Returning to the recently Sovietized Georgia in 1922, he led the Rustaveli Theater in Tbilisi. By that time, the energetic young director Sandro Akhmeteli had also returned to Tbilisi to lead the younger actors in a coup against the establishment. The two men collaborated with respect and unease, but Akhemeteli’s nearly despotic rule over his artistic corporation "Duruji" proved too violent for Marjanishvili whose production had become more restrained, motivated by his own conviction that "there’s enough suffering in life without showing it on the stage." In 1926, he and part of the company left to form a provincial touring theatre, centered on Kutaisi and Batumi, leaving Akhmeteli in sole control of the Rustaveli Theater. The new theater came to be known as The Second State Georgian Theater and would eventually be named the Marjanishvili Theater after its founder (1933). The theater is still functional in Tbilisi and continues Marjanishvili’s eclectic and somewhat conformist traditions.