Elena Gremina: "We are ready for everything"

Yesterday it became known that the Department of Urban Property of Moscow unilaterally terminated the lease agreement with Theater.Doc. At the request of COLTA . Ru was commented on by the co -founder and director of the theater Elena Gremina.

- What happened to the premises of the Theater. doc "?

- We, as regular tenants, have the right to an advantage when extending the lease. And in the prescribed manner we brought documents for extension of the lease. Yesterday we learned that, it turns out, the Department of Property terminated the contract with us. And we can no longer extend the rent.

-How did it happen that you did not know that the contract was terminated already in May 2014?

- Nobody informed us about this.

-And now you learned about the situation because some notification has come?

- No, because the contract did not extend with us.

- And you did not receive any comments from officials?

- No.

- What does this mean in the practical sense?

- What if everything happens, we will have to free the room and go into the night.

- How long are you given to free the room? And why, if the contract was terminated in May, did you work in the same place all summer?

- We must get out in a month. But no one told us anything like that, we pay rent as before. Perhaps it can happen in retroactively - I don’t know.

- that "Theater. DOC ”should now do in the official order?

-Now we must understand whether we can still somehow influence the property department so that we are extended by the contract. If not, we must free the room and find something else.

- "Theater. DOC ”regularly pays rent, and now they do this with it - is it generally legal?

- I have no idea. This is all incomprehensible to me. What are the grounds to terminate the contract if we rent this site for 12 years? Fire checks? We all passed them. Here you can only deal with conspiracyology - why does it suddenly need to destroy the site, which is 12 years old?

We have something like that all the time.

- Is it important that the theater. DOC ”was located precisely in the building in Trekhprudny Lane, and not somewhere else?

- Yes, it seems to me that if we are 12 years in this place, this is already a story, but, in principle, we are ready for everything.

- That is, it is important for you that the theater just survives?

- No. Just when there is such a story that they try to destroy us (and to drive us out of the room that you rent for 12 years is an attempt to destroy), of course, I think that our responsibility is to make the theater continue. A lot of people are writing now, they consider themselves part of this community, and thus there is an obligation to continue it.

- And in the legal sense, can you resist the situations?

- I think that the Department of Property is a monopolist and can do anything. And not that he found some violation from you and says: “How will you explain this? Here you have three days to correct it. ” He can simply do anything. Take and drive you out into the street if he does not like something. Not explaining anything.

- Is it difficult to refrain from asking: do you generally associate the events of yesterday with a deterioration in the sociocultural situation in the country?

- I am not a conspiracyologist, I can only work with facts. I think that this connection suggests itself, but nevertheless we were not ready for the fact that such a thing could happen.

- At the Theater. DOC »Are there active ill -wishers?

- No. On the contrary, we are somehow on take-off, we have our own audience.

-I am not in the sense of attendance, but in the sense-could your performances cause a strong irritation in someone?

- Well, such performances and such people, of course, are. But if you read user reviews, for example, in Afisha-we have one of the most popular theaters in Moscow, they write a lot about us, and it is clear that we somehow fall into the specific interests of people. We have different performances: innovative, conservative, all sorts.

-Did you have something resonant, for what could you press you so recently?

- There was a reading of the Maidan's Diaries , there was a COLTA.RU project “Dangerous plays” , which we showed after the cancellation to Mokmokf. “Berlusputin” is still going on, “1.18”, the reading of Oleg Sentsov is now being prepared. We have something like that all the time.

- What are you going to do now?

- Losing a room for us is, of course, a drama. But, in principle, “Theater. DOC ”is not walls, these are people. And in this sense, of course, we will come up with something. But what to say: this is still a blow.