"Maryushki go to death"

Tatyana Tikhonovets is a critic who nominated the “Finista” on the Golden Mask. In court, she tried to explain to the prosecution of what the meaning of the performance of Zhenya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk

In the second Western District Military Court, the sixth meeting was held in the case of the director Zhenya Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk. They are accused of “public justification” and “propaganda” of terrorism due to the play “Finist Yasny Falcon”-it tells about the Russians who are recruited by the Islamists. Medusa publishes the report of the publication "Bereg", whose correspondents visited the meeting.

Attention! There is a mat in this text. If this is unacceptable to you, do not read it.

A new meeting begins with the fact that a listener is withdrawn from the hall - a man of about 25 years old with a shaved head. One of the bailiffs did not like that he came to the court in shorts.

Judge Yuri Massin enters the hall with an hour delay. “Compared to what it was before, count, on time,” the listeners whisper (absolutely all previous meetings began with a delay, the maximum amounted to six hours). By the third week of the court, the support group of Zhenya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk became smaller, but almost all the places in the hall (about 25) are still occupied.

It was originally planned that on June 3 the witnesses would be interrogated by the prosecutions who did not come to court at one of the first meetings - but they did not appear today. Lawyer Berkovich Ksenia Karpinskaya suggests instead to begin to interrogate witnesses of defense - especially one of them in the court building. But the prosecutor Ekaterina Denisova objects and begins to present written evidence.

First - excerpts from the transcript of the video shot during the reading of the Finist at the Lyubimovka festival in 2019. All the fragments that interest Denisov relate to the testimony of Maryushki - this is how the Russians who are going to go to Syria are named in the play to marry the Islamists.

Among other things, the prosecutor reads the dialogue of one of Maryushki and the judge - this is an important point in the play, which is usually indicated by the defenders Berkovich and Petriychuk.

- Did you go to Syria to become a terrorist? -quotes Judge Denisov (on these words, Zhenya Berkovich peeps out from behind the spin of lawyers sitting in front of the Aquarium, to better see and hear the state prosecutor).

“I was driving to get married,” the prosecutor answers monotonously for Maryushka. Denisova continues to go along the lines. “The judge of the Tlyaratinsky District Court, having examined the materials of the criminal case against the defendant - the name was seized - born in 1990, natives and residents of the village of Vitiatli Tsuntinsky district ...” - she is painfully trying to pronounce the Dagestan toponyms.

Berkovich at this time cunningly at a glance with the audience. She remembers some fragments of the play by heart and sounds them silently; Sometimes he leans to Petriychuk and whispers something in her ear. She nods back and smiles.

Sergei Badamshin, who defends Petriychuk, carefully listens to the prosecutor’s speech, as if he were about to hear something important. “How can you fall in love with someone without even seeing a photo? Are you at all - an obscene word?! " - Denisov quotes the judge, replacing the word "fucking" on the go. Badamshin smiles rather and nods.

Having finished with excerpts from the reading of the “Finist”, the prosecutor moves to the transcript of the video of the performance itself. It differs from the play - not only the text written by Petriychuk sounded from the stage, but also the monologues of Maryushki, invented by actresses specifically for the performance.

For example, one of the heroines, a journalist, said that she decided to infiltrate ISIS, because none of the Russian reporters had yet worked there under the guise.

The other described that the Islamists recruited her in a group in social networks dedicated to oriental music (the girl decided to go into this community after she heard the Vostok radio in a taxi along the way from IKEA). Hearing the name of the Swedish brand, after the outbreak of the full -scale war of the that left Russia, the listeners and lawyers smile sadly.

It becomes stuffy in the hall: the sky outside the window is gradually dragging into clouds. One of the bailiffs is already fanned by the beret, the other pulls off the buff from the neck, which at the beginning of the meeting covered his face. The judge also does not withstand and turns to the prosecutor, who has already blushed from the stuffiness: "Ekaterina Mikhailovna, we are already working forty for an hour, let's declare a break."

- In the most interesting place! - Badamshin sighs. -How did it end?

“Without spoilers,” Denisova smiles.

After a break, the prosecutor reads the transcript. The judge finally allows you to start the interrogation of the defense witness. A woman with a short haircut enters the hall-theater critic Tatyana Tikhonovets, who in 2021 was the chairman of the Golden Mask expert commission and nominated for this Fanista award.

The judge asks if the witness is familiar with the defendants. Tikhonovets replies that he is familiar with Berkovich “superficially”, and in Petriychuk “only plays”.

