Authorities ban jailed Russian theatre director from taking part in plays in prison

In an extraordinary act of petty cruelty, jailed Russian theatre director Yevgenia Berkovich has been banned by prison authorities from taking part in dramatic productions put on in her penal colony, her support group reported on Sunday.

“Zhenya asked me to let people know that yesterday she was officially banned from any performance-related activity … She kindly requests that people stop asking in their letters what she is staging. She isn’t staging anything. She’s just sewing,” her support group reported.

In March, Berkovich put on a puppet performance as part of a contest in the penal colony, coming in third out of eight performances, her support group said. In the same post, Berkovich said she was planning to put on a performance for 9 May, when Russia celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, and asked people to send in stories about life in the hinterland during World War II.

Berkovich, along with playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, was sentenced in July to six years in prison for “justifying terrorism” for staging Petriychuk’s award-winning play, Finist, The Brave Falcon. The pair subsequently had five and two months taken off their respective sentences on appeal.

Though it was initially lauded by critics and theatregoers, Finist, The Brave Falcon was later condemned by the Russian authorities, who claimed the play, which told the stories of Russian women who travelled to Syria during the civil war to marry Islamist militants they had met online, had “glorified terrorists”.