November 2015: Pyotr Pavlensky sets the doors of the Russian security services building alight. Source: Facebook. “The madhouse was my first fully sensory experience,” Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina calmly tells her London audience, in tones uncharacteristic of the rest of Burning Doors, a new play by the Belarus Free Theatre that seeks to draw attention to the plight of Russian artists and dissidents. The theatre, banned in its own country, does a relentless job of transmitting this “experience” to the stage as it documents the trials Russian artists have faced in recent years.
The Belarus Free Theatre is no stranger to the difficulties of trying to create art inside a dictatorship. Established in 2005, the theatre has no official premises in its home country, and is forced to stage plays in private apartments and public spaces. Performances have previously been stormed by police, with actors, directors and audience members arrested. The theatre’s founder and co-founder live in the UK with political refugee status. On top of that, the troupe has struggled with securing the funds it needs to survive.
The direction Burning Doors takes is palpable on entering the steep stalls. A projection being shown above three prison cell doors introduces the play’s sources of inspiration, beginning with Alyokhina’s personal experiences of incarceration. The second is the work of performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky, who sewed his lips together in support of Pussy Riot’s right to freedom of speech, and later nailed his scrotum to Red Square and set fire to the doors of Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB). The third represents Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who remains imprisoned on terror charges (unrelated to his artistic work but rather to crackdowns in post-annexation Crimea). Experiences which Alyokhina has consigned to the past remain a present-day reality for Sentsov, which is a jarring realisation.
