National Music and Drama Theatre named after Magtymguly hosted participants of the «Theatrical Art in the Age of Happiness» festival. Actors of the Tatar State Academic Theatre named after Galiasgar Kamal (Republic of Tatarstan of the Russian Federation) took the stage with the play «The Alien». This performance includes stories from the life of an emigrant.

The main character of the play, Nakip, by the will of fate, ended up in Canada after the war. In a small town, he began to grow potatoes, just as he had done in his Tatar village. For Halloween, he made decorations out of potatoes. The memory haunted him. She carried him either to his fellow soldiers or to a concentration camp. But most of all, he was tormented by memories of his mother. He remembered her young, beautiful, carrying water on a yoke. Of course, years and lonely old age had changed the woman, and he tried to imagine her hunched over, holding a cane.

The culmination of the performance was the arrival of a neighbour, also the «alien», but with Scottish roots, who brought the news that former Soviet subjects were allowed to return to their homeland. It is not known what decision Nakip will make. But the point is different - in the feelings that accompany an emigrant in a foreign land.

«By the way, after the festival in Ashgabat, our troupe of actors goes to Istanbul for the Turkish festival of women’s drama», director Farid Bikchantaev, Honoured Artist of Tatarstan in Russia, gives an interview for our newspaper. – The playwright of the play «The Alien» is Sombel Gafarova from Norway. This topic is close to her because her father, having been freed from concentration camps, settled in Canada, and she herself comes from an emigrant family.

Our troupe performed with the play «The Alien» in Romania, China, and India. And among viewers from other countries, the story of life in exile evoked sympathy and understanding.