"Growing Up In Odessa" 1968 – 1981

"…A collaboration of like minded souls is a dream of many theatrical people. As any dream, it rarely turns into reality. Reality where the producer begins to design the scenery and the stage designer begins to stage plays.

Ladizhinsky staged his own play. I mean the cycle of his paintings, small temperas, their number already exceeding a hundred, a cycle titled "Growing up in Odessa". Here he is his own playwright, his own director, playing all the roles, those of men and women, comic and tragic. He designed the scenery, filled his world with a symphony of sounds – the noise of the crowd, the honking of trams, cries of street vendors and barking of stray dogs.

The scene of action and the hero of his play is Odessa"

From the article by V. Zheleznova to the album "Growing up in Odessa", "The Soviet Artists" periodical, 1975