Maria
Alyokhina was detained by Russian police the day she was supposed to talk to
the Herald. As one of the three members of Pussy Riot who were imprisoned for hooliganism
in 2012 after performing an anti-government action in Moscow’s Orthodox
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Alyokhina is used to such adverse attention.
Alyokhina
was supposed to be talking about Riot Days, the punk theatre performance piece drawn
from her book of the same name. Part memoir of A Punk Prayer, the 40-second
Moscow performance that resulted in a trial and incarceration, part part
call-to-arms, Riot Days is currently touring the world. With Alyokhina at the
show’s centre, three other performers, including members of underground Russian
band, Asian Women on the Telephone, help thrash out a sense-assaulting mash-up
of sound and vision.
Next
month, Alyokhina, Pussy Riot and Riot Days arrive in Edinburgh for a ten-night
run prior to a short UK tour. This comes following a thrilling show at Glasgow
School of Art last November. Performed in furious Russian with a projected barrage
of English surtitles, those of us lucky enough to be there witnessed something
incendiary.
Last
Tuesday, Alyokhina was in Moscow when she was detained for evading 100 hours of
court-ordered community service after releasing boxes of paper aeroplanes
outside the headquarters of Russia’s Federal Security Service in April. This
followed a separate 40-hour sentence for visiting the FSB’s office on the
centennial of the Soviet secret police with a sign that read ‘Happy birthday,
executioners.’
When
we eventually catch up, it’s Saturday morning, and thousands of people are on
the streets in Edinburgh and are about to march in protest against Donald Trump,
who two days later would be meeting Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. This would be
the day after the World Cup final was held in Moscow. For the moment, however, Alyokhina
is crammed into a car, speeding across Germany with the rest of the Pussy Riot
collective behind Riot Days. Yesterday it was Poland, tomorrow, somewhere else.
“It’s
a collective work,” says Alyokhina of Riot Days. “It’s not only about me. All
of us who are on the stage are part of the story It’s also about Russia in all
its difficult circumstances. We wanted to do the play for the same reason I
wanted to write the book, to tell the story of what happened, and so people can
see what is going on in our country.”
In
their brightly coloured tights and balaclavas, Pussy Riot became icons of a
non-religious kind. Here, at last, was a new set of totems for revolution. Within
days of Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich being
sentenced in August 2012 to two years’ imprisonment, after images of the trial
captured the world, others had been inspired to take action.
In
the same room that Riot Days will be seen in Summerhall, a late-night guerrilla
performance by Glasgow-based writer and theatre-maker Julia Taudevin and others
saw Taudevin and co don their own home-made balaclavas to read out excerpts
from Pussy Riot’s speeches at the trial. When I mention this, Alyokhina
expresses a desire to meet Taudevin.
In
this sense, the long-term effect of Pussy Riot’s actions has been a galvanising
one, and the slogan ‘Everyone Can Be Pussy Riot’ has inspired a global
community founded on opposition.
“For
me it’s interesting,” says Alyokhina, laughing as she says it, ‘because in Russia,
since our action, things have become worse in terms of state level political
repression. What happened after we were sentenced following A Punk Prayer,
people started to support us, and in Russia if anyone supported Pussy Riot they
could be beaten and arrested.
“A
lot of people have left the country. Either they go to prison or they leave. But
for me now, it’s not right to escape. That’s not my choice, and what we are
sharing with Pussy Riot and with Riot Days is that our country shouldn’t be
occupied only by this group of assholes, but by us also.”
With
this attitude, more arrests like the one Alyokhina faced last Tuesday are
inevitable.
“If
you make the choice we have, arrests happen,” she says. “The solutions to that
are unpredictable, but it’s still our country, and we have the right to make
that choice.”
As
she talks, Alyokhina intermittently breaks off to respond to those around her
in Russian. Everything is collective, and everyone wants their say. It must be
exhausting, but it’s the only way. Such an ethos also means that that different
members of the collective can perform different actions. This was made clear
during the UK leg of the Riot Days tour last autumn when, separate to Riot Days,
Tolokonnikova took part in another show, Inside Pussy Riot, with British
theatre company Les Enfants Terribles at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
The
reach of Pussy Riot was made even clearer last Sunday, when the group claimed
responsibility for the pitch invasion by four members of Pussy Riot hat briefly
held up the World Cup final. The protesters were dressed in the black-and-white
of police uniforms, and, in a statement, Pussy Riot called the performance
Policeman enters the Game. The piece was inspired by the late Russian poet, Dimitry
Prigov, and called for the release of all political prisoners in Russia. The
four were held in a police station overnight, and, at time of writing, one of
them, Veronica Nikulshina, has been sentenced to fifteen days in a special
prison and has been banned from sporting events. Sentences for the other three
pitch invaders will follow.
“A
lot of people think Pussy Riot is a group like it was in 2012,” says Alyokhina
somewhat presciently, “but it’s not. It’s a big collective, and we all meet
each other and do things in different circumstances.”
Another
of these strands is MediaZona, an independent news website founded by Alyokhina
and Tolokonnikova in 2013 following their release from prison. With Tolokonnikova
instrumental in the site, Alyokhina calls it “A very important project. I also
believe that theatre, books, videos, actions, they can all make a change.”
Hence
Free the Pussy!, an exhibition to accompany Riot Days at Summerhall that
features work by the likes of Yoko Ono, Jamie Reid and Pussy Riot themselves.
With
Pussy Riot at the vanguard of change, what then, does Alyokhina want Riot Days
to achieve, and what does she think Pussy Riot has already accomplished?
“For
me,” she says, “the best answer is when people come up to me after the
performance, saying they want to make their own actions. If we’re talking about
the action in Russia, I’m so happy that in the the last six years I’ve met so
many smart, brave amazing girls and boys who decided to participate in Pussy
Riot when they saw our work. For me, it’s a big honour that, after watching our
actions and everything that came out of them, it changed their minds and
changed their lives.”
Somewhere
in Germany, the car has to stop awhile, and Alyokhina has to go. Soon she’ll be in motion
again, speeding onwards towards the next destination, and the possibility of
change.
Pussy
Riot: Riot Days, Summerhall, Edinburgh, August 10-19, 7-10pm. Free The Pussy!,
Summerhall, Edinburgh, August 2-September 23.
Maria Alyokhina appears with Yanis Varoufakis at Edinburgh International
Book Festival, August 18, 1.30-2.30pm. Riot Days is published by Penguin Books.
The Herald, July 17th 2018
ends
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