Valery Fokin
Director
photo Valery Plotnikov
Valery Fokin (born 1946, Russia), after graduating from the Shchukin Theatre Institute at the Vakhtangov Theatre, worked at the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre for 15 years, where his each new production sparked keen interest among both audiences and critics. In 1985, Fokin took over the reins of Moscow’s Ermolova Theatre. His very first stagings turned the theatre into one of the most popular venues in the city. The media unanimously agreed that Fokin’s first production at the Ermolova Theatre, Speak..., marked the beginning of a new way of thinking for the theatre circles of Moscow. In 1975–1979, Fokin taught at GITIS. In 1993–1994, he worked at the PWST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków (Poland) and the Tokyo Toen Theatre (Japan). He also gave masterclasses as part of directing courses in Spain, Sweden and Bulgaria. In 1991, Fokin became general and artistic director the newly founded Meyerhold Centre (TMC). In 2010, the Russian president awarded him with the Order For Merit to the Fatherland.
As artistic director of the Alexandrinsky Theatre (Russian State Academic Drama Theatre named after Pushkin), Fokin produced A Hotel Room in City NN on the basis of Gogol’s writings, Kafka’s Transformation, Chekhov’s Tatyana Repina and Gogol’s Inspector General, earning wide acclaim from the Russian and international public. In his work, Fokin explores the most poignant and painful topics from Russia’s recent past and present, which had remained taboo for a long time. Whether modern or classical, his productions are marked by the universality of the dramatic metaphor, profound artistic insight, theatricality and precise psychological analysis of the characters. In his oeuvre, he has put on the works of Nabokov, Vampilov, Rozov, Albee and other masters of Russian and international drama.
