About
Anthony Nikolchev is aN Actor, Writer and director working at the intersection of theater, film, movement, text, and immersive experience—creating work that blurs the line between narrative story telling and expressionistic movement. His projects range from intimate experimental performances to large-scale interactive productions.
His theater and film work has appeared nationally and internationally, including presentations at La Biennale di Venezia (artistic director Willem Dafoe) and the Grotowski Institute. Known for visually striking staging and psychologically charged storytelling, his productions transform space and bodies into living dramaturgy, where architecture, sound, and movement collide, intimate and unsettling.
Alongside his artistic work, he creates large-scale interactive and branded experiences for global companies including Amazon, Jack in the Box, NFL and Tide, including the second most live-streamed digital event for audiences on Twitch. These projects combine cinematic storytelling with real-time audience participation.
As an actor, he has performed with his company, The Useless Room, at the Venice Biennale, The International Theater Olympics and Summerhall at the EdFringe. Other work includes alongside Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch legends Julie Shanahan and Julie Anne Stanzak in Sam Shay’s Life in this House is Over, the London and Los Angeles touring immersive hit The Day Shall Declare It by Annie Saunders and Sophie Bortolussi, and on film/TV in the Amazon series Undone, CBS’s Criminal Minds and indie films, such as Adam (Venice Film Festival), All These Voices (student Academy Award winner), Like Lambs and Beneath the Green. His original stage performances, including Look, What I Don’t Understand, and The Echoes Off The Walls Underground Are Louder Than Above Me have won Best Actor Awards at the United Solo International Theater Festival Off-Broadway, as well as toured the world.
His writing has appeared in the Mime Journal, HarperCollins’s Daily Celtic Prayers (England) alongside Roberto Bolaño’s texts On Exile, and the St. Petersburg Journal of Theater (Russia).
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, and has been commissioned to create new work by the Skirball Center in Los Angeles and Dance City Newcastle (UK).
Nikolchev teaches movement for performance at the California Institute of the Arts, and is the co-Artistic Director of the performance company, The Useless Room, along with the more brilliant Gema Galiana.
