Vladislavs Nastavševs

Biography

Graduated from the Department of Acting at the St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy in 2004 (class of Lev Dodin). Studied stage directing at Drama Center London (part of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design).
In London, directed Rudin after the novel by Ivan Turgenev at the Arcola Theatre, and Miss Julie by Johan August Strindberg at Cochrane Theatre. Apart from directing, often acts as set designer and composer at his own productions.

At the Dirty Deal Teatro (Riga, Latvia) Nastavševs directed the following productions:
Mitya’s Love based on a short story by Ivan Bunin;
Boys Smell Like Oranges based on a short story by Guy Davenport (2010; invited by Kirill Serebrennikov, the production was later presented at Winzavod in Moscow as part of The Platform Project);
Dzyn by Evgeny Kharitonov (2011).

After the success of these productions, Nastavševs wasinvited to work at the New Riga Theatre, for which he directed:
Dark Avenues based on a collection of short stories by Ivan Bunin (2012);
Travellers by Sea and Land based on a little-known novel by Mikhail Kuzmin (2014);
Lake of Hope, a play of Nastavševs’ own authorship (2014; the production, for which Nastavševs also acted as set designer and composer, received the Latvian Theatre Award for Best Production of the Year);
Cynics by Anatoly Mariengof (2017);
The Lake of Hope is Frozen (2018; yet another Latvian Theatre Award for Best Production of the Year);
Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams (2018).

Productions at the Latvian National Theatre:
Suddenly, Last Summer by Tennessee Williams (2012);
The Old Woman based on a series of works by Daniil Kharms (2012; presented on the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg in 2013 as part of the program of the 7th International Alexandrinsky Theatre Festival);
The Idiot based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015);
Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca (2015; Grand Prix of the the Latvian Theatre Award for Best Production of the Year; the National ‘‘Performers’ Night’ (Latvian: ‘Spēlmaņu nakts’) Award 2016 for Director of the Year);
Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (2017).

Productions at Valmiera Drama Theatre (Latvia):
Strindberg’s Miss Julie (new version);
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Miss Julie was presented at Prague Quadrennial (PQ) 2015 where it won the Gold Medal for Total Performance Design; the work was also nominated for the Golden Triga for Best Exposition.

Productions at Mikhail Chekhov Riga Russian theatre (RRT):
Medea by Euripides (2016);
The Five Songs from Memory based on the poetry by a Riga-based text group Orbīta (2020);
A Draft by Sergey Ukhanov (2020) – an online performance broadcasted via Zoom, co-production of RRT and the International Summer Festival of Arts ‘The Access Point’ (a drama festival exploring non-traditional performance locations, St. Petersburg).

At the Kamennoostrovsky Theatre (the second scene of the Academic Bolshoi Drama Theatre named after G.A. Tovstonogov, St. Petersburg), Nastavševs staged:
I Am Saying That I Love You (2019), a music performance presented as part of the program of 2 СЦЕНА TO STAGE experimental theatre event. The production premiered a year earlier at New Space Moscow run by the Theatre of Nations. The show included remakes of unremembered Soviet pop songs from 1956-1970s.
The Garden Where the Gymnasts Leap (Classic 20th Century Russian Poetry As Heard Today) – created in collaboration with Ivan Lubennikov, Moscow-based musician, composer and multi-instrumentalist (2019). Under the title A New World, the performance opened the 2019/2020 season at New Space Moscow by the Theatre of Nations.

After Kirill Serebrennikov was appointed artistic director of the Moscow Drama Theatre named after N.V. Gogol, he invited Nastavševs to work with him at the newly rebranded Gogol Center.
Here, Nastavševs directed:
Mitya’s Love (small stage, 2013; for the first time the production was performed in Russian and with Russian actors);
Fear after R.V. Fassbinder’s screenplay Fear Eats the Soul (main stage, 2013);
Medea (2013);
Kuzmin. Trout Breaks the Ice (2017);
Save the Orchid (as author, director, set designer and composer; 2019).

Debuted at the Bolshoi Theatre in 2020 with a production of Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles (Chamber Stage)