Theater of one informer

The story of the artistic director of the Novosibirsk Musical Theater, who was fired from his position after denunciations by the actor - Z-patriot

On December 5, Leonid Kipnis left the post of head of the Novosibirsk Musical Theater, which he held for almost 30 years. A source told the NGS publication about this. Kipnis himself refused to comment on the information, and the theater advised journalists to contact the regional Ministry of Culture for any comments.

A VN.ru source said that Kipnis was not fired of his own free will. For more than a year, he had a serious conflict with one of the theater actors, who fiercely supports Russia in the war with Ukraine. On the theater's website, Kipnis is still listed as director. Read more about the artistic director and the scandal surrounding the Novosibirsk Musical Theater in the material of Novaya Gazeta Europe.

History of the theater

The Novosibirsk Musical Theater was founded in 1959, initially it was called the Novosibirsk Musical Comedy Theater. It has become one of the key venues for musical productions in Russia, with a repertoire ranging from classical operettas to modern musicals. The theater has repeatedly received prestigious awards, including the Golden Mask Award. His repertoire includes works by such authors as F. Lehár, I. Kalman, A. Krotov, as well as innovative projects created in collaboration with the Association of Musical Theaters.

Kipnis is a graduate of the Novosibirsk Theater School and the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music and Cinema. Simultaneously with his studies at the institute, he began working at the Novosibirsk State Philharmonic, first as a reader and then as an artistic director.

In 1995, he became director and artistic director of the Novosibirsk Musical Theatre. During his tenure, the theater expanded its creative range, including rock musicals, modern operettas and musical comedies in its repertoire. Kipnis achieved high occupancy of the hall (more than 80% with almost three hundred shows per year) and regular participation of the theater in major festivals. On November 15, 2024, Kipnis became a laureate of the All-Russian Theater Award “Legend”. It was presented in the Beethoven Hall of the Bolshoi Theater of Russia.

Under Kipnis' leadership, the theater emphasized a balance between preserving traditions and experimenting with new forms. In December 2019, the theater released the rock musical “Foma” to the music of Yuri Shevchuk about the path of a musician in the era of perestroika.

The performance won three Golden Mask awards. As Siberian Express noted , against the background of the news of Kipnis’s dismissal, “Thomas” was removed from the theater’s repertoire.

In January 2024, the theater stopped showing the play “The Viper” based on the story of the same name by Alexei Tolstoy. The musical was about a girl who cannot find a place in life after the death of her loved one in the war; premiered in 2008. Officially, the stop of shows was explained by the need to update the theater's repertoire and the emergence of new productions. Leonid Kipnis then noted that the time of “The Viper” had come to an end, despite its success and status as the theater’s “calling card”.

Conflict with an actor

The scandal began in the summer, when theater actor Anton Lidman reacted to the dismissal of the director of the Novosibirsk youth drama theater "First Theater" Yulia Churilova, who staged a play by a Ukrainian playwright. Lidman wrote in the comments to a post by Dmitry Vinnik, professor of the Department of Humanities at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, that his “immediate supervisor” was “very worried about her dismissal.” “The situation in Novosibirsk is simply destabilizing. Liberota is really afraid of his own shadow, removing from the performances at least something resembling at least some kind of peaceful procession, icons, etc.,” wrote the actor under the pseudonym “Tokha” (original spelling retained).

After that, as Lidman said, Leonid Kipnis called him into his office and “insulted him,” and “then did it in the presence of the team.”

“He called me a bastard, and then added that nothing good would happen to me in this theater. So he declared: “I have nothing to do with scoundrels and informers.” Before this, he also spoke out: “And you, it turns out, are a patriot? Well, we’ll just live in shit.” Last summer, I published a post on social networks with a collage depicting a destroyed German Leopard tank and a Tiger tank burned in 1943. Kipnis saw this and told me: “Don’t do this. You have to be neutral,” the actor told Infopro54.

Kipnis himself explained that the entire troupe turned away from the artist. He admitted that he called Lidman a “scoundrel”: “What else can you call it? You can be a scumbag, you can be a scoundrel, a scoundrel. When a person openly demonstrates his position and at the same time deliberately lies and exaggerates because of one remark about Churilova, whom I saw only ten times, an event of universal proportions.”

Lidman complained that among his colleagues, only those who were close to his views communicated with him, that is, those who supported the actions of the Russian authorities. “In our team there are outright non-twins who, when bowing to the public, whisper “Glory to Ukraine!” and sincerely rejoice at our losses, so the depoliticized […]

Unfortunately, many professionals who were able to have their own opinions and defend them left the theater long ago, largely due to Kipnis’s policies and his style of doing business,” he stated, arguing that actors who support “SVO” are not are given roles in productions.

The actor also accused Kipnis of saying about Odessa: “There are no Nazis there!” In an interview with that same Vinnik, Lidman complained that after the start of the war, Kipnis did not participate in any way in raising funds for humanitarian and military needs.

At the same time, Lidman himself showed “patriotism” with all his might, as the Infopro54 portal notes: at home he made parts for grenades and machine guns on a 3D printer, and between performances he performed for wounded soldiers in the hospital “from the heart and with a pure heart.”

“I was raised this way, because all my ancestors fought. Help for the army and love for Russia are rooted in early childhood. But the theater management holds different views. This is not welcome here. I regard this as pressure from the fifth column and nothing else, which has now turned on administrative resources against me. It turns out that with one hand we are asking the state for money for productions, and with the other we are keeping a fig in our pocket,” Anton reasoned in an interview.

At first, Lidman complained about Kipnis to the Ministry of Culture, and in September he turned to the Investigative Committee, said Vinnik, who continued to closely monitor this story.

“My manager <...> did not support the holding of the SVO, personally called on me to “remain neutral” and ridiculed my patriotism <...> Despite the ongoing public outcry, the Ministry of Culture does not react in any way to the regular media coverage of the facts of Kipnis’s involvement in activities contrary to the interests of Russia ", stated the actor.

In January 2023, a court in Novosibirsk placed the former director of the Novosibirsk Red Torch Theater, Alexander Kulyabin, under house arrest. According to investigators, the man allegedly illegally paid salary supplements to his son, the former chief director of the theater Timofey Kulyabin (Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code, up to 10 years in prison). Many artists vouched for the ex-director of the theater, in particular the general director of the Bolshoi Theater Vladimir Urin, the director of RAMT Sofya Apfelbaum and the artistic director of the Theater of Nations Evgeny Mironov.

Kulyabin Jr. spoke out against the war in April 2022, left the position of chief director of the Red Torch and left the country.

Earlier, the Artistic Director of the Krasnoyarsk Theater for Young Spectators, Roman Feodori (Ilyin), resigned after being publicly accused of treason for moving abroad and staging a play about Stalin. The director was criticized by local Legislative Assembly deputy Elena Penzina.