The director and author Boris Nikitin, born in Basel and the son of Ukrainian-Slovak-French-Jewish immigrants, stages works in the international independent scene as well as at German-speaking municipal theaters. He is the initiator and artistic director of the festival It’s The Real Thing – Basel Documentary Platform.
For many years, Nikitin has focused on exploring the documentary and propaganda. His plays and writings consistently seek the dazzling borderline between illusionist theatre and performance, the documentary and its imitations. This long-standing artistic engagement with the representation and production of the real and its doubles was also central to his happenings, such as the discussion series Propaganda Talks 1–8 (2018), the Swiss Propaganda Conference (2019), and the festival It’s The Real Thing – Basel Documentary Platform, which he initiated in 2013. In 2017, Nikitin received the J.M.R. Lenz Theater Award of the City of Jena for his complete works. In 2020, he was awarded the Swiss Theater Prize.
Boris Nikitin held the Christoph Schlingensief Visiting Professorship at the University of Bochum. In addition, he teaches at the University of Frankfurt, Zurich University of the Arts, the University of Erlangen, and the University of Venice.