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Theatre Highlight of 2018 - Pussy Riot: Riot Days

Maria Alyokhina’s Herald Angel-winning multi-media stage version of her memoir of prison life was a dramatic call to arms like no other. Charting the aftermath of Alyokhina’s arrest in 2012 alongside two of her comrades in anti-authoritarian Russian collective Pussy Riot following their ‘punk prayer’ in a Moscow orthodox church, Yury Muravitsky’s production was a fifty-minute multi-media collage of text, electronica, martial drumming and archive projections. Performed in Russian with English surtitles by Alyokhina and a quartet of actor/musicians, Riot Days necessitated Alyokhina to smuggle herself out of Russia for the show’s ten-night Edinburgh Festival Fringe run at Summerhall. The result was relentless, defiant and inspirational.

Part of The Herald's Cultural Pick of the Year, in which twelve writers chose their personal highlight of 2018, December 29th 2018.

endsa


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