At the request of Ksenia, Karpinskaya, the critic tells what her work in the Golden Mask was: throughout the theater season, which precedes the festival, Tikhonovets watched performances in different cities of Russia, and then compiled a list of possible nominees. In 2021, for example, she managed to see 250 performances live and another 400 in the record. At the same time, the specific production, according to the critic, can get into the short list of the Golden Mask only if all members of the expert council (that year were 10) managed to get acquainted with it and appreciated it just as highly.

“Here [in the“ finalist ”] we drew attention to amazing costumes. We had a majority of votes for the play and for the performance ( to include them in the short list, approx. “Coast”) , ”says Tikhonovets. - First of all, for the performance! "

Lawyer Elena Oreshnikova, protecting Berkovich, turns to the director and smiles, bowing his head to one side. She smiles sadly back.

The witness, meanwhile, emphasizes: according to her assessment, the “Finist” only warned women against correspondence in social networks with strangers. “I always watch the audience. It was clear that I was not alone in a situation where we [before] did not think about what a terrible, serious problem it was! - the theater critic says with fervor. -This is the SOS signal: Beware, do not go in that direction, do not go to the messages of some oriental princes! ”

Karpinskaya clarifies whether the position of the playwright or director always coincides with the position of his heroes. “Almost always does not match,” says Tikhonovets. Referring to the book “Morphology of the fairy tale” of the Soviet philologist and folklorist Vladimir Propp, she explains that in the original fairy tale , the attempt to find Finist means “The Way to Death”.

“I think that such a director as Evgenia Berkovich, of course, knows this work,” says the witness. She has no doubt that the production should also be interpreted: “In the play [Maryushki], they also go to death. It can be civilian death if [it comes to the fact that the heroine] was planted, it can be physical death - they also shot them in Syria. ”

- Tell me, please, does this performance justify or promote terrorism? - asks Karpinskaya.

“No,” the critic replies confidently. - He warns of this terrible danger, and does it very accurately and clearly. It is very clear for the person who sits in the hall.

She adds that while watching the performance, the following thought about the Maryushki: “Lord, what kind of fools are like that! Have you never tried reading a book? "

During the interrogation of Badamshin, he changes the topic and asks the witness to tell about the criteria for selecting performances for the Golden Mask.

- Are political views, personal acquaintances, relations of the criteria in order to select this or that participant as a nominee? - asks the defender.

- I can say for sure: no!

And the prosecutor is interested in whether representatives of the expert council or members of the Golden Mask jury can be biased to nominees.

- Do you think that until 2023 performances, which were also nominated, were Russophobic, shocking, scandalous? - the state prosecutor asks directly.

“Well, [let's start] with Rusofobsky,” the witness takes a breath and continues strictly. - All major artists of our time in different years received a “golden mask”. And all major directors. How many "gold masks" of the [conductor and trustee of Vladimir Putin Valery] Gergiev! It is simple, I think, insulting - the word "Russophobic." This is not true!

Judge Yuri Massin is trying to reformulate the question: “Maybe the“ Golden Mask ”had any pronounced moods with its idea and awards were issued on the basis of these moods?” Tikhonovets emphasizes: dozens of different people of different theater professions, even in theory, cannot “conspire” and give bonuses to some “Russophobes”.

In the conclusion of the interrogation, Massin suddenly clarifies which version of the fairy tale “Finist Yasny Falcon” was read by Tikhonovets. Indeed, in the one he himself is familiar, the main character and the Finist at the end got married.

“Sadness did not smell at the end of the fairy tale,” the judge says, recalling the discussion of the “path to death”.

“The director does not just watch the word, he tries to understand what the meaning of everything is,” the critic explains his position.

At this meeting is put off until June 6th. Ksenia Karpinskaya is trying to find out if the defense can invite his witnesses to this. The prosecutor replies that she has not yet finished presenting evidence, so he cannot guarantee that witnesses will be able to perform. Lawyers remain at a loss: the witnesses declared by the prosecution itself, over and over again, ignore the summons in the court, which slows down the process. Denisova briefly says that he cannot affect the appearance of witnesses, and leaves the hall.

Listeners gather in the lobby to spend Zhenya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk, who are led from the hall to the convoy. Passing by Tatyana Tikhonovets is escorted with loud applause. The bailiffs attend the audience on duty by the fact that they will no longer let them into the hall. “Yeah,” one of the listeners whispers quietly. “They will not break everyone!”

"Shore"