About the Playwright

Maksym Kurochkin (b. 1970) was hailed as a major new voice in Russian playwriting after the Moscow premiere of his play, Kitchen, in 2000. Since that time, his plays have been produced in Moscow at Teatr.doc, the Pushkin Theatre, the Et Cetera Theatre and the Playwright and Director Center. His plays have been translated into all the major European languages. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including "Boldest Experiment of the Year" from the Moskovsky Komsomolets Daily for Kitchen, and the "Russian Anti-Booker" award. His subsequent plays include Repress and Excite; Vodka, Fucking and Television; Steel Will; Tsurikov; Fighter Class Medea; The Schooling of Bento Bonchev; and Mooncrazed. Vodka, Fucking and Television and Repress and Excite were translated into English and published in the American theatre journal TheatreForum. Kurochkin has acted in films and he writes for Russian film and television. Originally from the Ukraine, Kurochkin now resides in Moscow with his wife and daughter.

John Freedman is among those who have hailed Kurochkin as an important contemporary voice. In his article "Maksym Kurochkin: A Writer for Paradoxical Times," Freedman points out that the writer "symbolized the paradoxes of his age" (86). He embodied these paradoxes in the early 1990s, when he chose a course of study at Kiev University that applied advanced principles of astroarchaeology to research on pre-Christian Slavic monuments. Similarly, his writing, which leads him to create a drastically different dramatic world with each new play, reflects a writer who Freedman sees as "ideal for the global age," and as "both a product and an explorer of" an extraordinary transitional time in Russian and Slavic history (86).

Freedman, John. “Maksym Kurochkin: A Writer for Paradoxical Times.” TheatreForum 32 (2008): 85-87. International Index to the Performing Arts.
Web. 8 Oct. 2009.

Maksym Kurochkin (center) in conversation with CITD director Philip Arnoult and director Yury Urnov. Towson University. March 2010. Photo: Robyn Quick

Nick Bateman as Hero in Vodka, Fucking and Television. October 2009. Photo: Jay Herzog April 2010