Moscow’s Golden Mask Festival: The Russian Case (Online, 2021)

The team running the Russian Case as part of Moscow’s annual Golden Mask Festival pulled off a major feat in 2021 by organizing a five-day programme online. Deeply disappointed that the Russian Case had been cancelled in the preceding year due to the Covid pandemic, this group made it its mission to succeed in adverse circumstances; and succeed it did by providing works varied enough to engage its habitual audience, as well as people coming to the event for the first time, albeit digitally. In a departure from established practice, several productions that were performed too late to compete for the awards of the 2021 Festival appeared in this year’s Russian Case. The overview offered here gathers some works out of the choices made by Maria Shevtsova, Editor of New Theatre Quarterly, whose most recent book is Rediscovering Stanislavsky (Cambridge University Press, 2020)