Evgeny Schwartz was a Soviet playwright, writer, and screenwriter. He was born in Kazan into a Jewish family of doctors. For political reasons, the family moved to Maykop, where Evgeny Schwartz spent his childhood. In 1914, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the Moscow People's University. However, in 1917, he was drafted into the army due to the outbreak of the Civil War. After entering Rostov University, Schwartz began his theatrical career, performing as an actor in productions by the “Theatrical Workshop” association. As part of this group, he moved to Petrograd, where he simultaneously took up literary work, publishing newspaper reports and stories in children's magazines such as “Chizh” (“The Siskin”) and “Yozh” (“The Hedgehog”). During this period, he served for some time as a secretary to the writer Korney Chukovsky and maintained close ties with members of the "Serapion Brothers" literary group and OBERIU. His first work for children, "The Story of an Old Balalaika", was published in 1924 in the children's almanac “Vorobey” (“The Sparrow”). From 1925 to 1931, Schwartz combined his literary work with a position in the children's department of the State Publishing House (“Gosizdat”), which was headed by Samuil Marshak. In 1929, the Leningrad State Young Spectators Theatre (TYuZ) staged Schwartz's first play, "Underwood". Later, TYuZ produced his other works: "Island 5-K" (1932) and "Treasure" (1933). From the mid-1930s, Schwartz gained widespread fame for his plays based on the fairy tales of Andersen and Perrault: "The Princess and the Swineherd" (1934), "The Naked King" (1934), "Little Red Riding Hood" (1937), "The Snow Queen" (1938), and "The Shadow" (1940). At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Schwartz remained in besieged Leningrad, initially refusing evacuation. Later he was evacuated to Kirov, where he worked as the literary manager of a drama theatre. And after that, Schwartz was sent to Stalinabad (now Dushanbe), where the Leningrad Comedy Theatre had been evacuated by that time. There, he took the position of literary manager of the theatre. In May 1944, he moved to Moscow with the troupe, and in August, the premiere of the play "The Dragon" took place. Shortly after its first performance, the production was banned and did not appear on stage again during the author's lifetime. The peak of Evgeny Schwartz's popularity as a writer came in the post-war years. However, his plays were not staged in theatres until after the death of Stalin. After the war, he wrote plays such as "The Tale of the Brave Soldier", "An Ordinary Miracle". The collection of the Bakhrushin Theatre Museum includes playbills, programs, photographs, and other materials related to the productions of Evgeny Schwartz's plays.