LEV DODIN |
||
BIOGRAPHY |
||
|
One of the modern Russian directors best known in his country and abroad, Lev Dodin was born in Siberia in 1944. After WW II, the family moved to Saint Petersburg, where Dodin has lived ever since.
His interest in theatre began very early. After some work as an amateur, he was admitted to the Saint Petersburg Theater Institute where he studied under Boris Zon, who in his turn had been the pupil of Stanislavski. His studies finished, he was the guest director for many prestigious companies such as the Moscow Art Theatre and the Bolshoi of Saint Petersburg. He had his first success directing One Always Arranges Things With Oneself by Alexander Ostrovski, an independent production; subsequently he would direct works by Valentin Rasputin, Karel Capek, Tennessee Williams, Feodor Doestoievski. His staging of Fyodor Abramov’s The House set the seal on his fame throughout Russia. Dodin took over as Artistic Director of the Maly Teatr in 1983. The “truth” in Soviet art was well defined within precise limits that were not to be crossed, and very few ventured beyond these limits. Lev Dodin was one who did. Searching through his art to perceive the “truth” in man and in the world that surrounds him – to do this he chose a sure and powerful ally: |
great literature, and above all the great Russian classics.
While carrying on his work with the Maly Teatr, Lev Dodin has continued to teach at the Theatre Institute of Saint Petersburg, where he has taught for more than 20 years, forming whole generations of actors. Many of the actors of the Maly Teatr company were his students. The Maly Teatr (literal translation, “Little Theatre”) was founded in Leningrad at the end of the Second World War, in 1944. It had a theatre located at 18 Rubinstein Street, and a permanent company. The attention given the company was the result of the importance of Yefim Padve, its first director, who gathered around himself a company of young actors and directors, among whom was Lev Dodin, who became the company’s director in 1983. Dodin brought to the Maly Teatr his best students from the Theatre Institute of Leningrad, with whom he began work in 1976 on a collective work centered on several modern authors. The ties between the Maly Teatr and the Theatre Institute through the years became tighter and more privileged: many shows first created in the school then went on to form part of the permanent repertory of the Maly, and are regularly performed today. |
However, the most important gift of this bond is that, in this way, a new group of artists was formed, a group that developed a new language based in their common experience.
The Maly Teatr has been seen all over the world; in Japan, the United States, all over Europe, performing many of their groundbreaking works. |
