From Russia to Studio

The Studio Theatre’s 2004 fall benefit Tuesday night was a celebration of the new season and a toast to Russia, a font of theatrical innovation, according to all attending.

About 200 guests paid $200 a ticket to attend the hors-d’oeuvres-and-vodka reception at the Russian Embassy, a prelude to a performance of “The Russian National Postal Service” at the Studio Theatre.

The production, featuring nine plays (most by Russian writers and all on Russian themes), has kicked off the theater’s “Russian winter season.”

Written by 30-something playwright Oleg Bogaev, who lives in Siberia, “Postal Service” stars the highly praised Floyd King. The theater’s founding artistic director, Joy Zinoman, called it both contemporary and a comedy that’s “kind of fantastic, about an old man who writes letters to himself, and the people he writes the letters from come to life.”

The letter writers include Stalin, Lenin, Martians and Queen Elizabeth II. But the humor is a bit black, and the underlying theme is serious, explained Paul Mullins, the play’s director.

“Here’s a man who grew up a citizen of the Soviet Union, and he doesn’t belong anymore. He’s too old to make a new life, and he’s coming to grips with his mortality,” Mr. Mullins said.

“It has a lot to say about contemporary Russian issues, so I’ll be very interested to see how the Russian ambassador and his wife [Yuri and Svetlana Ushakov] respond,” added Mrs. Zinoman, noting that she and her staff read 100 Russian plays and winnowed down the list after she received a grant to spend a month in Russia studying the Russian way of theater.

While there, she met Anton Chekhov scholars, talked to playwrights and saw plays with a translator’s help every single night. And each night, she told the crowd, “never did I see an empty seat. Never.

“There was a kind of passion there… that was absolutely inspirational,” Mrs. Zinoman said. “It seems as if Washington audiences have that potential.”

It was no surprise, then, that many of the guests at this reception were Russian, or at least had Russian roots, including Prince Alexis Obolensky and his wife, Princess (Selene) Obolensky; Vladimir Tolstoy, a descendant of the writer Leo; and Dimitri K. Simes, an expert on Russia and president of the Nixon Center.

Also attending were former Ambassador to Russia James Collins; Lolo Sarnoff, founder of Arts for the Aging; and Gilbert and Jaylee Mead, major Studio Theatre benefactors.

The hors d’oeuvres included smoked salmon and creamed mushrooms, and the bartenders were generous with the Stolichnaya vodka, offering two or three shots with a single drink. (Maybe it’s lucky the play was only 85 minutes long.)

The money raised from the evening’s festivities, which ended in a coffee-and-dessert reception after the performance, will go toward the theater’s educational programs and its general operating fund as it finishes its $13 million expansion and renovation at 14th and P streets Northwest.

— Christina Ianzito