Kirill Serebrennikov entered court this week in a black T-shirt bearing a message for Russia, a quote from Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls: “Rus’, what do you want from me?”
It was an apt question from Russia’s leading avant-garde director, who faces a tortuous, months-long criminal trial seen as a bellwether for artistic freedom in the country.
Serebrennikov has been charged with embezzlement and faces 10 years in prison. Supporters have compared his trial to the purge of directors during the Soviet Union and the censorship of leading writers under the Tsars.
“People of culture have always held the most dangerous position in Russia,” Liya Akhedzhakova, a celebrated actor who starred in Soviet classics like Office Romance, told the Guardian in court on Tuesday. “They are the first to be targeted.”
Prosecutors claim that Serebrennikov and three co-defendants embezzled $1.2m (£937,000) from the Studio Seven theatre company from 2011-2014. The defence claims the money was spent on productions.
Critics think Serebrennikov’s problems have more to do with his politics than with money. The virtuoso director has made his name directing plays and films that challenged social norms, in a career that has been championed by some Kremlin officials but has also earned him powerful enemies.
The Student, a 2016 production about a teenager who wields religion to subdue his classmates and teachers, was seen as a searing critique of the Orthodox Church. Nureyev, a 2017 ballet directed by Serebrennikov, saw its debut at the Bolshoi theatre delayed amid concerns over its overt portrayal of the dancer’s homosexuality.
Now the man who created a hotbed of avant-garde theatre at Moscow’s Gogol Centre spends his days in court parsing expense reports.
During a seven-hour court session on Tuesday, he elicited laughs from the gallery when he described how he confirmed a request to purchase a musical instrument. “Ura! Let’s buy a piano!” he recalled saying.
He said he was more focused on productions than procurements.
“I was the artistic director,” he told Moscow’s Meshchansky Court court on Tuesday. “I didn’t know about the accounting side.”
The case has become a cause célèbre among Russia’s intelligentsia. In court you are likely to run into a smattering of film and movie stars, along with prominent journalists monitoring the process.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
