Katz Arkady Fridrikhovich (5 January 1931, Mykolaiv) — theatre director.
Arkady Katz graduated from the Odessa Theatre School and worked as an actor at the Theatre of the Soviet Army (Odessa) and the Russian Drama Theatre (Bălți, Moldova). Served in the Navy. In 1960, he graduated from the directing faculty of the Leningrad Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography.
He worked as a director at the Izhevsk Russian Drama Theatre named after V. G. Korolenko, where he staged The Living Corpse by L. N. Tolstoy and other productions.
In early 1963, he was invited to the Riga Russian Drama Theatre as a director, where he staged A Serious Comedy (Dangerous Years) by B. Brzhezovsky. From late 1964 he became the theatre’s chief director, staging over forty productions, including:
The Story of One Love by K. M. Simonov (1963),
Yegor Bulychov and Others by M. Gorky (1964),
West Side Story by A. Laurents and L. Bernstein (with L. S. Belyavsky, 1965),
The Lower Depths by M. Gorky (1970),
Rush Hour by E. Stavinsky (1971),
Joan of Arc by A. Upītis (1972),
Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man by A. N. Ostrovsky (1973),
Conversations with Socrates by E. S. Radzinsky (1974),
Duck Hunting by A. V. Vampilov (with I. Sh. Pekker, 1976),
King Lear by W. Shakespeare (1977),
Wild Strawberries by I. Bergman (with A. N. Kazantsev, 1978),
The Tailors’ Days in Silmachi by R. Blaumanis (1980),
Anna Snegina after S. A. Yesenin (with Yu. G. Losev, 1981),
The Government Inspector by N. V. Gogol, and many others.
From 1989, Arkady Katz worked at the Vakhtangov Theatre, staging productions such as Sunset based on works by I. Babel (1989), The Ides of March by T. Wilder (1991), The Marriage of Balsaminov by A. N. Ostrovsky (1993), Barbarians by M. Gorky (1995), among others.
He also founded his own theatre at the Central House of Actors in Moscow, staging Anna Snegina — regarded as one of his finest works. Katz continues to direct in theatres across provincial Russia.
Honoured Artist of the Arts of the Udmurt ASSR (1963), People’s Artist of the Latvian SSR (1976).