In 2019, Viktor Ryzhakov received the Golden Mask in the Drama/Large-Scale Performance category for the play Optimistic Tragedy. Farewell Ball at the Alexandrinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg) / Vyacheslav Prokofiev / TASS

The new artistic director of the Sovremennik Theatre will be theatre director and head of the Vsevolod Meyerhold Centre (CIM) Viktor Ryzhakov. This was reported to TASS by the press service of the Moscow Department of Culture. He will start working on January 4, 2020. The duties of the head of the CIM will be transferred to its art director Elena Kovalskaya.

Ryzhakov was born in 1960. In 1998, he became one of the organizers and artistic director of the first festival of independent theaters "Theater in Search of Theater" in Sochi. From 1995 to 2001, he was the artistic director of the Drama and Comedy Theater in Kamchatka. Since 2001 - director and teacher at the Moscow Art Theater School. Since 2002, Ryzhakov was one of the founders and directors of the A. M. Volodin Theater Festival "Five Evenings" in St. Petersburg. Since February 2011, he has been a master of the directing course of the international master's degree at the CIM and the Moscow Art Theater School. Since September 2012 - artistic director of the CIM. Since June 2016 - artistic director of the theater "Ijulansambl. Workshop of Viktor Ryzhakov".

Viktor Ryzhakov is the principal director of playwright Ivan Vyrypaev. Their joint productions include the plays Oxygen (Teatr.doc), Being, July (Praktika Theatre), Illusions, Drunks, and Dreamworks. Ryzhakov’s productions also include The Sun Rises (A.P. Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre), Five Evenings (Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theatre), Pushkin’s Little Tragedies (Satyricon Theatre), Woe from Wit (Moscow Art Theatre School), and others. Ryzhakov has won numerous theatre awards, including the Golden Mask National Award and the Grand Prix of the New Drama Festivals. In 2014, he was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Russia.

From 1972 to 2019, Galina Volchek was the artistic director of the Sovremennik Theatre. On December 26, she died at the age of 86 from complications following pneumonia. She was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow on December 29.

Volchek graduated from the Nemirovich-Danchenko School-Studio at the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre. Together with actor Oleg Efremov and other graduates, she participated in the creation of a theater studio, which later became the Sovremennik Theater. Volchek not only played in plays, but also directed them and acted in films.

New Artistic Director of Sovremennik Appointed