Now Playing: Vassa Zheleznova by Maxim Gorky.
Directed by Christopher Carter Sanderson
Stage Manager: Kaoru Kikuchi

With Ed Banas, Rafael De Mussa,, Celia Finkelstein, Jacob H Knoll, Laura Malone, Jacqueline Margolis, Laura Marks, Bristol Pomeroy, Susan Romanoff, and Jennifer Rubins
Lights by Joyce Liao, Sets by Victoria Marin. Costumes by Melissa Daghini

Russia, 1917. Vassa Zheleznova has it all: money, power, clout, and brains. Only one thing sheís missing - a future, for the Russian Revolution is drawing nearer, and the age of the Zheleznovs will abruptly come to an end!

There was a saying in the town of Nizhni Novgorod, where Gorky was born: "The houses are made of stone-the people of iron". Vassa Zheleznova is just such a person, a woman of iron will and a powerful matriarch. Her tragedy, however, is to see her family destroyed by the very bourgeois values that she seeks to preserve.

Maxim Gorky (Alexei Maximovich Peshkov) was born in 1868 in the Russian port of Nizhni Novgorod (re-named Gorky in his honor in 1932). He was encouraged to write plays by Chekhov, who introduced him to the founder members of the Moscow Art Theatre, were his plays were staged to critical acclaim.

Maxim Gorky is best known for his plays The Lower Depths (1902) and his novel Mother (1907) from were Vassa Zheleznova is based.

Reviews of Vassa Zheleznova
"The title may not be easy for you to say, but Maxim Gorky's rarely seen drama, about a tyrannical upper-middle-class widow struggling to keep both her family and her family business from falling apart, might well be worth a look; its heroine is thought to have been a partial inspiration for both Regina Giddens and Mother Courage, among other maternal monsters, Horizon Theatre's production, staged by Christopher Carter Sanderson, features Gorky's original 1909 version; he "corrected" it politically, under Stalinist pressure, in 1935."
- Michael Feingold, The Village Voice, Voice Choices

"Maxim Gorky's chilling 1909 study of a formidable matriarch who resorts to blackmail, forgery, and murder to retain control of her family business -- and her family -- is the original Dynasty. Alexis Carrington, step aside: You don't hold a ruble to Vassa Zheleznova! …a highly charged tour de force performance, Susan Romanoff is a terrifying presence!…and the supporting cast is excellent!"
- Nancy Ellen Shore, Backstage

"A ferocious family! Beautiful Vassa is the mother of greed and cruelty. In a striking parallel greed prevailed in Russia in 1906 and it prevails again in capitalist Russia in 2006... A powerful production! Highly recommended!"
- Mario Fratti, America Today