Valery Fokin

Valery Vladimirovich Fokin (; born 28 February 1946) is a Soviet and Russian theatrical and film director, actor and pedagogue. He is the Artistic Director of the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, and the President of The Meyerhold Centre in Moscow. Fokin is decorated with four honorary Russian state awards.

Biography Fokin was born in Moscow in 1946. During the 1970s and 1980s, Fokin made a name for himself in the Russian theatrical world by directing plays at this theatre and the Yermolova Theatre. In 1971, he directed Valentin and Valentina, a play written the same year by Mikhail Roshchin. In 1973, he directed the plays An Incident with a Paginator and Twenty Minutes with an Angel at Sovremennik. In 1989, Fokin was at the centre of an actor's dispute at the Yermolova Theatre, fueled by negative reviews of his Dostoevsky play, The Idiot.

Style Fokin has directed plays by the likes of Nabokov, Vampilov, Rozov and Albee. On 26 February 2006 Fokin was awarded the Decoration for Service to Saint Petersburg, by Decree No. 172 of the President of the Russian Federation.

Europe Theatre Prize In 2018, he received the XVII Europe Theatre Prize, in Saint Petersburg. The Prize organization stated:«The profession is like the alphabet: the more you are able to use it, the more it allows you to express yourself.» These words of Valery Fokin sum up his conception of theatre and - even more precisely - of directing. For this leading Russian artist, a graduate of the Chtchoukine Theatre Academy, who has practised his art on prestigious stages such as the Sovremennik Theatre and the Yermolova Theatre (of which he has also been the artistic director) in Moscow, the director has to be a kind of polymath, eclectic and erudite, in order to experience the different forms of human existence and be able to put them to work across the range of dramatic fiction. For Valery Fokin, theatre cannot and must not be reduced to a simple process of entertainment or commercial promotion, but must serve as a means to allow the artist to acquire a rich and colourful internal vocabulary. Valery Fokin’s multi-faceted nature is well known on the Russian stage, for he has succeeded magisterially in welding the old and the new, philosophy and psychology, imagination and technique. He is equally renowned for his ability to add the most concise inspirations, as it were, to the other standard features of the most celebrated works of theatre. He has been president of the Commission to preserve the work of Meyerhold, which became the Meyerhold Creation Centre thanks to the support of the Russian Theatre Workers’ Union and the Russian Architects’ Union. At the present time he is director of the Alexandrinsky Theatre of St Petersburg. Here he staged performances based on the works of Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol. His performances at the Alexandrinsky theatre received recognition from the Russian and international community. For many years, the Director conducts master classes and teaches in Russia and abroad. This year Valery Fokin is awarded the XVII Europe Theatre Prize in recognition of his revolutionary conceptions in both the social and the institutional domain.