History
A Brief History of the Theatre
The Moscow theatre known as the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop was officially founded on 27 July 1993 by a decree of the Moscow Government. The “Fomenkos,” however—as the theatre’s actors have come to be affectionately known, thanks to a journalist’s inspired turn of phrase, not only in Moscow but around the world—trace their history back to July 1988. That was when Pyotr Fomenko brought together a group of students for his directing workshop at GITIS.
Five years of study proved that the people whom fate had brought together in the summer of 1988 were capable of genuine theatrical miracles. Their student productions repeatedly won prizes at theatre festivals. Vladimir of the Third Degree, based on Nikolai Gogol and directed by Sergei Zhenovach, received the Youth Jury’s first prize at the Podium ’91 International Festival of Theatre Schools. An Adventure, based on Marina Tsvetaeva and directed by Ivan Popovski, won the Nail of the Season award in 1992. And Wolves and Sheep, by Alexander Ostrovsky and directed by Pyotr Fomenko, took the Grand Prix at the Kontakt International Theatre Festival in Poland in 1993.
The graduates of Fomenko’s 1993 class formed the nucleus of the young company, which would be joined by the master’s students on two further occasions.
What emerged was a theatre that combined a passion for exploration and experiment with the traditions of the Russian repertory stage. Working with the Workshop’s ensemble, different directors have brought their visions to life, explored challenging theatrical spaces and embraced a wide range of styles. Productions created during the Workshop’s “official” existence include work by Pyotr Fomenko himself and by his colleagues and pupils, notably Yevgeny Kamenkovich, Sergei Zhenovach and Ivan Popovski, among others.
Another essential goal was to keep the actors growing. Never to let the soul grow hard. Never to be swallowed up by everyday routine. Never to stop learning. Never to be afraid of looking back, or to stop moving forward… These are some of the principles by which the theatre continues to live more than thirty years later.
A natural extension of this philosophy was the creation of the theatre’s first trainee ensemble in the spring of 2007. Over three years, its actors and directors were able to hone their craft, experiment, make mistakes and develop their own theatrical ideas within the Workshop. In 2010, most of the trainees joined the permanent company, and audiences saw their first productions: A Tale of the Ardennes Forest, by Yuly Kim after Shakespeare, directed by Pyotr Fomenko (2009); Ryzhy, based on poems by the Yekaterinburg poet Boris Ryzhy (directed by Yuri Butorin, with Yevgeny Kamenkovich as supervising director, 2010); and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, based on Lewis Carroll and directed by Ivan Popovski.
A second group of trainees was recruited in 2010. Three seasons later, almost all had joined the company. While still in training, they created A Russian Man at a Rendezvous (supervised by Yevgeny Kamenkovich, 2011), which immediately entered the repertoire.
Today, the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop has a company of 65 actors.
For several years after its founding, the theatre had no permanent home. In 1997, the Moscow Government assigned it premises formerly occupied by the Kiev cinema at 30/32 Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Following renovation and reconstruction, the building officially opened on 13 January 2000, the eve of the Old New Year. Yet its two small, cramped auditoriums could not fully accommodate the artistic ambitions of the Workshop’s directors. The Moscow Government therefore decided to build a new theatre equipped to meet contemporary technical standards.
In 2004, months of collaboration between Sergei Gnedovsky’s architectural studio, PNKB Architecture and Cultural Policy, and the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop produced an exceptional design for a new theatre building. In 2005, the project received the prestigious Golden Section architectural award for Best Building Design. After several years of construction, the theatre celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in 2008 in its new home on Taras Shevchenko Embankment, directly opposite the entrance to the old building.
On 9 August 2012, Pyotr Fomenko, the Master and Teacher, passed away. The company proposed Yevgeny Kamenkovich, their teacher and one of the theatre’s founders, as its new Artistic Director. The appointment was endorsed by the Moscow Department of Culture, the theatre’s founding authority. Since 2001, the theatre has been led administratively by Andrei Vorobyov, who was also instrumental in its creation.
The theatre’s traditions, both artistic and human, live on uninterrupted. Today, our repertoire comprises 56 productions.
First and foremost are works directed by Pyotr Fomenko: Wolves and Sheep by Alexander Ostrovsky (1992); One Absolutely Happy Village, based on Boris Vakhtin (2000); adaptations of Leo Tolstoy’s prose, Family Happiness (2000) and War and Peace: The Beginning of the Novel (2001); He Was a Titular Councillor, based on Gogol’s Diary of a Madman (2004); Without a Dowry by Ostrovsky (2008); A Tale of the Ardennes Forest by Yuly Kim (2009); Triptych, based on works by Alexander Pushkin (2009); A Theatrical Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (co-directed with Kirill Pirogov, 2012); The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux (2003, revived by Kirill Pirogov in 2013); and Egyptian Nights, based on Pushkin and Valery Bryusov (2002, revived in 2018).
