School for Fools

Winner of High National Russian Theatre Award “Golden Mask” (prize of press), 2001, Best performance of St. Petersburg of 2000 "Golden Spot" Award. The performance School for fools was created under the same novel of the Russian writer Sasha Sokolov. The main character is the boy, a pupil of the special school for feeble-minded children who suffer by bifurcation of the person. He is one who can feel extremely the sharp beauty of the world, and is put in the cruel system of school-life. But the performance is far from politics and social problems. lt is a performance about love, freedom, beauty, a woman, a teacher.

The conflict and struggle of two contradictory worlds in one man and the same time, aspiration to find harmony, "having merged in a uniform act". Fear and simultaneous pleasure from a necessity to open a door in a dark room of memoirs; where the shadows of forgotten impressions and images are wandering. The time is confused.To be floating in a boat on a perfect river, to listen to a cuckoo and suddenly tum into a water lily not to belong anymore to a school or a house, hut to belong only to nature and to yourself.

Andrey Moguchy, director of the performance

"Good theatre is understandable without the words."

Formalny Theatre 's Actors can say and make everything and add to it something from themselves. They will never get lost in the tricks (they prefer to make them themselves carefully). They believe that the theatre is what is happening beside our back, when we try to understand the sense of the nonsense. They are sure that those who want to receive something from the theatre, whether sitting or standing in the even line chairs, deserve only the schools amateur concert. But they perform this concert with such a truth, that it seems that those who wait are satisfied...

Olga Abromovich, 3/7/1998

Andrej Mogučij (1961)

Graduated Leningrad Culture lnstitute (drama acting and directing department) in 1989. The same year he established an independent drama group "Formalny Theatre". In several years of this theatre's existence the unique system of drama improvisation was worked out. Every year this theatre participates in international festivals, taking place both in Russia and abroad. In years since 1995 the theatre performed in Germany, Denmark, Poland, Slovakia (The Festival Divadelna Nitra 1993), Slovenia, Holland, France, Great Britain, Finland, Romania, Hungary. In 1992 A. Moguchy participated as a director in the "RussianAmerican Theatre Project". In 1995 A. Moguchy was invited to teach in DIE ETAGE acting school (Berlin, Germany). He is speaking about his own work:

"The point of substantial actor is very important for me. And this is the starting point. Though it's often 1 am classified as a visionary and a formalist, who makes a performances from light, sound and actors in some abstract constructions. This is a husk indeed. There is only an essential actor is important, an individuality who can make his own actual expression. We are doing rehearsals and training only to free ourselves from our own aims and stereotypes and to make a consciousness slack One who has a slacked consciousness is able to make miracles. My purpose is to give an actor from the beginning such an impulse and to put him in such a circumstances he can grow something not being in a hurry. Just have to help and record this process, lead it to the strict constructed result... We speak with the audience on the associative language. We refuse a clear plot and try to influence the audience only by theatrical instruments, involving it to something incomprehensible and wake up its imagination."

about the production

creators

director

Materials available