Censure
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Against the backdrop of a drastic tightening of censorship, Russian theaters that were too free for the Kremlin’s taste changed direction, or simply went out of business.
“From an art point of view, it’s not just sabotage, it’s murder,” believes Kirill Serebrennikov. Thursday evening, the exiled artist spoke by videoconference from France in front of a crowd of regulars who came to pay tribute to their favorite theater, the “Gogol Center”. The Russian authorities have announced the dismissal of the management and therefore of the troupe of this flagship theater of Free Moscow. The institution, created in 2012 on the basis of a drama theatre, has become one of the most popular stages in the capital with an average seat occupancy of 92%. But its particularity came above all from its tone: Serebrennikov, artistic director from the beginning, had made it a place of experimentation open to the world, able to rely on the history of Russia to tell the current period. The Gogol Center was also a privileged meeting place for a young generation of actors who had become masters in the art of questioning current politics with a subtlety allowing them to avoid prison. But according to one of them, comedian Alexander Kuznetsov, there is now nothing left of all that.
“This evening goes beyond the Gogol Centre, it represents the end of a period of our life, of this country. It’s the end, there’s no other place to go. We put the theater…
