The space for the theater was given in the Third House of Enlightenment on Vladimirsky, 12. During the day, they rehearsed, adjusted the scenery to the new stage. In the evening, if there was free time, they walked around the deserted city. “The emptiness revealed the incredible beauty of the city,” wrote Nik. Chukovsky, “turning it almost into a majestic phenomenon of nature, and it, light, washed by the dawns, seemed to float somewhere between water and sky.” Schwartz’s first impression of Petrograd was somewhat different. “Everything seemed foreign, though not hostile, as in Moscow, but indifferent,” he recorded on September 30, 1953. “And walking along Suvorovsky, I did not feel melancholy, but vague disappointment. Dreams came true, Rostov is behind us, we are in Petrograd, but, of course, living here will not be as easy and simple as it seemed. Petrograd, darkened and quiet, is struggling itself.”

Cold weather was approaching. Water in the carafes froze at night. The men had a new concern — getting firewood. It was done like this. A heavy sharp tip was attached to a long strong rope. The duty men came to the Anichkov Bridge and waited for the approach of a log or at least a board. When they approached, the most responsible moment came. It was necessary to aim and drive the tip into the log. If the “hunter” missed or the log slipped away, they ran to the other side of the bridge, and the attack was repeated. Sometimes, overtaking the prey, they had to hurry to the next bridge downstream, and everything started over. Then the prey was carefully pulled to the descent and pulled up.

For example, I dreamed that the theater would burn down and the premiere would not take place. And how I dreamed! I thought for a long time about how to set fire to this multi-room and hated building.”

But everything went as usual. Posters were released. Tickets sold out. “The opening of the theater on Vladimirsky represents The theater was preparing for the season opening, and Yevgeny Schwartz felt “an inner malaise.” He felt that he had “ruined his life” with his acting. He was overwhelmed by dreams, “as absurd as my whole life then… an act of beautiful courage in itself. Indeed, to come from Rostov-on-Don with a troupe, belongings, a strictly literary (but not popular) repertoire, with decorations by famous artists, without hack “nails,” only dreamers in love with art could do that. But dreamers full of energy and courage.” The production was well received by the audience, tickets were sold many days in advance. In honor of the theater, a reception with a luxurious table for that time was held at the House of Writers. For the first time in a long time, the starving actors ate well.

The theater attracted the interest of Petrograd’s literati. All the “Serapion Brothers” attended the Workshop’s performances. January 1922 was unusually cold. The autumn stock of firewood was insufficient. The men went to unload wagons with coal, peat. They took fuel as payment, not money. Whoever could carry as much as possible. And yet it was terribly cold in the rooms. They came back from the performance and put on a large tank of water to boil. Before going to bed, everyone filled a hot water bottle with boiling water and only then got under the blanket. And in the passage between the beds, which they called Broadway, hungry Yevgeny Schwartz and Rafail Kholodov walked and shouted: “Well, who will throw something on Broadway?!” From under the blanket, here and there, someone’s hand appeared for a moment, and a dry biscuit, a gingerbread cookie — whatever they had — flew to them. They caught them deftly.

Soon the theater closed. Yevgeny Schwartz had his own version: “Relations in the Theater Workshop became so tangled, it gave so little money, we criticized each other so sincerely, with such contempt, that at the end of it all we felt only some relief. Now I understand that we could have saved the theater. Our actors turned out to be much stronger than we thought in those days… But there was no faith — due to the absence of a dictator. A theatrical collective needs a convinced and strong person who says decisively: this is good, and this is bad. Even in cases of disputes with him, inevitable in the feminine actor environment, the collective is preserved. We did not have such a person.”

And Yevgeny Schwartz, it seems, was satisfied with this outcome. In diary entries dated September 26, 1953, he repeated: “I hated acting work and, like a lover, dreamed of literature, but it always turned to me with a hostile, unfamiliar face.” But soon, in the autumn of 1923, its face would brighten with a smile for him.

To have something to live on, he first got a job in a bookstore, and then as the personal literary secretary to Korney Chukovsky. “Zhenya Schwartz was drawn to literature,” recalled Nikolai Chukovsky. “From the very first days, he became one of us in all those Petrograd literary circles where I also hung out. I can’t remember who introduced me to him or where I first saw him. He immediately appeared among the Serapions, the Nappelbaums, and in the House of Arts club. At that time, he was thin and bony, wore a gymnastyorka, wrappings, and Red Army boots. Schwartz began to visit me often. I was still living with my parents on Kirochnaya Street. My parents liked Zhenya Schwartz, and my father took him as his secretary. He couldn’t not be liked — full of intelligent sad humor, kind, well-read, imbued with genuine respect for literature, very modest and delicate.”

Source:

https://www.citywalls.ru/house717.html

Evgeny Mikhailovich Binevich “Yevgeny Schwartz. Chronicle of Life”

https://ria.ru/20161021/1479659052.html

https://24smi.org/celebrity/5230-evgenii-shvarts.html