The youth theater TheaterON has become a laureate of the VI Baikal International Art Festival "Vivat, Talent!" in the category "Theater". The ART-festival "Vivat, Talent!" is held on the initiative of Irkutsk Regional College of Culture supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation with a view to preserve and develop Russian national culture, as well as to exchange experiences between creative groups fr om different parts of Russia and abroad.

Dagestan was represented at the festival by the TeatrON youth theater. The actors staged a performance based on a story by Nikolai Gogol "Portrait", wh ere bold stage directions and insightful performance of the actors helped the audience to plunge into the world of Gogol's mystery and fantasy.

This story is about a young, talented but poor painter who is offended by the fact that fashionable colleagues get enormous money, while he must live in poverty... And the money found in the frame of a purchased portrait could have helped the artist develop the talent he possessed. But greed, viciousness, and great selfishness force him to take the easy way out, stepping over himself...

The play was directed by Yulia Timokhina, with Magomed Mollakaev as production designer, Adil Adilkhanov as lighting designer, Marina Alieva as makeup artist and Eldar Akhmedov as choreographer. The festival jury, which includes figures of culture and art from Russia and Belarus, highly appreciated the work of the theater company from Dagestan.