OPERA, THEATRE

Maxim Didenko is a theatre and opera director who works where the borders between physical theatre, dance, music, the visual arts, and drama stop meaning much. Ensemble movement, choreography, live music, video, and large-scale imagery aren’t decoration in his productions; they are how he rereads texts, classical and contemporary.

​

He trained as an actor and a director at the St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy and started out as a performer, dancer, and choreographer with Derevo, the Dresden-based physical-theatre company, in the orbit of AKHE Russian Engineering Theatre and Prague’s Farm in the Cave. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, he became one of the most prolific and closely watched directors of his generation, and he taught at the Moscow Art Theatre School and at his alma mater.

​

Since leaving Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has worked without pause in Germany, the U.K., and beyond. Recent productions include “The Snow Maiden,” at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden; “Musik für die Lebenden,” at Oper Bonn; “The Castle,” at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden; and “The Night in Lisbon,” at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. In London, where he has also taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, his staging of “The White Factory,” at the Marylebone Theatre, won Best Production at the Off West End Awards.

​

Offstage, he directs for the screen—music videos and a short-form series—and has experimented with V.R. and with immersive, site-specific work.

​

​This season, he stages “The Master and Margarita” at the Nationaltheater Mannheim (opening November 27, 2026) and makes his Vienna début with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockerel,” at the MusikTheater an der Wien (opening January 22, 2027). He is also developing “The Doors of Perception,” a physical-theatre piece after Aldous Huxley.