September 12: Tatyana Doronina's birthday, as Nyura from Three Poplars on Plyushchikha
On September 12, 1933, actress and theater director Tatyana Doronina was born in Leningrad. She is the "Iron Lady" of the Gorky Moscow Art Theater and the character of Nyura from the film "Three Poplars on Plyushchikha." She is 93 years old.
I love early autumn. At this time it seems: everything will still be fine.
Leningrad communal apartment
Doronina's parents came from peasant families. She spent her childhood in a communal apartment in Leningrad. Her father worked as a chef at a sanatorium and served throughout the Great Patriotic War. Her mother was a housewife; Doronina lived with her and her older sister in an evacuation camp near Yaroslavl during the war.
In eighth grade, she secretly applied to the Moscow Art Theatre School, but was rejected due to her age. In 1952, she applied to several theater schools in Moscow, but chose the very same Moscow Art Theatre School.
BDT and Tovstonogov
Together with her husband, Oleg Basilashvili, Doronina performed on stage at the Stalingrad Drama Theater, and then at the Lenkom Theater. In 1959, the couple was invited by BDT director Georgy Tovstonogov. She made her debut in Gorky's "Barbarians"—a production that became a notable event in the theater's life.
On the stage of the Bolshoi Drama Theater, Doronina played Nadya in a production of Alexander Volodin's play "My Elder Sister" and the beautiful flight attendant Natasha in the tragic story "Once More About Love" by Edward Radzinsky, the actress's second husband at the time.
Several years later, she transferred these images to the screen—in Georgy Natanson's films. "Once More About Love" was initially rejected because of a scene in which Doronina's character visits a man after their first date; but the film was championed by Culture Minister Ekaterina Furtseva.
Three Poplars on Plyushchikha
In 1967, Doronina starred with Oleg Efremov in the film "Three Poplars on Plyushchikha," directed by Tatyana Lioznova. The story of failed love and the song "Tenderness" by Pakhmutova and Dobronravov became a hit of the 1960s. In the taxi scene "The Earth Has Become Empty Without You," Doronina sang herself; in the film's finale, where the song plays on the radio, Maya Kristalinskaya sang.
There are three hundred households in our village, and they are all relatives.
If you don't tear off your own hands, there will be no happiness.
— Are you bathing in happiness?
— I swim... I live on the Oka River and I rarely swim in it.
The film was seen by 26 million people. Soviet women flocked to hairdressers with photographs, demanding they recreate the heroine's famous hairstyle. Soviet Screen magazine named 34-year-old Doronina Actress of the Year.
- That's not what you're afraid of in life, Anna Grigoryevna.
"What should I be afraid of? We don't live in the forest or in America."
- So, is it scary in America or something?
— It's scary. They wrote about it in the newspapers.
The Moscow Art Theatre and the "Iron Lady"
Since 1966, Doronina changed the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theatre to the Moscow Art Theatre.
Leaving the Bolshoi Drama Theater was my mistake. I couldn't betray the director who built the repertoire around me.
She played the lead role in her debut production of "Dulcinea del Toboso" by Oleg Efremov, then the theater's artistic director. She worked for a time at the Mayakovsky Theater. In the play "Long Live the Queen, Vivat!", she played two queens simultaneously—Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart. The role transition took her no more than a minute and a half while the costumes and wigs were being prepared.
In 1987, at 54, Doronina took over the Moscow Art Theatre and led it for over 30 years. Colleagues noted her tough and uncompromising management style, calling her the "Iron Lady."
Leaving the theater
Doronina effectively retired from the stage and the management of the theater in 2018, when the Ministry of Culture changed its leadership and offered her the nominal position of theater president. In 2021, she wrote a letter to Putin asking him to save the theater, after which new leaders were appointed to head the Moscow Art Theater.
I don't really believe in fate. I believe more in the existence of a Creator, the Lord God, and that we must do everything to please Him. I don't expect anything more.
Since 2022, the actress has been under constant medical observation and avoids publicity.
I live in imaginary worlds of imaginary people and I consider this life to be real.
