The Fomenko Workshop’s New Stage: How the Riverbank Slope Became Part of the Theatre

The New Stage of the Fomenko Workshop is built into the high bank of the Moskva River. Architect Sergei Gnedovsky and his design team used the change in ground level as the basis for the layout: the theatre was kept low on the side facing the residential buildings, while beyond the entrance they placed a foyer that descends towards the auditoriums across several levels. The audience’s route through the theatre thus helps them understand the building’s layout even before the performance begins.

The design was completed in 2004, and on 5 January 2008 the Large Auditorium hosted the premiere of Without a Dowry directed by Pyotr Fomenko. The published architectural description, Gnedovsky’s explanations and the production pages help distinguish the building’s capabilities from the specific ways in which it is used.

Why did the theatre need a new building?

The old premises no longer met the company’s needs. The theatre’s history states that in 1997 the Workshop was given the former Kiev cinema at 30/32 Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Following refurbishment, it opened on 13 January 2000, but its two small auditoriums limited what directors could do. The new building for the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop was a response to the needs of an established company.

The company’s story began with a class admitted to GITIS in July 1988; the theatre was officially founded on 27 July 1993. These two dates are important to understanding the architects’ brief: the new building was designed for a working company with an established approach to performance. According to the official history, collaboration between Gnedovsky’s architectural practice and the Workshop led to the 2004 design. In 2008, the company celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in its new home opposite the old one.

In describing the project, Archi.ru credits a team from the practice Architecture and Cultural Policy PNKB rather than a single architect: Sergei Gnedovsky led the work of M. M. Gavrilova, M. Yu. Krylov, I. S. Zakharov and O. B. Barsukova. This distinction matters: the layout of the two auditoriums, public areas and technical spaces was the result of collaborative design and discussions with the theatre. The same account also identifies two initial briefs, which defined the building’s total floor area and the requirements for theatre equipment and building services.

The company members involved in developing the plan are also known. In a 2016 interview the theatre’s director Andrei Vorobyov recalled that, over the course of a year, he, chief designer Vladimir Maksimov and head of production Konstantin Lebedev discussed the project with Gnedovsky many times. According to Vorobyov, the company’s suggestions prompted the architect to return to the drawings and revise his decisions. This account allows a more precise understanding of authorship: the architects were responsible for the spatial design, while the building’s future users set out their requirements in detail.

Among the company’s wishes, Vorobyov listed clear navigation through the public and backstage areas, a stage that could be reconfigured, space for exhibitions and concerts, and visitor comfort. The wish to avoid internal ‘traps’ is especially important in a building whose floors follow the terrain: complex geometry alone does not make a route easy to navigate. Wide staircases and a lift linking the levels therefore helped connect the different elevations. This describes a design intention, rather than a guarantee that every visitor will find every door without guidance.

In a 2009 conversation Gnedovsky spoke separately about his evening conversations with Pyotr Fomenko. He recalled that these meetings established the building’s scale and artistic principles. For the director, the theatre was a workshop for varied and sometimes unpredictable productions; such a programme required a stage that could adapt to each production. The conversations with Fomenko and working discussions with the company’s staff describe two sides of the same process: the overall vision and the practical requirements.

The company settled into the completed building gradually. According to the theatre’s history, the old premises opened after refurbishment in 2000; the New Stage welcomed audiences in early 2008. Ogonyok’s report on the building was published on 20 January 2008, around the time of the premiere of Without a Dowry. The Workshop also retained its old auditoriums. This proximity is important to the architectural concept: the entrances of the two buildings face one another, and performance spaces of different sizes remained part of a single theatre.

One of the early productions in the Large Auditorium was Pyotr Fomenko’s Without a Dowry: the official production page gives the premiere date as 5 January 2008 and the venue as ‘New Stage, Large Auditorium’. This is more precise than the general statement that ‘the theatre opened in 2008’: the record confirms that the main auditorium was already in use at the beginning of the year. The Workshop’s fifteenth anniversary, mentioned in its historical account, fell in the same year.

