Former Perm Vice Mayor and Theater Founder Valery Starikov Dies
Valery Starikov, the former head of the department of culture, sports, and youth policy of the Perm city administration and founder of the Ironical Company theater, has died. Recently, he had been working at the Sukharev sports complex.
Valery Borisovich Starikov died at the age of 64, according to v-kurse.ru citing its sources. He was born in Perm and graduated from Perm Polytechnic Institute in 1983, and in 1991 from the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music, and Cinematography named after N.K. Cherkasov. In the 1990s, Starikov founded the Ironical Company theater in Perm.
In 2000, Valery Starikov was appointed chief editor of the information and entertainment programs department at the T7 television and radio company. In 2005, he became head of the department of culture, sports, and youth policy, and in 2006, he moved to the position of director at the Perm Puppet Theater. As reported by v-kurse.ru, he had recently been working at the Sukharev sports complex.
In 2004, Valery Starikov stated that for artists with non-traditional sexual orientation, the cost of renting halls for performances should be increased. This, according to him, included Diana Arbenina, Svetlana Surganova, and Zemfira*. In 2009, when Zemfira* came to Perm for a King Crimson concert, in a conversation with journalists she recalled Valery Starikov.
«There was some official who compiled a list of people with non-traditional sexual orientation who were banned from entering Perm. Even Elton John was on it! I hope your current leadership can manage to make that awful scandal caused by that list forgotten,» the singer said.
The next time Zemfira* came to Perm was only on March 11, 2013.
*Recognized as a foreign agent by the Russian Ministry of Justice and also included in the list of extremists and terrorists. The artist«s real name is Zemfira Talgatovna Ramazanova.
