Viktor Ryzhakov

Viktor Ryzhakov was born in the city of Khabarovsk in 1960. He studied at the Far Eastern College for the Arts, the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute, and the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, where he completed his doctorate. In 1995-2001, he served as the artistic director of the Kamchatka Drama and Comedy Theatre. In 2001, he began to work as a director and instructor at the academy of the Moscow Art Theatre (MKhAT), and in 2012 he was made head of department and recognized director of MKhAT. Together with playwright and director Ivan Vyrypaev, Rizakov launched the Oxygen (“Kislorod”) theatre movement, which exerted a strong influence on contemporary Russian theatre. He is the founder and director of the Five Evenings Theatre Festival in Memory of Alexander Volodin, which was launched in 2002 in Saint Petersburg. Since 2012, he has served as the artistic director of the Meyerhold Centre in Moscow. He has held courses on the art of the theatre in Germany, Poland, the United States, and Hungary. He has directed many award-winning productions in theatres in Russia and Europe. He has also won numerous awards at prominent European theatre festivals (the Grand Prize at the Kontakt International Theatre Festival in Toruń, the Golden Mask Award, the New Drama Festival Grand Prize, and the prize for best performance for his production of The Hairdresser at the National Theatre Meeting in Pécs, or POSZT). In 2011, he was awarded a Stanislavsky Award for his work as a theatre pedagogue, and in 2014 he was named one of Russia’s Artists of Merit.