Bullied by the state, Teatr. doc is now being targeted by ultraconservatives
nastasia patlay thought something was amiss when she checked the young man’s id.
He seemed a couple of years below the strict 18+ requirement for
this performance of “Out of the Closet”, a play adapted from interviews with gay men and
their families. That restriction was not the choice of Ms Patlay, the director,
but a demand of Russian federal law, which since 2013 has banned the
“promotion of non-traditional sexual relationships” to minors.
A photocopy of his passport, which Ms Patlay snapped on her phone,
suggested he had recently turned 19. Perhaps she was being paranoid, but Teatr.doc,
which specialises in verbatim dramas assembled from real-life documents
and transcripts—and has long been described as “Russia’s most controversial theatre company”—
had already had enough trouble from the authorities.
Her hunch was vindicated;
the spectator was a plant sent by a far-right group. Shortly after the show began,
he and his friend walked out to rendezvous with a dozen more agitators.
Together they accused the theatre staff of illegally exposing children to “gay propaganda”.
(The passport had been doctored; in reality, the youngster was 15.)
Then they invaded the auditorium, stopping the play and shouting homophobic slurs.
Police were called and a fight broke out;
Teatr.doc complained about the invasion, the saboteurs that a minor had been admitted.
No charges were brought, but that sting last August turned out to
be the start of a protracted ordeal for the Moscow-based company at the
hands of ultraconservatives.
Despite all the official pressure that Teatr.doc had suffered,
this campaign was (and is) a new and different problem.
It encapsulates the dual challenge of artistic censorship in Russia—which,
as Vladimir Putin’s rule has progressed, has come to be enforced by freelance outfits
as well as the state, and as much for supposedly moral reasons as over political dissent.
Teatr.doc was founded in 2002 by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov,
husband-and-wife playwrights who were inspired by verbatim drama workshops in Russia
led by the Royal Court theatre of London. Its shows elicited strong responses from the start,
not only because of the content—subjects included homelessness,
immigration and hiv—but also their style and everyday language.
Productions that drew particular ire (and acclaim) included “September.doc”,
in which actors read comments made in internet chat rooms following the Beslan school siege of 2004,
and “One Hour Eighteen Minutes”, a reference to the time doctors were denied
access to Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer, before he died in police custody.
“They went after things that ail the society,”
says John Freedman, a critic and translator of Russian drama,
“and they did it in a way that was quite direct.”