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RAVE AGAINST THE WAR


INTERVIEW with ANNA DEMIDOVA from The Run: Refugee Rave Team

Question: When did you arrive in Berlin?

Anna: On March 8, 2022.

Question: What was your reason for leaving Russia?

Anna: When the war started on February 24 last year, I participated in the protests in Moscow. Usually when you protest, there is always an organization or a person who organizes it. So it's well organized and people know where to go, what to do. But in this case it was very spontaneous, it just happened out of the will of people who were against the war and found the war ridiculous. There was a lack of organization; the police, on the other hand, were very well organized. Many larger organizations that would normally organize the protest suggested it would be better to form grassroots organizations, organize your friends, the people you know, and go to the small protests because they are harder to capture by the police.

Question: You then organized something yourself?

Anna: I wanted to do my part and every day I went to the streets of Moscow to protest and I saw that every day there were more and more police, less and less people went to the streets because they were afraid. A few days after the war started it was almost impossible to demonstrate in the center of Moscow, as soon as you came out of the metro station there was a police car waiting for you. And every day I saw more and more cars with Z-signs and more and more pro-war people, I thought they were so ridiculous.

Question: But it became more dangerous?

Anna: Yes, it wasn't safe for me anymore, also because the police tried to catch me and somehow I also saw that all my efforts were kind of useless. That was the moment when I made the decision to leave, and because I knew that the police were after me, I had to make that decision very, very quickly. I had to pack my whole life in a suitcase and I only had one day to do it. So I don't know, it was crazy, but I did it. Yeah, and then I left.

Question: Do you plan to go back?

Anna: I can't. The moment I arrive or shortly after, I will be arrested by the police and sent to jail. And I can't let that happen, if you get arrested by the police and go to jail, you are prevented from doing something. But it's really important to protest, to do something, to oppose this system. When you're in jail, you can't change anything.

Question: When did you start theater in Russia?

Anna: I started playing roles for my family as a toddler, then in school, I attended theater classes, went to a university to study acting and started my acting career. But I always thought I could do more than just repeat the words someone else wrote for me. So at some point I did my own performance, I realized that I had something to say myself, values to convey and something that I thought was really important. At that time I didn't have any training as a director so I just put together a team, there were a lot of people who surprisingly wanted to work with me and so we did this performance with six actors and four musicians. There was a band and it was really crazy. After that I started to train and then in 2018 I started my own theater company with this first theater production. Then I started doing more and more and had this theater in Moscow for five years.

Question: Something like now?

Anna: Something like now. But right now I couldn't say we are a compagny. We're a bunch of theater people, we've been together for a series of performances and now we've started to do the second one for the Performance Festival in Berlin in early June 2023.

Question: Was your idea to do political theater in Russia?

Anna: Yes, that's a good question. I think most of the problems Russia has right now are due to a certain mentality of the Russian people, which is very hierarchical. People are always looking for a leader or a person, usually a big man, to tell them what to do. And so it is in all the state theaters that we have, there is always this big director at the top of the pyramid and all the other people serve him. That's kind of funny, in the Russian language we don't say we work in the theater, we say - We serve a theater, yes. And that's something very different from what I want to do in my life. I don't want to serve anybody.

Question: Were you able to realize anything else in Russia?

Anna: It was my vision, an egalitarian way of working, and to be honest there was some resistance even from the actors. Actors are not used to working like this. From the moment they go to university, there's this main teacher they call the master. Even that word, the master. From the very beginning they will blindly believe what this person says, perceiving themselves and their weaknesses and strengths only through his eyes. By the way, this is always a man.

Question: When did you start working with theater in Berlin?

Anna: Almost from the moment I arrived. I already had an idea on the plane, that started with a play by Mikhail Bulgakov called "The Flight". I've read a lot of his plays and books and generally like them a lot, but this one I never understood because the narrative is very unclear. There are these eight dreams of something and you always get lost in the narrative. But then the epiphany came. I hadn't slept for two days because I really had to pack my things very quickly and organize everything, I couldn't sleep because of all the adrenaline. Then my plane was always delayed and I was really afraid that I might not be able to fly because the plane was constantly delayed. When I was finally on the plane, it was 8:00 in the morning, and I said, "Please bring me some wine." I got some wine and started reading this book again, The Flight, and suddenly it was clear to me, "Oh my God, now I understand what the book is about."

What Mikhail Bulgakov wrote about happened in 1922, about 100 years ago, and it was just as crazy as what I just experienced. There are also these points on the map like Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Istanbul, Europe, some European cities. So I thought this form of a dream is a very interesting narrative, a very interesting form to talk about the refugee experience.

