Theater critic Alexei Bartoshevich, Russia's leading specialist on Shakespeare, has died

Theater expert Alexei Bartoshevich died at the age of 85, RBC reported, citing the rector of the Russian Institute of Theater Arts, Grigory Zaslavsky.

Bartoshevich is a theater scholar, theater historian and specialist in the works of Shakespeare. For many years, until 2020, he was the head of the Shakespeare Commission at the Council on World Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences - he is called one of the largest and most prominent Shakespeare scholars.

Bartoshevich was born in Moscow in 1939 and graduated from the Faculty of Theater Studies in 1961. Bartoshevich’s father is one of the founders of the Sovremennik Theater Vadim Shverubovich, and his grandfather is actor Vasily Kachalov.

He graduated from the theater studies department of GITIS, where he subsequently taught until the end of his life. He has published many books about Shakespeare and modern theater, and has recorded a number of programs about theater for television.

Bartoshevich is the winner of numerous awards, including the 2020 Golden Mask, awarded to him “for his outstanding contribution to the development of theatrical art.”