The next performance of the theatre dinner «Список Паперной» is at New Holland on 29 November at 20:00; tickets go on sale on 17 November at 14:00 on the venue's website. The production was made with the support of the MIRA creative community, the OBERIU Museum and the New Holland cultural urbanisation project — three institutions, one format: the audience sits at a shared table and the theatre happens beside them.
Author, licence, Wikimedia Commons
What a theatre dinner is
Everything is built around the table. Guests sit together, and the evening starts with everyone in one room rather than with a curtain going up. There is no ramp and no distance: the text is spoken for the people sitting next to you, and a pause carries as much as a sentence.
That changes the practicalities. Come for the first minute, not the second act — half the impression lives in intonation and silence — and come ready to react, because this kind of theatre counts on the room.
Author, licence, Wikimedia Commons
What the title points to
The name points to a list, a document with a particular weight in Russian culture: a register of names reads as a set of fates rather than as paperwork. The creators do not retell the story in the announcement, a dinner performance runs on presence, not plot. The OBERIU Museum among the co-authors hints at the Leningrad tradition where poetry and daily life sat side by side.
Author, licence, Wikimedia Commons
New Holland as the venue
New Holland is an island in central St Petersburg, a former industrial site turned park: brick buildings, water, space between them. That setting is part of the evening: you step out into a quiet park, not into traffic.
Author, licence, Wikimedia Commons
