OPERA, THEATRE
AND FILM DIRECTOR
Photo: Frol Podlesniy
Maxim Didenko is a theatre and opera director whose work moves between physical, dance, music, visual and dramatic theatre. His productions combine ensemble movement, choreography, live music, video and large-scale visual composition to reimagine classical and contemporary texts.
Trained as an actor and director at the St Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, he began as a performer, dancer and choreographer with Derevo, the Dresden-based physical theatre company, and 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 taught at the Moscow Art Theatre School and his alma mater.
Since leaving Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has directed steadily across Germany, the UK and beyond. Recent productions include The Snow Maiden at Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Musik für die Lebenden at Oper Bonn, The Castle at Staatsschauspiel Dresden and The Night in Lisbon at Nationaltheater Mannheim. In London, where he has also taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, his staging of The White Factory at Marylebone Theatre won Best Production at the Off West End Awards.
Beyond the stage, he directs for the screen — music videos and a short-form series — and has experimented with VR and immersive, site-specific formats.
This season he stages The Master and Margarita at Nationaltheater Mannheim (premiere 27 November 2026) and makes his Vienna debut with Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel at MusikTheater an der Wien (premiere 22 January 2027). He is also developing The Doors of Perception, a physical theatre piece after Aldous Huxley.
NEW PERFORMANCES
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ALL THEATRE PERFORMANCES
MULTIDISCIPLINARY: ACTIONISM / DIGITAL / STREET THEATRE / IMMERSIVE AND SITE SPECIFIC / LARGE SCALE EVENTS
Alongside his stage work, Maxim has always made art outside the theatre building: actions, street and site-specific performances, digital and immersive projects. He came to it through butoh with Derevo and the artist’s theatre of AKHE Russian Engineering Theatre, and has worked with artists including Pavel Semchenko and Maxim Isaev of AKHE, Igor Tsvetkov, Vladimir Varnava, Vladimir Volkov, Oleg Zhukovskiy, Ilia Starilov and Oleg Mikhailov. Across his stage and gallery work he has also collaborated with designers and visual artists including Pavel Kaplevich, Maria Tregubova, Galya Solodovnikova, Patricia Talacko, Andreas Auerbach and AJ Weissbard.
With The Drystone, the punk pro-theatre community he founded in 2010, he staged open-air performances and actions far from conventional stages. His work has been shown at Galerie Kuchling in Berlin; Solyanka Gallery, Winzavod, ArtPlay, Mutabor, Platforma and GES-2 in Moscow; and the Erarta Museum and Pushkinskaya 10 in St Petersburg, as well as in abandoned factories, city squares and churches.
In digital forms, he created the internet television project Asmodeus, worked in VR, and made the augmented-reality show Atalanta Fleeing.
He has worked with the media-art studio Sila Sveta and the independent channel TV Rain, created two large-scale events for Cartier, and collaborated with Courvoisier, Nike and Adidas.
