The witness status of theater director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk was changed to suspect by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. This was reported by TASS, citing a source in law enforcement.
Berkovich was detained in Moscow. “Contact someone with Zhenya, she does not pick up the phone,” the mother of director Elena Efros asked on social networks. Svetlana Petriychuk was detained at Vnukovo airport.
Due to the performance of Finist Yasny Sokol, a criminal case was opened under Article 202.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on justifying terrorism. Berkovich and Petriychuk were detained, a restraining order will be chosen for them on May 5 at the Zamoskvoretsky Court in Moscow. Employees of the Investigative Committee of the Moscow Central Administrative District have already questioned suspects of the new status.
On the morning of May 4, it was reported that a criminal case was opened for the game “Finist Yasny Sokol”. Berkovich and Petriychuk were first called in for questioning as witnesses, TASS reported.
Berkovich’s relatives were searched. Police searched the apartment of writer and human rights activist Nina Caterli, Yevgenia Berkovich’s grandmother. Alexander Andrievich, the director of the theater “The Daughters of SOSO”, where the show was staged, was also interrogated – he was left at home as a witness.
A performance adapted from Petriychuk’s play was staged by Berkovich in 2020. The plot of the story revolves around Russian women recruited by radical Islamists to be sent online to Syria. The game was written based on real-life sentences handed down by Russian courts in similar criminal cases.
Finist Yasny Sokol won two Golden Mask awards simultaneously in 2022, earning the nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Playwright.
“The play and performance were based on real sentences and interrogation records of women – there have been hundreds or even thousands of similar cases in Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in recent years. What happened to them? Where are these women running to, and most importantly, from where? What is the indestructible human need—belief, love, feeling like part of something big and powerful—that drives men to take up arms and kill and women to support it? Who is the Finist for whom Maryushka is ready to gnaw iron nuts and sit in accordance with Article 208?” The description of the performance on the theater’s website is as follows (the page was deleted when the material was published – socialbites.ca).
Actress Anastasia Sapozhnikova, who played one of the roles, told Lente.ru that the game does not justify terrorism.
He suggested that investigators did not read the text or watch the play.
“Looks like they’re on top. There was a performance about it – how the women are totally different, not bad and good, but different, how they find themselves in this situation. There is not a word about the legitimacy of terror in this game, the game is of women who can’t find the ideal in their heads and are thrown into everything already. It’s about eternal loneliness.
It’s just that someone has an instinct for self-preservation, and someone maybe not so developed, that’s all, ”sapozhnikova said.