Play readings written by acclaimed female voices from different generations.

14:00-15:30
CRIME by Esther Bol [Asya Voloshina]

The play Crime by Esther Bol (formerly Asya Voloshina) is composed of documentary-based correspondence between the protagonist from the start of the war and news feeds — primarily Ukrainian Telegram channels she follows. She is safe, or almost safe, but fully immersed in the war through the screen of her phone. She is Russian, and her lover is Ukrainian. He volunteered to fight at the front as a soldier for Ukraine. Early in the war, he is captured, while she is arrested for participating in an anti-war protest. No one knows his fate, and she writes letters into the void.

The play covers the events of the first six months of the war. The reading will feature its monologue version. The author considers Crime to be her most significant work to date.

17:30-19:00
LAND OF NO RETURN by Marina Davydova

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. A year before that, in 1990, on the outskirts of the empire, in Baku — now the capital of sovereign Azerbaijan — pogroms took place, leading to the exodus of the city’s large Armenian diaspora. Two hundred thousand people left the land they had long considered their home. This ethnic conflict has since been overshadowed in people's memory by the more dramatic events of 1991, yet it was, in many ways, the beginning of the dissolution of the vast empire.

At the heart of the play is a lyrical heroine who, much like Tadeusz Kantor in his "Theatre of Death", watches the characters as they move through more than forty years of history. The events of 2022 cast a new light on what happened in the early 1990s, just as the tragedies of the early 1990s help us to understand the roots of the events of 2022.

In Land of No Return, all political theses, slogans, and trends are questioned. No ideological cliché withstands the test of time and history. The only enduring foundation for humanity remains the ability to show compassion and forgive one another.

Although the play is based on the author's personal experiences and is generally faithful to historical events, its plot and characters are fictional. Land of No Return was written at the end of 2022, commissioned by Munich's Residenztheater, which holds the rights to its premiere production. The text has been translated into several European languages (German, French, Romanian). As part of the Voices festival, its first reading in Russian will take place.

19:30-21:00
BERLIN SYNDROME by Polina Borodina

“This is a painful and, I hope, funny text where I’ve gathered all my experience from insane Berlin dates and enduring an unbearable catastrophe in a new, bearable reality. It’s also my first original play written in exile, in a new context and from a new identity: it almost lacks the gravitational pull of Russia, and none of the characters share my background, even though most are immigrants and refugees. Why is this so important to me? In 2022, I thought my time as a playwright was over because I wouldn’t be able to create anything meaningful about either the new reality, which I don’t understand, or the old one, with which my connection is gradually fading. You know, almost two hundred years ago, Dostoevsky advised the émigré Turgenev to ‘bring a telescope from Paris’ to observe what’s happening in Russia, because — between the lines — it was clear he wouldn’t be able to write about French life anyway. I sincerely hope that this text proves I no longer need a telescope”.

MARFA GORVITS
director

Marfa Gorvits is a distinguished director, actress, and two-time Golden Mask Award laureate. She began her education at the Moscow International Film School and went on to study at the Shchepkin Higher Theater School under the guidance of Yury and Olga Solomin. Later, she completed her studies at the Directing Faculty of the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (RATI-GITIS) under the mentorship of Sergey Zhenovach. As an actress, Marfa performed in productions with the Theatre Art Studio and subsequently ventured into directing, with notable works such as The Fearless Nobleman at RAMT, Cinderella, and Flying Swings at the Praktika Theater.

In addition to her work in mainstream theater, Marfa founded the Children’s Documentary Theater Laboratory (DDTL) and serves as its artistic director. Her achievements include awards from the Arlekin All-Russian Children’s Theater Festival in St. Petersburg and the Tsar’s Fairy Tale International Theater Festival in Veliky Novgorod. Her directorial career has taken her to Estonia, Norway, Germany, and Israel, and she has collaborated with theaters across Russia, from St. Petersburg to Sakhalin.

MARINA DAVYDOVA
playwright

Marina Davydova is a theater historian, critic, playwright, and stage director. Since 2023, she has also served as the director of drama at the Salzburg Festival. Marina graduated from GITIS’s theatre history department and the master’s program at the State Institute of Art Studies, holding a Ph.D. in art history. She has taught at VGIK and RGGU and previously worked as a theatre critic for Moscow News, Russian Telegraph, Time for News, Izvestia, and OpenSpace. Since 1998, she has been the artistic director of the NET (New European Theatre) Festival and editor-in-chief of Theatre since 2010. Her published works include End of the Theatre Era and Culture Zero: Essays on Russian Life and the European Stage. As a director, she has staged pieces such as Eternal Russia and Museum of Uncounted Voices at Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Checkpoint Woodstock at Thalia (Hamburg), and Decline of the World at the MON Theatre Space (Kazan). Marina is a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

ESTHER BOL [Asya Voloshina]
playwright

Until February 2022, Esther Bol lived in St. Petersburg. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she left the country permanently. A graduate with a master’s degree from the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts, her plays have been translated into French, English, Polish, Spanish, Lithuanian, Czech, Romanian, and Hebrew and have been staged around 50 times in Russia, as well as in Poland, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Moldova, Israel, and Uruguay. As a symbol of the irrevocable rupture and impossibility of return, she changed her name.

POLINA BORODINA
playwright

Polina Borodina is a Russian playwright celebrated for her versatility across genres, from political and existential dramas to site-specific performances. Known for placing human experience at the core of her work, she addresses complex topics with a blend of humor and everyday absurdity. Her background outside of the cultural world has enriched her storytelling, enabling her to connect across diverse social groups. An award-winning author, Polina has over 50 productions staged internationally, many of which have been nominated for prestigious awards including "Golden Mask." After protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she was forced into exile. Now based in Berlin, she continues her work, organizing grassroots projects, writing a novel, and participating in the Deutsches Theater as an APF Foundation fellow.