UVA, Department of Drama (Fall 2017)

Performed at the Ruth Caplin Theater

Marianne Kubik (dir)

“Masha”

Barbara Hammond’s WE ARE PUSSY RIOT OR EVERYTHING IS P.R. is an interactive, documentary drama that tells the story of the Russian performance collective whose 2012 protest of Vladimir Putin and the subsequent jailing of three of their members caused an international sensation.

In 2012, the five women of the feminist art collective known as Pussy Riot danced, kicked, and shouted their punk prayer to the Mother of God entitled “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!” on the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, a place where women were forbidden to stand.  Their performance lasted just 48 seconds before they were dragged away by security.  When the performers uploaded the video of the event to YouTube later that evening, they set in motion a series of events  that illustrates the benefits and dangers of activism in a connected world.  As soon as their post went viral, the young women became enemies of the Church and State.  Three of the performers were hunted down, put on trial, and convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”  The artists’ trial earned international attention and inspired acts of solidarity and fervent debate about the place of protests in modern society.  It is a story that combined bureaucratic lawyers, political prisoners, and religious orthodoxy while putting Putin and the Russian government under another round of scrutiny.