"We are just sharing madness of love": Moscow "Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theater" performs in Ufa

The tour is part of the regional program of the Golden Mask festival, which Ufa hosts for the first time.

The artists of the Moscow "Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theater" presented their famous performance "A Midsummer Night's Dream" based on the comedy by William Shakespeare On the stage of the Bashkir Opera and Ballet Theater. It was staged in 2015 and won the Golden Mask 2016 National Theater Award in the Drama - Large Form Performance category.

The performance captivated thousands of spectators with its beauty and poetry, was shown in many cities of Russia and abroad. Tickets for the performance in Moscow were sold out several months before the performance itself; the same situation has developed in Ufa. There was a full house on the show's first evening; there is still a second performance ahead. At the same time, the number of seats in the stalls increased due to the dismantling of the orchestra pit.

"We are very unaccustomed to the fact that the hall can be one hundred percent full. In Moscow, it has long been 50, at best 70 percent. We are very nervous. We are trying to feel the people who come," the actor Kirill Pirogov admitted before the performance.

Director Ivan Popovski explained that the performance always turned out to be a little different - as it adapted to a specific audience, stage, and its capabilities.

 "We are very pleased to be in Ufa. You have a wonderful city. We missed Ufa. A fairly large number of years ago we worked here in the Russian Drama and the Tatar Theater "Nur", showed "War and Peace" and "Last Dates" by Bunin. On our next visit, we are settling in the third theater. You have a vibrant city, a wonderful theater and a perfect audience," theater director Andrey Vorobyov said.

The Golden Mask festival is being held for the first time in Ufa. It opened with a tour of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater, which presented a staging combining the performances of the legendary choreographers of our time - Akram Khan, Jiri Kilian, and Ohad Naharin.