Question: Did you then think about some destinies and create a script?

Anna: No, not at all. I was collecting these stories. My flight first went to Istanbul and I was so surprised to meet so many of my friends and colleagues there who fled Russia for the same reason, all kinds of persecution. I also met many new people and I was really shocked by their stories, especially the conflicts with their parents. Some of these parents said, "Oh, you don't support Putin. Then you're not our son anymore either. We don't want you in the family." There were really big, big conflicts within the families. And people told me crazy stories about how they moved from Russia to Turkey. And then when I arrived in Berlin, I met a lot of people from Ukraine, and their stories were even crazier, how they fled bombs and other things from this terrible war.

Question: How did Bulgakov now help capture these stories?

Anna: So at first I collected all these stories and thought it would be exciting to perform them, but how? When I encouraged people to talk, everyone told something, but they were nightmares, I couldn't believe that this should be real, it was all like a bad dream. But it's similar with Bulgakov, he realized this and I thought, exactly, the dream is the right form for such stories. This was to become a performance with eight dreams set in different places.

Question: But that already sounds like a classic work with author, director, actresses working from text.

Anna: It went differently. I met different artists in Berlin and we started to improvise and exchange, we shared some of my working methods and it was exactly as I described before. And in the end there were eight artists participating in one production.

Question: So it's not about the eight stories of the people we see on stage?

Anna: I would say we were more inspired by the stories, but it's not that the performance itself is not real. We use this documentary material, then we create a story from it and add something, we are very, very flexible. Also, this is, as we say, a dream. So this is not the real story.

Question:. A Russian director and Ukrainian actresses. Isn't that terribly complicated at the moment?

Anna: I think it's very important among people from different countries, especially from Russia and Ukraine, to listen to each other, that happens way too rarely. By talking and listening we can solve a lot of problems, it's so simple, even if it sounds like a corny saying, but it really helps. When you listen and recognize what other people's needs are, what they would like to do, what they would like to promote, what ideas are important to them, when you support their ideas, then collaborative work is possible. So for me that was really important, for me as a person, I'm very interested in their stories. And I'm very interested in talking and communicating with Ukrainian artists and understanding what they think. Who are they, what is their world like, how can we do something together? I also questioned myself and thought about basic things like respect, trust, conversations and questions.

Question: Was the performance at Ballhaus Prinzenallee your premiere?

Anna: Before that we had the official premiere, because we also needed some funding to make that premiere possible. We didn't have any money, so we couldn't lift a big production with nice costumes, nice sets, lighting and so on. But we still wanted to go through a few roles and we did this little showcase in September, just a few scenes, at a place called PAS Petersburg Art Space Berlin.

Question: What is The Run - Refugee Rave in terms of genre?

Anna: Okay. I'll try to explain. So, these are eight dreams from eight different refugees or immigrants or people with a migration background. It's related, of course, to the ongoing war in Ukraine. These were our dreams, our nightmares in this time of war. We are different people from different places, but we share this common experience, and we want to bring it to the audience. But not moralistic, so to say: Putin is a bad person! War is a bad thing! That's clear. Everybody knows that. There's no point in doing a performance just because of that.

Question: What else can you achieve in the theater?

Anna: Theater should also be fun. We want our audience to get to know us better. To get closer to us, to feel us better. Berlin is such an international city with people from many different countries, but everyone lives on their own planet and is focused on their own problems. And the Theater is really a cool way to get in touch with people. Usually people find something unknown scary. We're here to show that we're not scary. Maybe we all have the same problems.

Question: But now you have several languages on stage and English subtitles, but not always. How do the ideas come across if the audience doesn't know the languages?

Anna: It doesn't always have to be text. By the way, we have subtitles in German and in English, sometimes we switch, one day in German, the other day in English. There are five languages spoken in the performance: English, Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian and Italian. And I wanted to keep those languages because I think it's nice to speak different languages. Every new language you learn is a new way of thinking.

Question: Do you want to create your own language for your subject?

Anna: In a way, yes, there are many more means than speaking. The stage and costume design by the great designer Alexandra Kharina. These visual things are already a language of their own. We also have a fantastic music created by composer Zaur Dakhuzhev and played by DJ Alla Krokha. This is also a language, and there is a lot of singing and music, so we call it The Run Refugee Rave, that is the real rave with a real DJ, and we have a professional choreography by Alexandr Andriyashkin. There are many languages with us and The Run: Refugee Rave itself is already a new language.

Fotos Pavel Metelitsyn and Lika Petrychenko