Interstudio Logo
ACADEMY FOR THEATRICAL ARTS
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP -
THEATRE OF SYNTHESIS AND ANIMATION
Sankt-Petersburg / Puschkin ( Tsarskoe Selo)

was founded in St. Petersburg in 1990. In the same first year the first french-russian program for directors and actors took place.


Founders of INTERSTUDIO:

In 1993 the workshop got acknowledgement as an independant state institute.


International studio of the theater of synthesis and animation INTERSTUDIO

This studio was set up in 1990 at Tsarskoe Selo, former summer residence of the Russian tsars, not far from St. Petersburg, in the Zapasnoy (Vladimir) Palace. The theatre's system of synthesis and animation involves the creation of performances in which all the various components of theatrical language - voice, movement, gesture and mime, sound and light, scenery, props, objects, masks and music, verbal action and mise en scene - animating the spacial and time forms, are melted together in united world, synthesing into a new audio-visual text.

INTERSTUDIO is both a theatre and school, in which actors, directors and designers are trained for theatre of synthesis. Through the experience of this theatre a number of specific artistic forms have been identified, forms which are paratheatrical: performance and installation. There are two principles at INTERSTUDIO: performance moves beyond theatrical practice and disappears within in. The theatre nourishes performance and is itself fed by the new experience gained through performance.


Studio of paratheatrical forms

The Sobolev school
Founded in 1994 by artistic director of INTERSTUDIO, Jury Sobolev. This is the only school in Russia - and one but few in Europe - where people work directly with performance and installation as independent artistic forms. The studio programme also includes such disciplines as music, literature and visual arts as theatrical text; the symbol in culture; the symbolism and semiotics of space and time; stage design.

Method

For all the variety of art strategies in use, all the students' works have the same general characteristic: each performance by an artist in the Studio is an action, an important step in the author's fate, separating one stage in life from the next. The participants of the school concentrate mainly on representation within the borders of contemporary artistic language - at the junction of new genres and technologies. At the basis of the methodology of the creation of a work is an orientation on dialogue with oneself and at the same time on communication with the spectator. The most varied texts are looked at from the point of view of their artistic nature. Important characteristics of the work of artists from the Sobolev School are also synthesis and the mutual intertwining of different languages and strategies, whether contemporary visual art, or theatre and music, psychological and ritual practices from different cultures.


The teaching method

The education and teaching at the School is inseparable from life. Life is seen as the purpose of artistic action, in which each event, each object, are seen as aesthetic. Students and teachers are living and working together in a group. The group of artists exists as a collective of like-minded friends with the friendly and trusting atmosphere that implies, with all its group traditions and inner mythology. Students and teachers are not divided. They are in permanent dialogue with each other, studying together. The acceptance of new students for the Studio, their assessment on the basis of exams, is decided by all members of the group together. Important criteria in assessing their works are the level of openness and inner risk of the performance artist, his spontaneity and the archetypal nature and expression of selected forms. One necessary professional quality is deep understanding and development of one's personal problems, decentralisation. There is a continuity in the teaching, as former students go on to become teachers. Attention is mainly concentrated on developing a sense of responsiblity: everybody is responsible for himself and for his deeds.

The study process is build around the creation of final works. The student learns no abstract talents, he works on real projects, achieving the necessary result with the aid of tutors and other members of the group. Such an approach excludes the possibility of unreal "student" problems - the best installations and performances are presented for the judgement of proffesionals and audiences in galleries of contemporary art.

«To teach them the basics of their future profession, that is only one part of our work. For us it is important to develop all the countless layers which finally form the whole thing, together with the students. »Yuri Sobolev + Mikhail Khousid

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