Moscow

Nikolay Foregger Workshop (Mastfor)

1920-1924

The Nikolay Foregger Workshop (Mastfor) — a Moscow theatre organized in 1920 by the director and choreographer Nikolay Foregger. Foregger believed in the importance of scenic movement. At his studio, he taught students plastic, acrobatics, and rhyme. As well as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Foregger invented his teatrical-physical training (“thephystrainage”). Elements of the training could be used for any performance. The workshop gained popularity due to its satirical performances and parodies. The overall direction was experimental. Foregger employed the style of folk fair theatre, music-hall and circus performances. The stagings included clownery, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and pamphlets. At the workshop Foregger staged the famous buffoonery "A Good Attitude Towards Horses" (1921) by Vladimir Mayakovsky, a buffoonery-parade that reminded of French fair theatre and music-hall; “Guarantees of Ghent” by Vladimir Mass (1922). There were parodies of productions of the Moscow Art Theatre, the Bolshoi Theatre; Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, Kasian Goleizovsky, Isadora Duncan et al. Foggerer staged dances in “classic buffoonery” style: “The Black Swan”, “The Madness of Giselle”; sport dances. In “The Dance of the Machines” (1922), actors by means of dance and acrobatics depicted production processes as a symbol of socially useful labor; an orchestra imitated sounds of working mechanisms. This choreographic performance had a significant impact on dance, estrada, and cinema. The Workshop involved Osip Brik, Matvey Blanter, Sergei Eisenstein, Sergei Yutkevich. In 1924, the building of the Mastfor burned down by accident. After the fire, Foregger continued to direct performances at multiple stages. In our museum collection the Nikolay Foregger Workshop is represented by drawings, caricatures, sketches of costumes, and photos related to "A Good Attitude Towards Horses", "The Children Thief", “The Supernatural Son”, “The Mystery of the Canary Islands”, and other performances of the Mastfor.