Nord-Ost

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Nord-Ost
Music	Aleksei Ivaschenko Georgii Vasilyev
Lyrics	Aleksei Ivaschenko Georgii Vasilyev
Based upon	1944 novel by Veniamin Kaverin The Two Captains
Productions	2001 Dubrovka theatre
Awards	Golden Mask for Best Musical Golden Mask for Best Performance by a Featured Actor

Nord-Ost (Russian: Норд-Ост, means "North-East" in German) is a Russian musical theatre production that was composed by Aleksei Ivaschenko and Georgii Vasilyev, based on the novel The Two Captains by Veniamin Kaverin. It is a fictional story based around the historical events surrounding the discovery of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago in 1913. The musical was first staged on October 19, 2001 in the Dubrovka theatre where it played over 400 performances.

On October 23, 2002 Chechen terrorists took the audience hostage in the Moscow theater that was showing the production of Nord-Ost, threatening to blow up the building and demanding withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Most of the hostages were released after the theatre was stormed by special forces. 130 hostages were killed; "Nord-Ost” lost 17 members of the team, including 2 child actors aged 13 (Kristina Kurbatova and Arsenii Kurilenko) and one third of all musicians in the orchestra. The producer Georgii Vasilyev had himself been among the hostages^[1].

After the attack, Nord-Ost returned to the same theater stage in Moscow on February 8, 2003 and continued showing there until May 10, 2003, when the producers took it off the stage, quoting the loss of viewer interest due to fears caused by the attack.

Since then, there have been guest performances of Nord-Ost in Nizhniy Novgorod and Tyumen.