NIKOLAI KUCHIN

STAGE DESIGN AND SCENOGRAPHY



A YOUNG SWALLOWMAN

A new play by Laura Santos
Festival ,Neue Zeit, Neue Dramatik’
Munich Kammerspiele
2023

Laura Santos’ new play is set in Argentina, in the Rio Negro Valley. A truck overturns and empties its entire load of cows on the road. Locals approach the scene of the accident to secure the best cuts of meat in a brutal slaughter. Teenage girls Belinda and Mora witness this scene and attempt to rescue a calf, but Mora disappears without a trace.

Over the course of the play, we discover a dense network of relationships and the structures of a social order that make young women disappear, silence them, torture them and finally kill them.

Early in the play the stage is engulfed in an avalanche of black ashes, creating a messy field on which fights and slaughter take place. A sense of imminent danger is underscored by images of volcanic eruptions, rendering the skies black and the scenes deviod of any sense of hope.

With Frida Lang, Elisabeth Nittka, Bernardo Arias Porras, Cathrine Dumont, Jelena Kuljić, Leoni Schulz, Michael Pietsch
Directed by Florian Fischer
Lighting Design by Max Kraußmüller
Costume Design by Heloà Pizzi Mauro
Dramaturgy by Felicitas Friedrich
Associate Direction by Claudia Kaunzner
Translation by Miriam Denge
Photography by Judith Buss
MOBY DICK

Based on a novel by Herman Melville
Nymphenburg Palace Summer Festival
Produced by Ensemble Persona
2024

A red modular wharf-like structure, inspired by Yakov Chernikhovs drawings, fills the courtyard of Munich’s Nymphenburg Palace, constantly moving and reconfiguring as the hunt for the whale goes on

Directed by Tobias Maehler
Lighting Design by Matthias Wanek
Costume Design by Sarah Silbermann
Technical Direction by Christian Kern
With Peter Kempkes, Nick-Robin Dietrich, Anna März, Sophia Lahme, Tom Hospes
Music by Ondrej Zadak and Vera Drazic
Photography by Bernt Haberland
Production Management by Sandra Maehler





PLAYLIST

Stage, space and costume design for an evening of new musical theatre writing
Studiobühne Munich
2024

A fragmented installation fills the black box theatre like a miniature city, in which radically different life stories take place side by side

Dramaturgy and curation by Tobias Schuster and Tassilo Pyko
Directors Sergei Okunev, Laura Schinzel, Nick Tlusty, Yunus Wieacker, Lara Freimuth
Co-Designer Yue Ying
Assistant Designers Christina Schuldheis, Maya Nikolov
Lighting Design by Hermann Hübner
Production management by Janina Schreier


EIN GELBER KLANG

A new work based on Wassily Kandinsky’s opera script
Stage, Costume and Video Design
Music by John Cage, Morton Feldman and Erik Satie
Chemnitz Opera
2023

One of Kandinsky’s lesser known works is a stage composition ,ein gelber Klang’ (,a yellow sound’), which loosely interprets creation of the earth. We reimagined the 1909 script, matching Kandinsky’s ideas with ‘abstract’ music of John Cage, Morton Feldman and Erik Satie. Adam and Eve are a K-pop couple, a Buddhist gardening society is planting the first flower. But visions of a potentially bleak future are there too - and a televised nuclear test explodes the creator’s apartment.

The performances took place off-site in the monumental interiors of the Chemnitz Art Museum. The stage is a silver reflective amphitheater, an update on the classic Greek form. A permeable curtain cuts through the room, and mobile mirrors blend the reflections of the stage figures with the audience.

Directed by Veit-Jacob Walter
Musical Direction by Anna Scholl
Designed in collaboration with Tina Hübner
With Bjørn Waag, ensemble and musicians of Chemnitz Opera


PEER GYNT

A dramatic poem by Henrik Ibsen
Nymphenburg Palace Summer Festival
Produced by Ensemble Persona
2023

Henrik Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt about 100 years after the discovery of the ego in philosophy. Throughout his life, Gynt is on a quest for his identity. But whether lying, cheating, or fantasizing, he fails to achieve his great goal.

For this staging of Ibsen’s anti-hero play a mountain in two parts was constructed on the open-air stage in the courtyard of the Nymphenburg Palace in Munich. The stage draws a visual parallel between a typical wooden hut and a Norwegian mountain landcape, suggesting that in the quest for one’s identity and home one doesn’t always have to look too far.
With Yannick Zürcher, Elisabeth Rass, Peter Kempkes, Rodrigo Umseher, Claudia Roick, Sophia Lahme and Monika Steinwidder
Directed by Tobias Maehler
Lighting Design by Matthias Wanek
Costume Design by Sarah Silbermann
Technical Direction by Christian Kern
Photography by Bernt Haberland
Production Management by Sandra Maehler