Other directors’ work includes The Most Important Thing, based on Mikhail Shishkin’s novel Maidenhair (2006); King Lear by Shakespeare (2019); Doctor Zhivago, based on Boris Pasternak (2021); Those Who Await the Movement of Water, based on Nikolai Leskov (2022); An Utterly Incredible Event (Marriage in Two Acts) by Gogol (2024); Arcadia; Four Days in the 25th Frame by Olga Mukhina (2025); and Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (2026)—all directed by Yevgeny Kamenkovich; Alice Through the Looking-Glass, based on Lewis Carroll (2010), A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare (2015), The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (2023), and The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky (2026) — directed by Ivan Popovski; The Testament of Charles Addams, or The House of Seven Hanged Men (2019), directed by Oleg Glushkov; Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht (2016), directed by Kirill Vytoptov; Seryozha Is Very Stupid by Dmitry Danilov (2018), directed by Alexey Kuzmin-Tarasov; Dangerous Liaisons (2022), directed by Yegor Peregudov; and The Old Man and the Sea (2025), directed by Ivan Shalayev.
Members of the company also regularly direct productions themselves: Polina Agureyeva (The Living and the Dead: Soldiers Are Not Born, based on Konstantin Simonov, 2023; About Love (Five Poods of Love, 22 Misfortunes, 33 Hysterics), based on Anton Chekhov, 2026); Polina Ayrapetova (Riverside Country, based on Rune Belsvik, 2025); Yuri Butorin (Ryzhy, based on poems by Boris Ryzhy, 2010); Mikhail Krylov (Ruslan and Lyudmila, based on Pushkin, 2014; The School for Wives by Molière, 2015; Bright Souls, or How to Write a Story, based on Vasily Shukshin, 2024); Fyodor Malyshev (A Ridiculous Man, based on Dostoevsky, 2015; …Souls, based on Gogol, 2017; The Knight. Mozart. The Feast., based on Pushkin, 2022; Mayakovsky. Listen!, based on poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 2023; The New Year Adventures of Masha and Vitya, based on the film of the same name, 2023); Kirill Pirogov (The Seagull); Dmitry Rudkov (The Egyptian Stamp); and Yuri Titov (Last Encounters, based on Ivan Bunin; My Brel, 2022; The Gift, based on Guy de Maupassant, 2023; The Divine Comedy: Variations, based on Dante Alighieri, 2024; and From Mooing to Music, 2026).
In 2013, the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop introduced an experimental strand of its artistic life. For more than a decade, the theatre has held evenings of “trial and error,” during which actors and directors present their independent explorations of literary works to fellow company members. Some of these experiments have grown into full productions and entered the Workshop’s repertoire.
Over the course of its history, the theatre has created 108 productions.
Productions born at the Workshop have repeatedly received major theatre awards: the Stanislavsky Prize for One Absolutely Happy Village (2000); the Golden Mask National Theatre Award for One Absolutely Happy Village (2001), War and Peace (2002), Three Sisters (2006), The Most Important Thing (2007), Triptych (2011), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016) and Mozart’s Don Giovanni: Dress Rehearsal (2022); and the independent Crystal Turandot Theatre Award for Three Sisters (2005) and The Most Important Thing (2008). The theatre’s productions have also repeatedly won the Seagull and Nail of the Season awards, as well as prizes at international theatre festivals.
Over the years, the Workshop’s productions have taken part in numerous Russian and international theatre festivals: the Golden Mask (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2016, 2022); the International Chekhov Festival (1998, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011); the Christmas Festival in Novosibirsk (1997, 2001); Voices of History in Vologda (2001, 2005); the Chersonesus Games in Sevastopol (1993); Kontakt in Poland (1993, 1996); the Venice Biennale (1995); the Avignon Festival (1997); BITEF in Belgrade (1997, 2004); the Bonn Theatre Biennale (1997); the Paris Autumn Festival (1998, 2002, 2003) and the Madrid Autumn Festival (2002, 2003, 2006); a festival at Lincoln Center in New York (2004); the international theatre festival in Zagreb (2004, 2007); Russkij Festival in Rome (2004); Europalia.Russia, the Russian culture festival in Belgium (2005); the European Culture Days in Karlsruhe, Germany (2006); the Ibero-American Theatre Festival in Bogotá, Colombia (2006); and the International Arts Festival in Greece (2007). The company has also toured extensively and successfully throughout Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Europe, Latin America, the United States, China, Israel and Japan.
The theatre continues to evolve, opening up new areas of activity. In spring 2016, the Workshop began offering children’s lectures on theatre history under the title A Journey Through Theatre History, presented by theatre scholar and staff member Anastasia Sergeyeva. In 2026, she also launched a theatre-themed quiz called A Workshop of Questions.
The Pyotr Fomenko Workshop has a passion for fine music and frequently welcomes guest musicians to its stage. Performers have included Lucas Debargue, Boris Berezovsky, Nikita Borisoglebsky, Yelena Kamburova, Yevgeny Margulis, Irina Bogushevskaya, Valery Syutkin, Varvara Vizbor, Yuly Kim, Sergei and Tatyana Nikitin, and many others. Each season brings new discoveries for the theatre’s audiences.
The company’s own actors also frequently present musical programmes. Music Beyond the Desk, an evening devised by actor and composer Nikolai Orlovsky, has become a regular feature. The theatre’s foyer also hosts informal musical gatherings under the title Foyer for You.
Exhibitions of painting, photography, sculpture, costume design and other art forms in the foyer of the Workshop’s New Stage have become an integral part of its creative life. Over the years, the theatre has exhibited works by distinguished artists including Boris Zaborov, Tatyana Selvinskaya, Yuri Kuper, Viktor Sentsov, Mikhail Guterman, Erik Bulatov, Yekaterina Golitsyna, Mikhail Dronov, Andrei Volkov, Yelena Grabovskaya, Francisco Infante and Nonna Goryunova, among many others.