Why does the New Stage look low from the street?

The New Stage at 29 Tarasa Shevchenko Embankment presents a low façade towards the nearby residential building. The project description specifies a height of 6.9 metres on the road side: the architects sought to keep the building in scale with the neighbouring residential block’s non-residential ground floor. Yet the design provides a total floor area of 10,600 sq m, including two auditoriums, rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms and technical spaces. The main volume was set into the slope and oriented towards the Moskva River. The theatre therefore appears low from the street, while its multi-storey section reveals itself from the water.

The site had previously been considered for an entirely different use. In a 2022 interview with the district newspaper Gnedovsky recalled the original proposal for a garage for 250 cars. According to his account, residents of the neighbouring building fought to preserve the slope and, during discussions about the theatre, pressed for a height limit to retain their view of the river. This recollection explains why the maximum height on the residential side was a fundamental condition rather than an incidental feature of the façade. In the published design, this request became a specific dimension: 6.9 metres above road level.

Different publications give different figures for the height. The project description specifies 6.9 metres on the road side; the 2022 article gives 6 metres on the residential side and 12 metres on the river side. These figures refer to different reference points. The sources do not describe a common measurement method, so they cannot be used to calculate the exact difference in height between the façades. The building’s geometry itself offers a more reliable guide: a low edge beside the residential buildings and a volume that opens towards the water as the bank slopes down.

This solution amounts to more than a striking silhouette. The design placed technical spaces and a two-level car park on the lower levels, while the entrance remained at street level, opposite the old theatre. The nearby housing, road and slope both limited the height and determined how the building’s functions were distributed. Gnedovsky, in an account of his architectural practice explained that integrating the theatre into both the high riverbank and the surrounding residential development was fundamental to the design team. He also specifically mentioned protecting the interior spaces from the noise of major roads.

The published project description records the height of 6.9 metres, the distribution of technical spaces and the intention to plant the roof. On the theatre’s panoramas page viewpoints are listed by the entrance, on the way down the slope and from the embankment. These views help compare the low profile beside the residential buildings with the façade facing the river.

The major road also influenced the composition. In a talk published in 2017, Gnedovsky said that solid walls provided protection from noise; in the 2009 conversation, he linked this decision to the busy road nearby. The river façade serves a different purpose: here, the design opens up views from the public areas and the Small Auditorium. The contrast between open and closed sections responds to the theatre’s immediate surroundings, so it is better understood through the building’s orientation than through an arbitrary stylistic label.

The challenging slope also required a structural solution. In January 2008, an Ogonyok correspondent recorded Gnedovsky’s explanation: the building was set on two terraces, with a load-bearing double wall between them. This is the architect’s account during a tour of the completed theatre, rather than a published structural calculation; it explains the principle without replacing engineering documentation. The double wall distributed loads on the slope. Separately, Gnedovsky linked the tiered foyer’s layout to the 7.5-metre difference in level between the cloakroom and the auditorium.

The roof formed part of the solution for keeping the street profile low. The design proposed a lawn and flower garden on a usable roof; the 2022 article describes a grass lawn already covering around 1,500 square metres of the roof. These accounts refer to different moments: the original intention and the condition observed many years later. For the neighbouring residential building, what matters is the idea of a planted upper surface in place of a tall volume housing technical equipment facing its windows.

How did the riverbank’s change in level shape the audience’s route?

Audience members gradually descend from the cloakroom towards the auditoriums. According to Gnedovsky, the difference in level was 7.5 metres; this was what suggested the tiered foyer. The descent was not hidden away in a service corridor. It became part of a shared space with staircases, balconies and a succession of views into the theatre and out to its surroundings.

