In Mindaugas Karbauskis' production of Alexander Ostrovsky's "Talents and Admirers" at the Mayakovsky Theater a man who has devoted his life and love to theater often tinkles a small, high-pitched bell.

"Two in Your House" is the latest political act mounted by the folks who tirelessly bring us slices of theatricalized contemporary life at Teatr.doc.

Yury Olesha's "A Conspiracy of Feelings" was one of the dramatic works that defined an era in Soviet theater. Based loosely on the influential novella "Envy" and staged in 1929 at the Vakhtangov Theater, it did not remain in repertory long, though its fame and reputation were lasting.

Milena Avimskaya was born in Kazakhstan, grew up in the Siberian city of Surgut and was educated in Moscow. She found her calling in St. Petersburg.

It is almost a holiday fairy tale. Just one year ago, Odin Lund Biron attended a New Year's party hosted by the Satirikon Theater. An actor in the company, he had begun to feel it was time for a change. He could hear the home fires calling.

Valery Belyakovich has been a quietly prominent figure on the Moscow theater scene for more than two decades. He founded the feisty little Southwest Theater Studio in the late 1980s during the theater studio boom, and it was one of the few such venues that lasted through several eras of political, social and historical change.

Carlo Gozzi. The famous 18th-century Italian writer of colorful, slightly unsettling fairy tales. In theater it has come precariously close to cliche. You stage Gozzi in extravagant costumes of vibrant color, usually showing a prominent Oriental influence.

Life and the world will return to something resembling normalcy at some point. But at present, life in Moscow — and that includes the life of culture — is swept up in the fervor caused by disputed elections on Dec. 4 and amplified by subsequent protests Dec. 5 and Saturday.

How things have changed! A year ago, even a week ago, it would have been hard to find more than a hardcore handful of Russian performers and artists who would dare display a sense of civic commitment.

Natalya Moshina's "Heat," the newest play at Praktika Theater, is an unusual work. We are blessed with the riches of new plays good, bad and indifferent about the contemporary psyche. But I don't remember seeing anything quite like "Heat."

Ivan Vyrypayev has an extraordinary ability to achieve the complex by way of the simple. He loves to stand actors virtually motionless on stage. They face the audience and talk.

Alexander Ogaryov's production of "A Month in the Country" at the Mayakovsky Theater is something of a beginning. It is the first new show created by the company since Mindaugas Karbauskis was appointed Artistic Director late last season. The theater has been through difficult times in recent decades, slipping from its status as one of Moscow's most important houses in the 1970s and '80s to the position of a venue you could safely ignore if you had better things to do.

As one of the great men of contemporary theater, Tom Stoppard surely knows that theater and rock 'n' roll don't mix.

I previously noted that 20 years have passed since I began writing about theater for the Moscow Guardian, a precursor to The Moscow Times. Earlier, I said I would occasionally exploit this space to reminisce about those times in the theatrical Wild, Wild East. Here are some thoughts.

If anyone were going to write a play about cannibalism, it would be Yury Klavdiyev. Klavdiyev is one of Russia's most distinctive and challenging voices. His plays take on hard topics of violence, deviance and outcasts. What might not be clear immediately is the dry-eyed affection this writer holds for his characters.

Don Quixote is one of a handful of non-Russian myths that have played significant roles in the formation of the Russian cultural psyche. Yevgeny Slavutin's production of "Don Quixote. Reboot" at the Moscow Open Student Theater has me thinking about the Spanish hidalgo.

I began writing regularly about Moscow theater just over 20 years ago. It was for a pre-Moscow Times publication called The Moscow Guardian — a kind of weekly newsletter for foreigners. But in seven months' time, a rather frumpy MT logo had appeared; the stories were printed on real newsprint; and the whole organization moved into a new office.

The Satirikon Theater is back in a groove. This house is always a guarantee of quality, but it does occasionally slip into safer fare — albeit extremely well done. That's not the mood there these days, however.

The audience burst into applause when Dmitry Bykov walked into the packed hall at the Contemporary Play School for the first performance of his play "The Bear." The applause made more sense beforehand than afterward.

If you are going to do it big, "The Master and Margarita" is a good place to start. Few literary works in the last century have been as popular in Russia as this novel finished by Mikhail Bulgakov in 1940. Its mythology, its spirituality, its take on history, and its images of talented, thinking individuals navigating dangerous territory occupied by hacks, nuts, bureaucrats and Satan are viewed by some as a handbook for living in the Russian capital.

A few years back I was invited to Magnitogorsk to be a jury member for the Theater Without Borders festival. It was – I say "was" because it no longer exists – a festival that championed non-Moscow Russian theater.

Of all the topics I have seen addressed in contemporary plays over the last two decades, I have seen nothing like Tatyana Orlova's "Occupation Is a Fine Affair. O, Federico!" Semi-autobiographical, it tells the story of what it was like growing up during the Soviet occupation of Germany following World War II.

"At first these texts attract me, they're beautifully written," Vladimir Berzin says of theatrical scripts composed by his friend and fellow director who goes by the name of Klim. "But then they irritate me."

One of the uglier parts of being a critic is when you are brought face to face with your prejudices. Most of the time you do a good job hiding them, minimizing them, avoiding them or just plain ignoring them. But every once in a while, the escape routes are closed.

The list of awards that have accrued to Lyudmila Ulitskaya over the years continues to grow. The most recent, the Simone de Beauvoir Prize, was announced in January. Her novellas ("Sonechka"), her novels ("Kukotsky's Case") and her screenplays have enjoyed popular and critical success. Less known, perhaps, is Ulitskaya's occasional affair with theater.

The crush at Teatr.doc has long been a given. The tiny basement hall of the feisty little theater that mixes social issues, journalism and politics became something of a Mecca for young, curious audiences shortly after it was founded in 2002.

Now I don't want to start off on the wrong foot. After all, this is one of the great times of the year — the start of the new theater season in Moscow. This is a time when every future production sounds fabulous and every show is a huge success in its makers' eyes. Why would I want to rain on that lovely parade? Well, I don't. But I also cannot help but put two and two together and come up with a few what-fors. Let's get that out of the way right now.

The festival known as Lyubimovka is one of those intriguing misnomers that no one would think to question. Properly, Lyubimovka is the name of the rural estate northeast of Moscow that once belonged to the family of the famous director Konstantin Stanislavsky. Indeed, that is where the Lyubimovka Festival of Young Drama was held from its inception in 1990 until the year 2000.

Thank God for Robert Sturua. I have known and loved the great Georgian director for two decades. His work with the Rustaveli Theater in Tbilisi is some of the finest, most exhilarating theater I have ever encountered. But my gratitude for Sturua at the moment is for something he did not do.

The first time I crossed Andrei Konchalovsky's path was in Warsaw in 2006 where I attended the premiere of his theater production of "King Lear" with Daniel Olbrychski at the Theater Na Woli. The second time was the same year on a soundstage in Moscow where the director was in the process of shooting his film "Gloss." Both times were proverbial instances of calm and focus amid madding crowds.