Rimas Tuminas

Biography

Rimas Tuminas is the recipient of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, the State Prize of Lithuania, Russian Festival of Performing Arts ‘Golden Mask’ Award winner, International Stanislavsky Theatre Award winner, multiple Crystal Turandot Award winner, Golden Nail Award winner, MK Award winner, ‘Star of Teatral’ Award winner, etc.

Rimas Tuminas was born in Kelme, Lithuania. In 1970–74 he studied at the Lithuanian State Conservatory. In 1978 he graduated from Joseph Tumanov’s directing course of GITIS. His first staging was Yordan Radichkov’s January (1978) in the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, the first Moscow staging was Oswald Zagradnik’s Peacock Melody (1979) at the Stanislavsky Theatre.

In 1979–90 – the Director of the State Academic Theatre of Lithuania, since 1994 – chief Director. In 1999 he left the theatre (his last productions were Oedipus the King by Sophocles and Shakespeare’s Richard III).

From 1979 he taught at the Conservatory of Lithuania (now Lithuanian Academy of music).

In 1990 Rimas Tuminas founded the Small Theatre of Vilnius, where were staged Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1990), Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo, Grigorijus Kanovicius’s Smile at us, O Lord! (1994), and Mikhail Lermontov’s Masquerade (1997), the theatre toured abroad extensively (Finland, Sweden, Poland, Iceland, etc).

Staged more than 20 plays in different theatres in Lithuania and abroad. Among his foreign works are Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1992) and The Seagull (1993) in Finland, Don Juan by Moliere in Iceland (1995). In collaboration with the poet Valdemaras Kukulas Rimas Tuminas wrote There Will Be No Death (1988).

At the Sovremennik Theatre in Moscow in 2000 he launched a performance We Play Schiller!, in 2007, Woe from Wit by Alexander Griboyedov.

In 2002 at the Vakhtangov Theatre, on Mikhail Ulyanov invitation, he staged the play The Inspector General by Gogol. In 2007 Rimas Tuminas was appointed Artistic Director of the State Academic Vakhtangov Theatre. Here he released plays: Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare (2008), Le ultime lune by Furio Bordon (2008), Uncle Vanya by Chekhov (2009), Masquerade by Mikhail Lermontov (2010), The Wind in the Poplars by Gérald Sibleyras (2011), Marina (2011), Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (2013), Smile at us, O Lord! by Grigorijus Kanovicius (2014), Minetti by Bernhard (2015), Oedipus the King by Sophocles (2016). In 2012 he founded the First Studio of the Vakhtangov Theatre. 

At the Bolshoi Theatre he staged operas Katerina Izmailova by Dmitri Shostakovich The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Tchaikovsky (conductor: Tugan Sokhiev, 2016 and 2018 respectively).

In 2017 he did a production of one-act operas Oedipus Rex by Igor Stravinsky and Bluebeard's Castle by Béla Bartók for the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre.

Rimas Tuminas is the recipient of the State Prize of the Russian Federation (Contribution to the development of international cultural cooperation, 1999).
In 2010 Rimas was awarded the Order of Friendship for his major contribution to the development of cultural ties with the Russian Federation, and for the preservation and promotion of the Russian language and culture abroad.

Died on 6 March 2024.