Kirill Serebrennikov

Kirill Serebrennikov, born in Rostov-on-Don in 1969, is one of the international star directors of his generation. He works in all genres - theatre, opera, ballet, film and television. His theatre productions are regularly invited to international festivals, including the Wiener Festwochen, the Festival Internationale Neue Dramatik at the Schaubühne Berlin and the Avignon Theatre Festival. In 2017, he was awarded the European Theatre Prize for his production "New Realities". He has a particularly close working relationship with the Chekhov Artists' Theatre in Moscow, where he not only directed productions, but also served as deputy artistic director from 2011/2012 and led the acting and directing programme at the theatre school in 2012. Together with his students he founded the Seventh Studio, later part of the Gogol Centre in Moscow, which he headed as artistic director from 2012 to 2020. Under his direction, the Gogol Center Moscow established itself as Russia's leading avant-garde theatre and a versatile centre for international art exchange. In 2017, Serebrennikov was arrested for alleged embezzlement of funds and, after years of house arrest, was given a three-year suspended prison sentence in 2020. In 2020, he had to hand over the management of the Gogol Centre. Despite all the restrictions, Serebrennikov has remained artistically active and has brought out new productions that he has directed via digital communication, such as Nabucco at the Hamburg State Opera (2019), Decamerone at Deutsches Theater Berlin (2020) and Parsifal at the Vienna State Opera (2021). Kirill Serebrennikov's first theatre production that he himself has premiered in Western Europe was Anton Chekhov's The Black Monk at the Thalia Theatre. As the political situation worsened due to the Russian war against Ukraine, Kirill Serebrennikov protested against this war, left his country and currently lives in Germany. He is "Artist in Residence" at the Thalia Theatre and has brought two further productions to the stage there with Der Wij and BAROCCO.