Maria Mashkova in the play “The Foreigner”

What makes a person leave home? Politics, history, circumstances - or just a “bad mood”? The play “The Foreigner”, based on the novella by Sergey Dovlatov, searches for answers to these questions and brings them into today’s reality. But this is not only the story of the heroine Marusya Tatarovich - it is also the personal story of actress Masha Mashkova, her attempts to break into Hollywood, life in Los Angeles, memories of family and growing up.

15 May - in Limassol, on the stage of Pattihio Theatre.

“The Foreigner” is a conversational play without a fourth wall: ironic, honest, funny and therapeutic. It speaks of emigration as an eternal human experience - an attempt to find one’s place in the world and keep a sense of humor when everything around becomes foreign and new. If in the 80s emigration was a domestic drama, today it is an existential leap into the unknown. But the essence remains the same: each of us at some point becomes a “foreigner” - in a new country, profession or even in our own life.

“Let us summarize the facts. A certain Maria leaves the Motherland. Then Maria, you see, asks to come back. It creates the impression that for some people the Motherland is a variable quantity. I want to leave, I change my mind - I will return. Meanwhile, a, I apologize, vile betrayal has been committed. And therefore the guilt must be atoned for. And only then will it be decided whether to let you back. Or not to let you back,” writes Sergey Dovlatov in the novella “The Foreigner” in 1985.

“I searched for a long time for material that would allow the audience in the theatre to laugh out everything accumulated. To laugh until tears. And the heroine Marusya (drum roll) came to me from Novosibirsk! (for those who don’t know, I lived until age 8 in the Tolmachevo aviation town), who emigrated to America, but emigrant life… you understand. And Marusya now all of a sudden very much wanted to go back. I was turning the pages of the novella with trembling hands, eager to find out whether Marusya would return… back,” says Masha Mashkova in 2026.

Director Maxim Didenko’s authorial method combines live theatre, cinema and multimedia, creating a contemporary language of stage art and opening new forms of theatrical expression. The production contains two parallel processes: theatrical/staged and cinematographic. Cinema itself becomes part of the play, which gives the project particular depth. The Foreigner features Maksim Sukhanov, Varya Shmykova, Nikita Kukushkin, Nikola Ashurkov.

Play creators:

Dramatist - Mikhail Durnenkov

Director - Maxim Didenko

Composer - Anna Drubich

Costumes - Tatyana Dolmatovskaya

Set designer - Ksenia Peretrukhina

Lighting and sound design - Yuri Galkin

Multimedia - Oleg Mikhailov

Producers - Alexandrina Markvo, Katerina Kashintseva, Masha Mashkova

Stage manager - Ilya Kuznetsov