Gnedovsky described this approach as an unexpected variation on the familiar theatre entrance. In the January 2008 report, he compared the descent into the New Stage with the traditional grand staircase that takes audiences up to the auditorium. Here, the route led down to auditorium level. The architect explained that along the way he had introduced elements of stage equipment into the foyer: lighting fixtures, fly bars and catwalks. The theatrical atmosphere was therefore created by more than columns or stylised balconies: part of the stage’s technical language was brought into the public space.

The design layout makes it possible to trace this route more precisely. The entrance area and cloakroom were at the top; the intermediate level housed the Main Auditorium foyer. Below were the winter garden, with a shape reminiscent of an amphitheatre, followed by the Small Auditorium seating area, refreshment bars and museum. At the understage level, beneath the foyer, the architects provided space for technical services, a small recording studio and storage rooms. Broad staircases connected the tiers, while a lift provided access between levels. This list matters because it reveals the purpose of each descent: visitors pass through a sequence of places where they can pause and look across to other parts of the building.

There were two ways to move between the tiers. In the design, the lift connected every level of the foyer and continued down to the garage. The stairs offered a route through balconies and viewing platforms, while the lift allowed visitors to move between levels without following that route. A 2004 publication specifically states that this provision was also intended for wheelchair users. This documents the connections between levels envisaged in the design; current accessibility arrangements for a particular performance should be checked in the visitor information.

The theatre’s official virtual panorama page lists the upper foyer by the entrance, the lower foyer by the passage to the stalls, and the auditoriums separately. Viewing the images requires the obsolete Adobe Flash Player, but the list of viewpoints makes it possible to trace how the audience’s route is divided between levels.

Why did Gnedovsky call the foyer a ‘theatre of the audience’?

The audience areas are arranged across several tiers so that people can see one another from different levels and linger between them. Gnedovsky called the foyer a ‘theatre of the audience’: the architect distinguished the performance space, comprising the stage and auditorium, from the audience’s space, which he understood to include the foyers, entrance halls, façades and surrounding urban environment. In this way, the approach to the auditorium and the movement of visitors became part of the architectural concept.

The idea of a ‘theatre of the audience’ had a history in Gnedovsky’s work. In a 2017 lecture, he explained that he had worked on the architecture and scenographic arrangement of small theatre auditoriums and had spent almost nine years at Giproteatr, where he led experimental design and modelling. His colleagues explored how audience areas could serve social functions beyond supporting a performance. At the New Stage, these ideas took physical form: the foyer became a space with its own geometry, and one of its boundaries incorporated a movable connection to the stage.

The architect associated the tiers with forms drawn from ancient, Shakespearean and Baroque theatre. In the design description, the winter garden resembles an amphitheatre in shape. The Main Auditorium has stalls and boxes. The architects used recognisable forms from different periods to make movement between levels part of the theatrical experience.

Gnedovsky identified specific elements of the ‘theatre of the audience’: balconies, box-like cloakroom bays and the marble atrium in the foyer. The architect’s account of the project records these details; they cannot tell us how every visitor experiences the building. Their arrangement does, however, show how the architects organised the route to the auditoriums through platforms visible from different levels.

Did the foyer remain simply a place to wait?

The New Stage foyer is indeed used as a performance space in its own right. The official page for the production ‘The Knight. Mozart. The Feast.’ specifies the foyer as the venue and gives the premiere date as 12 October 2022. The theatre describes how the actors perform among the audience, while the attendance rules explain special entry arrangements because the action also extends into the circulation area. This is a concrete example of a public level becoming a stage, although the production itself does not prove that every mechanism envisaged in the design is used in every staging.

This choice also has spatial implications for the audience. The familiar division between waiting and watching becomes less distinct: a place where people usually pass on their way to their seats or talk before the start becomes part of the performance space. The theatre therefore controls when the audience is admitted. This production demonstrates a practical possibility offered by the building: the audience foyer becomes a place of action when a production makes use of its space.

How did the Small Auditorium and foyer work together in ‘Triptych’?

