Anthony Nikolchev, featured in the 2025 Venice Biennale (under artistic director Willem Dafoe) and praised by the LA Times for a “technique and honesty that constitutes a tour de force,” is a multi-disciplinary performer, writer, and director, working in Los Angeles as well as internationally. He is the co-artistic director of Galiana&Nikolchev’s The Useless Room, a movement-based experimental performance group in Los Angeles, USA, and is on the faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. His physical approach to theater comes from years in residence at the Grotowski Institute with Matej Matejka, and deep practice with Yura Kordonsky and Vivien Wood.
He has worked with dancer Lukasz Przytarski on the newest Useless Room production, The (Un)Double, which premiered at the Venice Biennale Teatro in June 2025. Notable other performances include Life in this House is Over directed by Sam Shay (Wuppertal, Germany, supported by the Pina Bausch Zentrum), his self-generated solo performances, Look, What I Don’t Understand, (Best Actor at New York City’s United SOLO Festival) and The Echoes Off The Walls Underground Are Louder Than Your Footsteps Above Me, (a second award of Best Actor at United SOLO in NYC) which toured Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Moscow, Warsaw and Central Europe/Asia, Peter Brook’s Operetta, The Tragedy of Carmen, at the San Diego Opera directed by Alexander Gedeon, and the site specific critically acclaimed, The Day Shall Declare It, in London and Los Angeles directed by Annie Saunders and Sophie Bortolussi. Film/TV credits include: Amazon’s original series Undone, CBS’s Criminal Minds, Beneath the Green, Past Hope Now, and Adam (La Settimana Internazionale della Critica at the 77th Venice Film Festival).
He has lectured on the topic of “Human Rights and Political Theater” at St. Petersburg’s Smolny University, was a guest speaker at the 2017 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity with his partner Gema Galiana and collaborator Annie Saunders from Wilderness, and has been commissioned to create new work by the Skirball Center in Los Angeles and Dance City Newcastle (UK).
