Stage photo of play And Quiet Flows the Don Photo: Courtesy of Tianqiao Theater

Stage photo of play And Quiet Flows the Don Photo: Courtesy of Tianqiao Theater

Play And Quiet Flows the Don will kick off the first show of a week-long run at the Tianqiao Theater in Beijing on Thursday.

Directed by Russian director Grigory Kozlov, the play made its Chinese mainland debut in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, on April 28.

Originally a novel, And Quiet Flows the Don was written by Russian writer Mikhail Sholokhov, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965.

Sholokhov took 14 years to finish the novel, which tells the story of a Cossack family as they live and love from World War I to the end of the Soviet Union.

An adaptation of this great literature work, the Russian language play is eight hours long in total.

"The original version of the play is 24 hours long, this eight-hour version contains the finest parts of the story," Kozlov said in a statement.

All the actors and actress in the play are Kozlov's students. Kozlov paid great attention to training their stamina, which has helped them handle the 8-hour-performance.

Compared to other plays featuring fancy stage decorations, And Quiet Flows the Don uses a simple backdrop to represent the landscape of the countryside where the Cossack people call home.

After it's run at the Tianqiao Theater ends on August 23, the play will head to Shanghai.