Pyotr Fomenko’s ‘Triptych’ provides an early, verifiable example of the two spaces being combined. The production’s official page gives the premiere date as 2 December 2009; the theatre explicitly describes the venue as a single space combining the Small Auditorium and the audience foyer. Pushkin’s ‘Count Nulin’, ‘The Stone Guest’ and ‘A Scene from Faust’ formed the basis of the stage composition. The source confirms that the spaces were combined, rather than documenting the precise route taken by every actor or audience member at each performance.

From an architectural perspective, it matters that the theatre describes the three parts of ‘Triptych’ as distinct in genre and style. Combining the spaces allows a single production to change the character of its action in sequence, without confining it to a conventional stage. A cautious connection can be drawn here with Gnedovsky’s concept: the design included a sliding boundary between the auditorium and foyer, and the 2009 production did indeed use the space on both sides of that boundary. The production listing does not say exactly which mechanism was used in any particular scene.

In an interview published that same year, 2009, Gnedovsky recalled that Fomenko had been rehearsing a work for the auditorium and foyer before construction was even complete. It is tempting to link this to ‘Triptych’, but there is no direct documentary evidence here identifying the future Pushkin production as the work he meant. It is more reliable to consider two established facts side by side: the director explored the possibility of a shared performance space in advance, and after the opening he created a production in the combined space. Keeping these facts distinct preserves the chronology without attributing an unproven plan to Fomenko.

Fyodor Malyshev’s later production, ‘The Knight. Mozart. The Feast.’, takes a different approach. Its listing identifies the audience level as a performance space in its own right, rather than a space combined with the Small Auditorium. Comparing the two productions reveals the range of uses the architecture allows: in 2009, the auditorium and foyer worked together; in 2022, the actors performed in the foyer separately from the auditorium. This distinction tells us more than a general reference to ‘adaptability’: different productions chose different relationships between the stage and the audience’s space.

In July 2026, according to the theatre, the winter garden hosted the exhibition ‘The Detgiz Carousel’; a meeting with its curator, Vladimir Brovkin, was scheduled for 15 July. In February, the opening of ‘Kapustnik’, an exhibition of ceramics by actor Ambartsum Kabanyan, was also announced there. These details confirm that the lower audience level is used for an exhibition programme, although the announcements alone do not prove that every meeting took place.

A theatrical work and an exhibition use the foyer in different ways. For a performance, what matters is the relative positioning of actors and audience, the entrance, and the ability to stage action in a circulation space. An exhibition calls for longer visits and its own viewing rhythm. What they share is the architect’s decision to make the space outside the auditoriums more than a corridor. This is where the idea of a ‘theatre of the audience’ can be tested against the theatre’s activities years after its opening.

How do the Main and Small Auditoriums carry the architectural idea forward?

The two auditoriums serve different purposes. In the project description, the Main Auditorium seats 450 and retains the familiar elements of a classical theatre: stalls, boxes and tiered amphitheatre seating. Its forestage was designed to be reconfigured: one arrangement allows an orchestra pit in front of it, while another extends the performance area towards the audience. The seating capacity and stage capabilities given here are specifications from the published design, rather than the current seating plan used for ticket sales.

A report from a tour of the building in January 2008 helps convey the extent to which the Main Auditorium could be reconfigured when it opened. The correspondent wrote that the first three rows could be removed to create an orchestra pit or rearranged to enlarge the performance area; in one configuration, the action extended towards the amphitheatre seating. This is evidence of the new auditorium’s capabilities, rather than a description of every subsequent production. It clarifies that ‘classical’ refers to the arrangement of the auditorium, rather than a fixed layout for the entire performance space.

The design gives the Small Experimental Auditorium a capacity of 100–150 seats. Its two tiers allow the audience or the action to be placed at different heights. Lifting mechanisms and an overhead crane serve the staging itself, while vertical wooden panels allow the auditorium’s proportions to be changed. The architect’s description speaks of opening up the space towards the Moskva River and the panorama of the business district. In a 2009 interview, Gnedovsky clarified that the auditorium wall facing the water is glazed: this concerns possibilities for views and staging, rather than documented evidence of the façade opening to the outside air.

