Repertoire of the Masterskaya Theatre

Aleksandr Ostrovsky
Dreams of Love, or the Marriage of Balzaminov
A comedy in two acts
based on the play
"Whatever You Go For, You’ll Find"
Director: Grigory Kozlov

Boris Vasiliev
The Dawns Here
are Quiet
A drama in two acts
Director and playwright:
Polina Nevedomskaya

William Shakespeare
Once Upon a Time in Elsinore. Hamlet
A tragifarce in two acts
Based on William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” in B. Pasternak’s translation
Director: Roman Gabria

The Brothers Grimm
A Tale
of a Fisherman,
his Wife and a Fish
An old-time story with transformations
Director: Larisa Markina
A. N. Ostrovsky’s comedy Whatever You Go For, You’ll Find, which is the basis of our production of Dreams of Love, or The Mariage of Balzaminov, is well-known among audiences. Our theatre offers a new and original take on Misha Balzaminov’s tragicomic search for a rich bride. “The production turned out to be poetic and very intimate, although the comedic elements are also very expressed… But through that farce shines an inexplicable lyric poetry.” (Inna Sklyarevskaya)
The lyrical comedy The Elder Son is one of the most popular and demanded plays of the contemporary theatre. In the Masterskaya’s production, it receives a new meaning and new sound. “The Elder Son is usually performed as a drama of ideas or as a melodrama about loneliness. Kozlov leads his students on a path more familiar to him – comedy. And his comedy solves complex problems of existence not because it’s shallow, but because its essence is to welcome life with open arms, to rejoice in it as a miracle…” (Elena Gorfunkel)
Besides Grigory Kozlov’s productions, the theatre’s repertoire also boasts productions staged by his students, young directors of Saint Petersburg.
A Gentle Creature (directed by Andrei Gavryushkin) is staged and acted in the best traditions of psychological theatre. It received the Best Actor award at the XV International Festival of Chamber Productions of F. M. Dostoyevsky’s Work.
The drama The Dawns Here Are Quiet in Polina Nevedomskaya’s staging is, first and foremost, a story about how “the face of war is not female.” “In this idiotic world order, men contrive their meaningless, foolish and infantile fights in which for some reason young and wonderful women have to die.
Contemporary foreign drama is represented in our theatre’s repertoire by the productions of Ekaterina Gorokhovskaya (the teenage comedy At the Ark at Eight by Ulrich Hub), Ricardo Marin (the tragic clownery of Fando and Lis by the absurdist Fernando Arrabal), Liudmila Manonina (Brian Friel’s tragicomedy Afterplay, which won awards for Best Directing Debut and Best Male Role at the XVI International Christmas Parade Festival). All of these plays, well-known to western audiences, are presented in Saint Petersburg for the first time.