Theater qualification

In May, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning swearing in public places, including swearing that should not be heard from theater stages.
The bill was approved by the Federation Council at the end of April.

As noted by the assistant artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov, theater critic Pavel Rudnev, who came to the Tomsk Drama Festival “Season Premieres”, removing performances from the repertoire that contain obscene language is not an option.

“Theater is not only about the beautiful, but also about the eerie, scary, blood, sex. These are also themes for art. Theater playwrights will still look for euphemisms and replace words. Thus, in order to become documentary and believable, the theater will be forced to invent new forms,” Rudnev noted.

According to the critic, very soon the theaters themselves could abandon obscenity in performances.

“Obscene language came into use in drama and theater during the era of perestroika. This is not a problem of our time. The problem is that this law was adopted at a time when in another two or three seasons the theater itself will abandon this vocabulary, because this is an absolutely used technique that has already exhausted all its resources,” the critic added.

According to Rudnev, everything that is prohibited instantly excites, which means that the emergence of underground theaters and performances is not excluded.

According to the bill, it establishes fines for offenses: for citizens - from 2 to 2.5 thousand rubles, for officials - up to 5 thousand, and for legal entities - from 40 to 50 thousand rubles. A list of prohibited swear words will be compiled later, based on an independent linguistic examination.

Let us add that from May 9 to 11, the Tomsk Drama Theater hosts the festival “Premieres of the 163rd theatrical season.”

For more information about how the festival went, see the “Rush Hour” program on May 12.