In January 2008, an Ogonyok correspondent saw the Small Auditorium as a dark space with a panoramic window, where sliding panels could screen off the river view and a section of amphitheatre seating. This visit adds to the project description: the panels change both the width of the performance area and the production’s relationship with the backdrop beyond the glass. When they are closed, the audience focuses on the black interior; when open, the river and Moscow City may enter the field of view. These are different staging possibilities within a single room, rather than a permanent view from an audience seat.

The project compared the dimensions of the new Small Auditorium with the theatre’s previous stage, while highlighting the new mechanisms and two tiers. This comparison matters: the venue did more than increase seating capacity. It retained an intimate scale while allowing the audience’s position and the direction of the action to change. The Main Auditorium serves productions requiring a traditional, large audience space; the Small Auditorium offers directors a more flexible spatial arrangement. Both solutions grew out of the differing needs of a single company.

Which boundaries can actually be changed in the Small Auditorium?

It is easy to confuse two different features in descriptions of the New Stage. Vertical wooden panels operate within the Small Auditorium: they alter its proportions and block or reveal the view towards the glazed riverside wall. A tall sliding wall separates the auditorium from the foyer and allows the two spaces to be combined. The first feature controls the boundaries of the performance area and the view; the second extends the action into a space normally reserved for the audience.

Two primary-source accounts confirm the distinction. The project description on Archi.ru first discusses the Small Auditorium’s two tiers and wooden panels, then separately identifies its connection to the foyer through a tall sliding wall. In an interview with the magazine 60th Parallel, Gnedovsky describes the glazing on the river side. Neither source says that the entire external wall slides away to turn the theatre into an outdoor stage. The phrase ‘open the auditorium towards the river’ should therefore be understood as a change to an internal boundary and to the visual connection with the city.

In 2009, Gnedovsky said that, even before construction was complete, the company had been rehearsing a future work in spaces similar in size to the New Stage. According to him, Pyotr Fomenko had begun preparing a production intended to use both the auditorium and the foyer. The source records an intention and a rehearsal process, but without further verification it does not allow us to identify the production or claim that its final form precisely matched the original plan. This distinction matters when discussing the architecture: the design was being tested through theatrical practice even before the move.

What changes when the theatre is viewed from the river?

From the embankment, it becomes clearer where the building’s bulk, concealed from the residential buildings, has gone. From above, the New Stage presents a low entrance façade, while the river side reveals the lower levels reached by descending through the interior. This contrast explains the building’s layout more clearly than any individual decorative feature.

The river-facing façade has an extended structure of its own. A 2022 description identifies seven storeys on the water side and open galleries running along four levels, with a combined length of 180 metres; a metal staircase connects the levels. These details help explain why the low roofline beside the residential building does not mean a small interior volume. The theatre unfolds down the slope, revealing a different height where the terrain allows. The galleries are part of the building’s design; the publication provides no basis for promising visitors unrestricted access to them.

The Old and New Stages are linked even by colour. An Ogonyok correspondent recorded Gnedovsky’s explanation of the terracotta colour of the Small Hall’s outer walls: the architects matched it to the tone of the foyer in the previous building. He recalled that Pyotr Fomenko initially felt the shade was not quite right, after which it was checked against a sample at the Old Stage. This is a small but telling detail of the design process. The theatre did more than acquire an adjoining building: the architects sought a tangible sign of continuity between the spaces.

On the side wall of the New Stage is an artwork by the sculptor Andrey Krasulin, ‘Stairway to Heaven’; it is mentioned in a 2022 publication, while the Zodchestvo festival catalogue lists Krasulin among the project participants. The sculpture adds a vertical motif to the exterior of a building whose design centres on downward movement. This comparison is an editorial observation, rather than a meaning the creators explicitly attributed to the composition; the published text links the artwork itself to the theme of creative exploration.

