Theatre pieces 1981-1990
In the '80s, more theatre directors started making stage adaptations of The Master and Margarita, although it remained largely confined to the so-called Eastern Bloc countries. Within the Soviet Union, Moscow was the city with the most representations. The theatre piece Бал при свечах [Bal pri svechakh] or Bal by candlelight, a creation of the Moscow Gorky Art Theatre, directed by Vladimir Prudkin, was staged 120 times in the summer of 1984. But there were also adaptations created in Saratov, Minsk, Kharkiv, Tallinn, Zagreb and Kyiv.
The first Western European adaptation, Mästaren och Margarita, got its premiere on October 1, 1982 in the Stadsteater of Stockholm (Sweden), and was directed by Peter Luckhaus. It was a quite successful initiative with 43 representations.
The Romanian director Andrei Şerban, who had already performed the theatre piece in New York in the '70s, did it over in 1983 at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. In 1987, the theatre play Babylon was on the program for a year in the town of Maillet in France, and Der Meister und Margarita was performed for the first time in the Berlin Volksbühne.