Saint-Petersburg Theater Laboratory was found in Saint-Petersburg, Russia in 1984. Nowadays the object of the Theater Laboratory's activity is experimental research in the dramatic field: in particular, Antonin Artaud's Theater of Cruelty.
Vadim Maksimov, with a doctorate in art, is a founder and the dramatic director of the Theater Laboratory. He is professor at St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, expert in French theater, especially Artaud, the French theoretician, philosopher and playwright of the 1920s and 1930s.
The Theater Laboratory's actors undergo a specialized training which has been developed over the past 8 years. It includes the Oriental practice of psychological self-regulation. The training is based on Artaud's idea of the human body's "energy centers". Each center contains a set of senses and can find expression in the form of plastic motion and voice. The training helps the actor escape from the masks imposed by everyday life.
The main principle of the Theater Laboratory's performances is a rhythmic and psychoenergetic act of organization, an integration of voice, gesture and word into a unified impulse, which has a profound affect on the audience's perceptions.
To the present the Theater Laboratory has produced some twenty plays, including world classics (Sophocles' Antigone, Oscar Wilde's Salome, August Strindberg's A Dream Play, Euripides'/I. Brodsky's Medea), as well as modern European dramaturgical efforts (Fosse/Frostenson/Fragments, Milorad Pavic's Party).
Some of the plays have never been performed in Russia before (Igor Terentiev's Iordano Bruno, Antonin Artaud's Samurai or ..., Dzeami Motokie's Kagekie, Jean Genet's Elle and William Butler Yeats' The Only Jealousy of Emer).