The connection with the river also runs through the layout of the Small Hall: its adaptable space faces the water and the Moscow City skyline. The view through the window depends on the glazing and the position of the internal panels; it does not imply a stage open to the outdoors or unrestricted access to the hall. From public pedestrian areas, the building’s form can be read from the outside; its internal arrangement is documented in the published design and the architect’s account. These are different levels of observation, and together they offer a fuller picture.

The building also received a measured professional appraisal. In 2008, architectural critic Yulia Tarabarina wrote that it was difficult to find fault with the building, but questioned whether it was the most outstanding work in that competition period. The critic compared its forms to late Soviet modernism. This was Tarabarina’s personal assessment; that same year, the Zodchestvo jury awarded the building the ‘Crystal Daedalus’.

The awards relate to two stages of the architects’ work. The Golden Section award recognised the 2004 design: the award archive dates the award to 21 October 2005; the theatre’s history also gives 2005. The Ogonyok report gives 2006; the dated list of winners confirms 2005. Following its completion, in 2008 the building received the ‘Crystal Daedalus’ at the Zodchestvo festival, while the exhibition competition results list the theatre among the buildings awarded a gold diploma.

How can you assess the central design idea by looking at the building?

The architecture of the Fomenko Workshop Theatre becomes clearer through three comparisons. First, compare the low profile of the street façade with the building’s volume as it opens towards the Moskva River: this reveals the change in height that the architects coordinated with the neighbouring buildings. Next, relate the visible slope of the riverbank to the stairs and tiers of the audience areas shown in the published design plan and the official panoramic views. Finally, compare the Small Hall’s design possibilities with specific productions for which the theatre itself identifies the foyer as the performance space.

Each observation has its limits. From outside, you can assess how the building sits on its site, but cannot verify the current position of the internal panels. The project page shows the arrangement envisaged by the architects, but does not provide an up-to-date plan of how the building operates. The programme confirms the venue for a production, but does not list every configuration of the sliding walls. Reading this evidence together reveals more than any single source: the terrain explains the form, the architectural description explains the audience’s route, and the production history shows how the theatre has used some of the architectural possibilities.

The design decisions for the Fomenko Workshop Theatre’s New Stage follow a coherent sequence: the architects kept the building low beside the residential block, set the main spaces into the slope, linked the audience levels through the foyer and provided a movable boundary for the Small Hall. The descent from the entrance to your seat therefore helps you understand the building’s layout even before the performance.

The route the ‘Poklon City’ tour links Poklonnaya Hill with Moscow City and includes the Fomenko Workshop Theatre. From outside, you can compare the building with the riverbank and neighbouring buildings; the published project description reveals the layout of the foyer and halls.

Sources

1. The Pyotr Fomenko Workshop — A History of the Theatre
2. The P. Fomenko Workshop Studio Theatre — Project Description
3. Sergey Gnedovsky. Design Approaches
4. The Pyotr Fomenko Workshop — A Virtual Tour
5. Results of the Zodchestvo 2008 Architecture Competition
6. ‘The Architecture of Spectacle’ — A Conversation with Sergey Gnedovsky, 2009
7. Andrey Vorobyov on Designing the New Stage
8. ‘Fomenko City’ — A Report on the Theatre’s Opening, 2008
9. Sergey Gnedovsky on the Building by the River, 2022
10. ‘The Knight. Mozart. The Feast.’ — the performance space in the New Stage foyer
11. Fomenko Workshop news for 2026
12. Yulia Tarabarina on the theatre building at ‘Zodchestvo 2008’
13. ‘Triptych’ — production page on the Fomenko Workshop website
14. ‘Without a Dowry’ — production page on the Fomenko Workshop website
15. ‘Poklon City’ — tour itinerary
16. ‘Golden Section 2005’ award archive
17. Pyotr Fomenko Workshop — visitor guidelines and New Stage address