Vassily Vladimirovich Sigarev (Russian: Васи́лий Владимирович Си́гарев, born 11 January 1977, Verkhnyaya Salda, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Soviet Union) is a Russian playwright, screenwriter and film director.^[1] His plays Plasticine, Black Milk and Ladybird were first produced in the West by the Royal Court Theatre, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, respectively.^[2][3] In 2002, Sigarev was named the winner of the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright given out by the Evening Standard for Plasticine.

Sigarev was born in 1977, in Verkhnyaya Salda, Sverdlovsk Oblast, a small town 180 kilometers (110 mi) north of Yekaterinburg, into a working-class family.^[4] He studied at the Nizhny Tagil Pedagogical Institute and graduated from the Yekaterinburg Theatre Institute where he studied under Nikolay Kolyada.^[5]

The subject matter of Sigarev's plays is the decay of post-Soviet Russia. Plasticine deals with child rape, Black Milk features a husband and wife team of con men in an abusive relationship, while the main characters of Ladybird steal cemetery markers to sell them to raise money for booze.

Sigarev has directed three films, Volchok, which was made in 2009 and which he adapted from his own play, Zhit (Living) (2012) and The Land of Oz (2015). He also wrote the screenplay for Prodayotsya detektor lzhi (2005), which is based on his plays Detektor lzhi and Fantomnye boli. In his 2021 interview with Yury Dud Sigarev mentioned Elem Klimov's Come and See as the film that influenced him the most.^[10]

Sigarev lives in Moscow and was married to Russian actress Yana Troyanova from 2013 to 2020.^[11]

Sigarev openly supports Alexei Navalny and was detained at 2021 Russian protests.^[12]

• Plasticine
• Black Milk
• Ladybird