, and this picture made a lot of noise. And it was like this: in 1874, a representative of a British publishing house, Professor Adams, approached Marjani with a request to be photographed for an English encyclopedia, and he agreed. In fact, Marjani opened photography for the Tatar society at the end of the 19th century.

Multimedia realm – this is how we can characterize what we saw in the digital complex “Eastern Club” on Tatarstan Street. Here, with the help of modern technologies, the history of the Tatar theater is presented – you can find out where the first Tatar performances were staged, the first stage and the auditorium were built. Guests enter the Backstage with a virtual dressing room and dressing room (you can change your image and take a picture), watch excerpts from performances at the Phantom Theater, and also travel along the River of Time and study the ABC of the Theater. And the icing on the cake in the new route is the ascent to the observation deck, which is located on the roof of the Kamal Theater. The media representatives were met by the director of the theater Ilfir Yakupov, and together with him we took the elevator to the fifth floor. From there we got to the roof, which offers stunning views of the Lower Kaban and the center of Kazan.

Answering the question of the RT correspondent where the new theater building will be located, Ilfir Ilshatovich not only kindly showed “the very place”, but also told an interesting story. Whether it’s a true story or a legend – decide for yourself. Once, two friends and two great lovers and connoisseurs of the theater, Gabdulla Tukay and Galiasgar Kamal, came out of the rooms of the Bulgar Hotel, which was located at the corner of present-day Tatarstan and Moskovskaya streets. They heatedly discussed where a new Tatar theater could be built. And then an idea was born, why not place the building right here – on the shore of the Nizhny Kaban Lake, opposite the hotel. And indeed, many years later, a theater with an oblique blue roof was erected on this very spot, which became one of the hallmarks of the capital of Tatarstan. And if we extend the vector indicated by Tukay and Kamal, then it will symbolically point to the territory where a new beautiful building of the Kamal Theater will soon appear. Our newspaper reported in detail about the project that won the international competition. We really did not want to go down from the theatrical roof back to the Kazan streets with their everyday bustle, but there is an inexorable word – “regulations”, we had to obey. You can sign up for the tour “Tukay and the history of the Tatar theater” by calling +7 (843) 590-86-67. After all, it is better to follow a new route once than to hear about it a hundred times. The Muses Melpomene and Thalia approve.