P.B

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-212) and index.

An organisational history -- What's in a name -- Why Russia -- Retracing the name -- The skete -- From study to studio -- The studio in visual art: cobra, a collective vitality -- The studio in science: the Copenhagen spirit -- The studio in Russian theatre -- Creating a commune: the first studio's theatre-Obshchina -- Oases of curiosity: the holidays of Slava Polunin -- A new camaraderie in faith: the Theatre Art Studio -- For the sake of what: the studio as laboratory of communion -- -- From workshop to masterskaya -- The masterskaya in visual art: Rembrandt, the master as auteur -- The masterskaya in science: Thomas Edison and the contradictory positions of his -- The masterskaya in Russian theatre -- The visionary authority of Vsevolod Meyerhold -- I need them to fear me: Anatoli Vassiliev and the School of Dramatic Art -- The ecstasy of togetherness: the laboratory of Dmitry Krymov -- For the sake of what: the masterskaya as laboratory of authority -- The value of a theatre laboratory.

"The term 'theatre laboratory' has entered the regular lexicon of theatre artists, producers, scholars and critics alike. And yet, use of the term is far from unified, often operating as an catch-all for a web of intertwining practices, territories, pedagogies and ideologies. Russian theatre, however, has seen a clear emergence of laboratory practice that can be divided into two distinct organisational structures: the studio and the masterskaya (artisanal guild). By assessing these structures, Bryan Brown offers two archetypes of group organisation that can be applied across the arts and sciences, and reveals a complex history of the laboratory's characteristics and functions that support the term's use in theatre. This book's discursive, historical approach has been informed substantially by contemporary practice, through interviews with, and examinations of, practitioners including Slava Polunin, Anatoli Vassiliev, Sergei Zhenovach and Dmitry Krymov"--