People‘s Artist of Russia and Georgia, recipient of the Lenin Prize (1986).
Born in Tbilisi. Graduated from the Tbilisi Rustaveli Theatre Institute in 1965 (workshop of D. Alexidze).
Director with the Municipal Zugdidi Drama Theatre (1965–1967), Georgia‘s Young Spectators‘ Theatre in Tbilisi (1967–1970) and the Tbilisi Academic Rustaveli Theatre (1970–1980). Artistic Director of the Academic Mardzhanishvili Theatre in Tbilisi (1980-1991). While working in theatre, he also taught at the Georgian Theatre Institute and from 1978 he directed Georgian Television Theatre for twelve years.
Temur Chkheidze has staged over seventy productions including Kldiashvili‘s The Stepmother of Samanishvili (together with Robert Sturua, 1969), Dadiani‘s People of Yesterday (1972), Lorca‘s La casa de Bernarda Alba (1974) and Sophocles‘ Oedipus Rex (1976) at the Rustaveli Theatre, Shakespeare‘s Othello (1982) and The Collapse after Dzhavakhishvili at the Chekhov MKhAT and the Mardzhanishvili Theatre (1982, 1984), Kiacheli‘s Haki Adzbe at the Mardzhanishvili Theatre (1981) and Anouilh‘s Antigone at the Chekhov MKhT (2001).
At the Mariinsky Theatre he has staged Prokofiev‘s The Gambler (awarded Russia‘s Golden Mask theatre prize in the category "Best opera production", 1997), Verdi‘s Don Carlo (1998), Wagner‘s Der Fliegende Hollдnder (1998), Rakhmaninov‘s The Miserly Knight and Rimsky-Korsakov‘s Mozart and Salieri (1999). At the Bolshoi Theatre he has staged Shostakovich‘s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (2004). At La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera he has staged Prokofiev‘s The Gambler (1991, 2001) and in Paris and Bordeaux he has directed Rimsky-Korsakov‘s The Tsar‘s Bride (2004). Appeared in the films Living Legends (1977) and Earth, This Is Your Son (1980).
Since 1991 he has been Director, since 2004 Principal Director and from June 2007 Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Tovstonogov Drama Theatre. Productions at the Bolshoi Tovstonogov Drama Theatre include Schiller‘s Kabale und Liebe (1990), Arthur Miller‘s The Crucible (1991), O‘Neill‘s Under the Elms (1992), de Filippo‘s Questi fantasmi (1993), Shakespeare‘s Macbeth (1995), Anouilh‘s Antigone (1996), Dumbadze‘s The Sunny Night (1997), Pushkin‘s Boris Godunov (1999), Shaw‘s Heartbreak House (2002), Lermontov‘s Masquerade (2003), Michael Frayn‘s Copenhagen (2004), Schiller‘s Maria Stuart (2005) and Tolstoy‘s The Power of Darkness, or When the Claw is Caught the Whole Bird is Lost (2006).
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