Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theater: A Ridiculous Man

Concertbutnotaconcert, running time: 1 h, prime November 2, 2015
Ticket price range 1000—7000 rub.

Author — Fyodor Dostoevsky
Concept and Direction — Fyodor Malyshev
Conductor — Polina Agureeva
Stage Design and Lighting Design — Vladislav Frolov
Costumes — Valeria Kurochkina
Music — Mikhail Volokh
Music — Anton Sergeev
Stage Manager — Olga Lopach

Trials and Errors is an experimental programme at the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theatre, where actors and directors explore new ideas, texts, and theatrical forms. The most successful productions become part of the theatre’s repertoire.

Upcoming Performances

December, 20, 20:00

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The style of the performance is defined as a “concertbutnotaconcert.” It contains a great deal of music, which lives and enters into conflicts with the hero, and even runs out of control. It twinkles like a dead small star, it creaks as might unoiled hinges. It tears around like a madman, from peasant dances to Tom Waits, drowning out the confession of this “ridiculous man.” It seems as if he was drawn by Brueghel — a grimacing cripple, a carnival fool, who unexpectedly emerges as the main character of a mystery play. This story of a soul that fell but was healed, this dream of a ridiculous hero, is played out as a nervous, irritable Brechtian Song the day before suicide is committed. Musical instruments, barely visible stairs, a ring of light (is it a half moon or the half barrel of a gun imagined by a feverish, sleepy mind?). This is Peter Brook’s “empty space.” A hero in outer space. A hero in the Void. Behind his closed eyes, as in the grave, nothing but darkness and his own emptiness. What will happen when he awakes?

[Stage director] Malyshev moves within the text of this fantastic story by Dostoevsky in the same way as the story’s protagonist does in the end — barefoot on broken glass. The shards of a broken wineglass are for the protagonist, exposed nerves are for the actor. “The Demons,” a music group concocted by Malyshev for this “concert-but-not-quite-concert”… sounds unassumingly ominous. There’s no conflict with Dostoyevsky, no attempt to clear some ground between oneself and the ridiculous man. This is voluntary self-torture, which is very Russian at its core. It would seem that the mysterious Russian soul cannot exist without suffering. And that means Dostoevsky.: Elena Smorodinova, Expert