Konstantin Bogomolov
Photo: Christos Sarris
Aesthetically and politically a radical, Konstantin Bogomolov (b.1975) has been described in the international Press as the “enfant terrible” of the Russian theatre.
His parents were film critics. He studied Literature at Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) and Direction at the Russian Academy of Arts (RATIGITIS).
The winner of numerous awards and distinctions in his home country, Bogomolov has worked with historic Russian theatres (the Moscow Art Theatre and the Leninist Komsomol Theatre / Lenkom) while staging productions in equally prestigious European theatres and international theatre festivals, including the Polish National Theatre in Warsaw, the Festwochen in Vienna, and the Theaterformen in Hanover.
All in all, he has directed over twenty productions, also undertaking the adaptation/dramaturgy in the majority of cases. Works (theatrical and literary) he has staged include: “Iphigenia in Aulis” by Euripides, “Much ado about nothing“ and “King Lear” by Shakespeare, “Black Snow” by Mikhail Bulgakov, “The Trial” by Franz Kafka, “The Seagull” and “Platonov” by Chekhov, “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by François Rabelais, “The Dragon” by Evgeni Schwartz, “Ice” by Vladimir Sorokin, and “The Idiot” and “The Brothers Karamazov” by Dostoyevsky. He recently staged “Husbands and Wives”, a production based on Woody Allen's film of the same name.
Two directorial practices which often feature in his aesthetically unconventional and politically innovative productions are, first, casting female actors for male roles and vice versa, and, second, shifting the action to a different period than the original. For instance, in “King Lear”, the lead role was played by a female actress and the action was transferred to the Soviet Union in 1941, just before the German invasion.
Staged by the Moscow Art Theatre, his five-hour, adults-only version of Dostoyevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov”, which was entitled “The Karamazovs” and subtitled "A dream fantasy of the director, K. Bogomolov", was the production with which Bogomolov introduced himself to Greek audiences from the Main Stage of the Onassis Stegi in January 2016.
In this production of Demons, all the cast and crew are Greek, with the sole exception of Bogomolov's long-standing, multiple award-winning set and costume designer, Larisa Lomakina.
The “Demons” takes place in two dimensions: in the social and political reality of its era (nihilism, pre-revolutionary demands, religious and social dialogue), but also on a metaphysical plane. This is the fundamental difference between Demons and Dostoyevsky’s other works.
At the time Dostoyevsky was writing “Demons”, the revolutionary movement was already underway in Russia and committing its first acts of violence. In 1869, the body of a Moscow Agricultural Academy student, who was also a member of a revolutionary cell, was found floating in a lake close to the Academy. The crime was conceived by the leader of his revolutionary group, Sergey Nechayev, who also took part in the murder. It was this blood-curdling crime that provided Dostoyevsky with the germ of the plot for “Devils”, which painstakingly records every detail of the murder and features a protagonist who is modelled to the last detail on the young student's murderer.
