Biography
Oleg Bogayev was born in 1970 in the city of Sverdlovsk (now called Yekaterinburg) in Russia. He writes of growing up as the Cold War gave way to the emergence of Perestroika, a "change from the decay of the empire to the birth of a new society." He cites the social turmoil of recent decades as useful for artistic product: " I know is that Russia is just the right place for a playwright - with shattering of fates, conflicts, crumbling of hopes, clashes of ideas - all that I've seen and experienced."
Bogayev became interested in writing as a teenager, spurred by what he describes as "two tragedies": first love and the death of his father. He began writing poems and short stories. He worked in theatre as a set and lighting designer; he became interested in writing plays after being exposed to the work of Harold Pinter.
In 1997, Bogayev won the Anti-Booker Prize for Русская народная почта (The Russian National Postal Service) and the award for Best Play at Russia's Golden Mask Festival for that same play.
Read more about this topic: Oleg Bogayev
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)