Yevgeny Arye

Yevgeny Arye was born in 1947 in Moscow

Yevgeny Arye was born on 28 November 1947 in Moscow. He studied psychology at Moscow University for a first degree. He then moved to Leningrad to study theater under director Georgy Tovstonogov.

In the Soviet Union he directed for theater and television, working at theaters in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. His productions there included the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He was refused permission to emigrate until 1990.

In 1990 he moved to Israel with a group of actors from among his students. Together with Slava Maltsev he founded the Gesher Theater in Jaffa, which works in Hebrew and Russian. He directed there until 2019 and also staged plays and operas in Moscow, New York and Latvia.

He taught as a guest lecturer in Paris, at Juilliard, at New York University and at Tel Aviv University. In 2009 he won the Yuri Shtern Prize for New Immigrant Artists and the Stanislavski prize in Russia. In 2017 he received the EMET Prize.

Arye was married and had a son, who stayed in the United States with his wife. He fell ill in November 2021 and died on 19 January 2022 in New York. Tel Aviv placed a memorial plaque at the entrance to the Gesher Theater.