Russian theaters feel the chill

"Bastards!" Grandma Nuria shouts out in a cemetery. She's full of despair as she utters the expletive, her impassioned monologue carrying within it questions about the futility of war and fighting.

It's unclear at whom the old woman is directing the abusive word: the soldiers or those who send them to fight in a war.  What is clear, however, is that she is full of grief over the loss of her husband, a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war, who is buried in the cemetery.

And now another member of her family is going off to war. This time it's her grandson, and Nuria fears that he, too, may not come back alive.

Uproar after the premiere

The scene in the cemetery is from the play "The First Bread," written by a young Russian playwright and staged by a young Polish director at the renowned Moscow theater Sovremennik, which means "contemporary."

Since it was founded in the 1960s, it has built a reputation as Russia's best-known experimental stage. The premiere of "The First Bread" took place in July. After that, Sovremennik wanted to close down for the summer break. But instead, the ensemble was plunged into days of turbulence.

Members of an association called "Officers of Russia" did not like the performance. They interpreted Nuria's swear words as an insult to World War Two veterans. And Nuria's grandson's affection for another man in the play was seen as propaganda for homosexuality.

Controversy spirals after complaints

These things are currently considered criminal acts in Russia. The "officers" and another veterans' association personally complained to the Moscow city administration and the mayor about the play and even wrote to the Russian Investigative Committee and the state prosecutor's office.

The story soon took on a life of its own. The left-wing nationalist pro-Kremlin organization "Serp" (South East Radical Block) went public, calling the director and the play "talentless." Its supporters even tried to disrupt a performance at the Sovremennik theater, though they didn't succeed.

The Veterans Association demanded the director's removal. When the story became a media sensation, the management at Sovremennik was forced to react and deleted controversial passages from the grandmother's monologue.

But it didn't end there. The advisory council of the Russian Ministry of Culture also waded into the controversy and demanded that an extra commission be set up to check all Moscow theaters for compliance with the so-called National Security Strategy.

The strategy document had only recently been updated into law by President Vladimir Putin. The complainants honed in on a passage calling for the "preservation of moral, spiritual and patriotic values."

Crazy about theater

The Russian Ministry of Culture distanced itself from the demands of the council, which has only an advisory function. But the threat had been made, raising the question of how much censorship there really is on Russia's stages.

In a city like Moscow with more than 250 theaters, this is a highly political question. After all, theaters are not only extraordinarily popular with the population but are also considered free spaces for important social debates.

"The current relationship between the state and the theater does sometimes look dramatic, and the level of theatricality in these conflicts is quite high,"  Alexander Rodionov, director of Teatr-Doc, an independent theater in Moscow, said. The goal of such conflicts, he says, is to "encourage self-censorship among theaters."

Rodionov's small but well-known theater consistently attracts attention with its staging of uncomfortable issues. In an interview with DW, Rodionov emphasized that, according to the constitution, there is no censorship in Russia. This is "important, valuable and fair for Russian culture," he said. The conflicts usually sounded louder and more frightening in words than they were in reality, he added.

Self-censorship as protection?

Theater critic Marina Davydova, on the other hand, fears that such incidents will occur more often in the future. "The fact that the Russian judiciary is now concerned about a play in which there is not a single indication of a crime shows that society is becoming radicalized," she said in an interview with DW.

The former director of the Novosibirsk State Opera, theater manager Boris Mezdrich, experienced that firsthand. After the Russian Orthodox Church took legal action against his production of Richard Wagner's "Tannhäuser" for allegedly offending religious feelings of believers, he lost his job as theater director in 2015.

Mezdrich believes that in the future there will be more so-called citizen groups "whose feelings could suddenly be hurt." To prevent the situation from escalating each time, he would like to see the state play a mediating role and out-of-court settlements.

In the meantime, Mezdrich himself is well back in business and does not see the scandal surrounding the "Tannhäuser" production only negatively. "I got a huge boost to my reputation," Mezdrich said. "That helped me mentally."

At the Sovremennik theater, things have calmed down again. The ensemble is on summer break. "The First Bread" doesn't feature in the theater's new program, at least for now. 

This article has been translated from German