Alisa Zichuk
Actress, Director, Acting teacher and Visual Storyteller
Alisa Zichuk is an actress, director, acting teacher and visual storyteller based in Prague. Her professional practice combines screen acting, theatre, directing, performance training, filmmaking and education.
She graduated from the Kyiv University of Culture with a degree in Theatre and Cinema Directing in 2023, after studying there from 2019 to 2023. Alongside her university education, she trained extensively as an actress. From 2021 to 2023, she studied the Chubbuck Technique at Nastasia Shapoval’s Acting Studio, both in person and online. In 2023, she also completed the Acting Portfolio: Ukraine/Europe course focused on professional work within the Ukrainian and European acting industries.
Her further professional development includes physical theatre and movement-based performance training with NIPAI. In 2024, she participated in the Physicality in Acting Workshop led by Sergei Ostrenko and Jeremy Vik in Berlin, followed by the International Physical Theatre Laboratory of NIPAI at Laubegg Castle in Austria, an intensive programme of approximately 73 hours. In 2026, she continued her acting education through professional training with Maya Kvetny and Francisco Medina.
As a screen actress, Alisa has worked on international productions in the Czech Republic, Georgia and Ukraine. Her film credits include DAM, the vertical drama Never Piss Off, filmed in Tbilisi and directed by London-based director Lucas Pelizaro, as well as Starboy, Through Her Eyes, Ephemeral, You Will Never Know Why, The Killer Couple, and A Couple of Centimeters. She has performed principal roles across these screen projects.
Through Her Eyes was created as a student production connected to PFI and was selected as the Best Film of the Year within the institution.
Starboy received recognition at several international film festivals, including Boundless Film Festival in London, Your Way Film Festival in Malta, NAC Film Festival in Texas, Bonne Chance Festival in Paris, and Lift-Off Volume 7 at Pinewood Studios in England.
Her theatre work includes performances in Prague in Mírotvůrci, directed by Roman Horák and Philipp Schenker, and Zavřít nebe, directed by Tereza Krčálová. Both productions were performed in Czech. Her other stage credits include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard and Role, based on the work of Sergei Dovlatov. She also performed the role of Helen in Sherlock Holmes in an English-language theatre production in Prague.
Alongside acting, Alisa works as a film and theatre director. Her theatre directing credits include The Voice of the Silent Abyss, created in the Czech Republic, and Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, inspired by the work of Kurt Vonnegut.
Her film directing credits include Out of Character, Number Numb, The Killer Couple, and DAM. She has often combined directing with acting and other areas of production, allowing her to approach performance from both sides of the creative process.
Her latest directing project is the medium-length film Falsely Coherent Pattern, which she directed, filmed and edited herself. The project reflects her multidisciplinary approach to filmmaking, bringing together directing, acting, visual composition, camera work and post-production.
Alisa has also been working with cameras for approximately 12 years and has long-standing practical experience in visual storytelling. Alongside film production, she occasionally works in photography and has experience with cinematography, editing and visual composition. This background strongly influences the way she observes performance: not only from the perspective of an actor, but also through the eyes of a director, filmmaker and editor, with an understanding of how a performance functions within the frame and within the complete structure of a scene.
For the past three years, Alisa has also worked as an acting teacher at the private acting school Jsemherec.
She teaches both beginner and more advanced actors, working with acting technique, scene study, character development, physical expression and practical performance exercises. With more advanced students, her work also extends beyond individual exercises into the creation and development of complete performance projects.
Her combined experience as an actress, director and teacher allows her to give performers feedback from several perspectives at once. She is particularly interested in helping actors understand not only what works or does not work in a performance, but why, and how an artistic intention can be translated into a specific, playable and physically grounded action.
At NIPAI, Alisa worked as a teaching assistant to Sergei Ostrenko during the International Laboratory in 2024. She currently serves as a tutor for the distance-learning course "From Stage to Screen: The Complete Screen Acting Certificate", working remotely with NIPAI students and providing individual guidance and feedback throughout their studies.