Russian theatre in the age of High Putinism: politics and aesthetics

Setting out from the premise that legislation is performative, this study initially explores the relationship between state cultural policy, censorship, and theatre production. The case is made that following the so-called ‘conservative-authoritarian turn’ in Russia in 2012, there has been a gradual return to an interventionist cultural policy qualitatively similar in some respects to that of Soviet-era Socialist Realism. I identify and describe the period in question – which is characterised by intensified censorship in its numerous guises, a new highly prescriptive cultural policy, and arbitrary repressions of nonconformist elements in society – as the period of High Putinism. Having established the environment in which contemporary theatre in Russia operated during the second decade of the twenty-first century, surveys of the field are combined with close analysis of a dozen productions from the period. Collectively, these works all demonstrate in various ways what Jacques Rancière calls ‘dissensus’, which is to say they resist, circumvent, and transgress the norms of the ideological consensus set out by the state cultural policy. What they develop instead are alternative ways of thinking, seeing and doing that look beyond the horizons of the status quo. They achieve this through a variety of means, including aesthetic experimentation, audience participation, digital technology, contemporary dance and music, as well as radical postdramatic staging devices – in short, a hybridization of genres, styles, disciplines, and media. The resulting thesis is a cross-section of a vivid contemporary theatre scene existing largely on the margins of cultural life. From this position of marginality, a diverse set of emancipatory performance practices emerges.