Anastasia
Tarkhanova
(born 1995 in Moscow) is a theatre maker, scenographer and visual artist whose work combines documentary research, spatial storytelling and visual minimalism.
She is interested in theatre as a place where memory, biography and political realities become visible through space, objects and images. Rather than illustrating a story, her stage designs create environments in which encounters and lived experiences can unfold.
She graduated in Theatre Studies from the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow in 2018. Her diploma thesis examined the work of Swiss theatre director Milo Rau and contemporary documentary theatre. During her studies, she also completed several artistic residencies with master students of Joseph Beuys at the Free Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, where she expanded her practice beyond theatre towards installation and visual art.
From 2017 to 2022, Tarkhanova worked as a set and video designer with PostPlay Theatre in Kyiv and collaborated with a number of independent theatre companies throughout Ukraine.
Between 2019 and 2022, she was the scenographer and visual designer of the documentary theatre project Misto To Go (misto meaning "city" in Ukrainian), developed with young people in the Donbas. She also contributed to projects of the Theatre of Displaced People, including Children and Warriors, directed by Georg Genoux and Natalka Vorozhbyt.
Since 2018, she has collaborated closely with director Georg Genoux on theatre, film and interdisciplinary projects in Ukraine, Bulgaria, Germany and beyond.
Her work includes productions such as The Land I Do Not Know, which premiered at the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater in Zittau, and HeimaTraum, as well as numerous participatory theatre projects developed together with young people and local communities.
From 2022 to 2024, she served as Head Scenographer and Designer at the Thespis Zentrum of the Deutsch-Sorbisches Volkstheater Bautzen, where she created the visual concepts for numerous productions, including Mothers and Sons, directed by Miriam Scholl.
During the same period, she also co-curated the international theatre festival Willkommen Anderswo together with Georg Genoux.
Together with Georg Genoux, Anastasia Tarkhanova is the founder and curator of EX-EAST, an international theatre and future lab based at the Moritzhof Cultural Centre in Magdeburg and developed in collaboration with Agency for Safe Space. Across all of her work, she seeks visual languages that remain open, inviting audiences to complete the picture through their own memories and experiences.
Georg
Genoux
(born 1976 in Hamburg) is a German theatre director, curator and writer whose work explores memory, democracy and social transformation through documentary and participatory theatre. Over the past two decades, he has created theatre and film projects across Germany, Ukraine, Russia and Bulgaria, presented at more than eighty international festivals.
He is a co-founder of Teatr.doc, Democracy.doc and the Joseph Beuys Theatre in Moscow. Between 2010 and 2013, three productions of the Joseph Beuys Theatre were nominated for Russia's National Golden Mask Award in the category Best Experimental Theatre Project of the Year.
Georg Genoux served also as producer and associate director of One Hour Eighteen Minutes, a documentary theatre production about Sergei Magnitsky, directed by Mikhail Ugarov with dramaturgy by Elena Gremina.
In 2012, his production CRISIS was invited to the 7th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) in Berlin.
From 2012 to 2015, he served as theatre director at Theatre Replica in Sofia, where he founded the international theatre laboratory and festival NEDRAma. In 2014, the President of Bulgaria awarded Theatre Replica the Stoyan Kambarev Award for Contemporary Art for a series of productions developed together with Georg Genoux.
In 2015, together with Ukrainian playwright Natalka Vorozhbyt, he co-founded the Theatre of Displaced People in Kyiv. The initiative was widely recognised by the Ukrainian press as one of the country's most significant new theatre projects and was named the Main Achievement of Ukrainian Theatre in 2015 by Gazeta.ua.
His documentary feature School #3, created together with young people from the Donbas, received the Grand Prix of the International Jury in the Generation 14plus competition at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in 2017.
From 2022 to 2024, Georg Genoux served as Artistic Director of the socio-theatrical Thespis Zentrum at the Deutsch-Sorbisches Volstheater in Bautzen. In 2025, he was awarded the Lessing Prize of the Free State of Saxony in recognition of his artistic work.
Together with Anastasia Tarkhanova, he is the founder and curator of EX-EAST, an international theatre and future lab based at the Moritzhof Cultural Centre in Magdeburg and developed in collaboration with Agency for Safe Space.
