Born in Leningrad. Graduated from the St Petersburg Academy of Theatre Art, having specialised in "Theatre and Decorative Art".
Began his career as a lighting designer at the age of nineteen (a production of Fahrenheit 451 at the St Petersburg Theatre of Youth Art), and by the age of thirty he had become one of the most in-demand specialists in his profession in Russia and subsequently internationally.
Has participated in productions by the Maly Drama Theatre, the Theatre of Europe, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Alexandrinsky Theatre, the Tovstonogov Grand Drama Theatre, the Baltic House Theatre Festival, the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Moscow Operetta Theatre, the Boris Eifman Ballet Theatre, the Moscow Young Spectator Theatre, the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Musical Theatre, the Chekhov MKhAT, the Akimov Comedy Theatre, the Et Cetera theatre under Alexander Kalyagin and Moscow's Sovremennik Theatre among others.
At the Mariinsky Theatre he has worked on productions of Semyon Kotko (1999), The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia (2001), Otello (2001), Boris Godunov, Cinderella, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung (2002), Das Rheingold, Die Walküre (2003), The Nose, A Life for the Tsar, The Snow Maiden (2004), Carmen, Tristan und Isolde (2005), The Gambler, Jenůfa, Otello, Silenzio. Diana Vishneva (2007), Christmas Eve (2008) and Otello (2013).
Regular collaborator with the directors Dmitry Chernyakov and Alvis Hermanis.
Collaborates with the Opéra de Paris, the Schaubühne (Berlin), the Teatro Real (Madrid), English National Opera (London), the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels), the Burgtheater (Vienna), the Bayerische Staatsoper (Munich), La Scala (Milan), the Metropolitan Opera (New York), the Wiener Staatsoper, the Hamburg Opera, the Opéra de Lyon, the Deutsche Oper (Berlin), the Berliner Staatsoper, the Dutch Opera (Amsterdam), the Zurich Opera, the Salzburg Opera Festival and the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
Actively involved in stage design and multimedia directing in high-tech shows. Founder and Artistic Director of the Show Consulting studio of stage design and stage technology. Director of Magistracy at the St Petersburg Academy of Theatre Art, specialising in "The Management of Artistic Technological Processes in Contemporary Theatre."
Several-times recipient of Russia's Golden Mask theatre prize (including for Mariinsky Theatre productions of Semyon Kotko and The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia), participant at the international exhibition of stage design and stage space Prague Quadrennial, recipient of Latvia's national award for theatre, recipient of Estonia's theatre award, and recipient of the All-Russian prize in mass forms of theatre art Shades of the Theatre of the Masses.
