Not just the poverty, not just the general situation, but simply the fact that there was a lack of new content. Now many classical pieces are being played. A great deal of Chekhov and Shakespeare is being played. Plays are being written based on various novels. There is a great deal of material on offer.
Every theatre is a repertory theatre and every day there is a different performance.
Normally theatres have about 20 pieces in their repertoire which are regularly changed. I know that at the end of the 1980s in Moscow alone there were roughly 200 small theatres. Most of them are now gone. From the initial total there are at most 12 or 15 left, and they were only able to survive because of state support. Theatre has declined rapidly because the artists were not able to live on the money they earned.