In an age of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and complete shutdown of freedom of speech at home, the future of theatre in Russia is bleak. As theatre is instrumentalised by the state in line with its “patriotic cultural policy”, prominent directors and writers have been forced into exile. Putin has effectively cancelled Russian culture.

But what about outside of Russia? How can we portray Russia onstage? Should we?

Join the Pushkin Club for an evening with Erica Whyman (acting artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, director of My Neighbour Totoro and Hamnet) and Roxy Cook (writer and director of A Woman Walks Into a Bank).

Pushkin House is delighted to present a special theatre evening featuring the performance of Vanya is Alive, an anti-war play by a Russian playwright Natalia Lizorkina, followed by a talk with the creative team.

Following the UK premiere of Eugene Birman's documentary opera Russia: Today at London's King's Place in February 2023, a new edition of the project is coming to Pushkin House. The evening features the film version of Russia: Today by Alexandra Karelina (2021), a world-premiere of two pieces by composer Martyn Harry performed live by EXAUDI, and a discussion with the Russia: Today creative team.

On the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine Pushkin House hosts the reading of three recently written anti-war plays. Playwrights are determined to speak out about the tragedy of the war, document its horrors and implications, understand the current situation, and seek ways to oppose the rhetoric of animosity and the legitimisation of Russia's imperial aspirations.

The plays will be read in Russian with translation provided via projection.

The Pushkin Club invites you to a talk by Robert Chandler in celebration of Pushkin’s birthday on 6 June and by way of introduction to his recently published selection of Pushkin’s prose, Peter the Great’s African.

Pushkin was acutely aware of the many schisms that Russia has suffered over the centuries: between the Orthodox Church and the Old Believers; between Slavophiles and Westerners; between liberals and authoritarians. He attached ever more importance to his work as a historian and, above all, to his study of Peter the Great. Chandler will discuss the various texts in the collection Peter the Great’s African and Pushkin’s great work of prose, The Captain’s Daughter.

The Pushkin Club invites you to a reading by Robert Chandler celebrating the life and work of Teffi.

Nadezdha Lokhvitskaya – the writer we now know as Teffi – was born on 21 May 1872. This year sees the 150th anniversary of her birth and the 80th anniversary of her death in Paris on 6 October 1952. Originally Robert Chandler had intended to celebrate these dates by reading from Other Worlds, a recently published collection of stories foregrounding her witty and paradoxical treatment of Russian folk religious beliefs. Instead, however, he will read from Memories, her account of her last journey across Russia and Ukraine in the early days of the Russian Civil War.

Pushkin House is hosting The Ukrainian Genius, an evening of readings and music to raise funds for Ukrainian humanitarian relief. The event has been initiated by a group of London-based friends, led by critic and translator Will Hobson and author Charlotte Hobson. They invite you to a celebration of Ukrainian culture to keep the bravery of its national struggle at the forefront of everyone’s minds and fly the flag for international solidarity.

Colonial wars are associated with the conquest of space—through the names of cities and rivers, through strategic coordinates, through percentages of territory captured or defended. Still, contemporary invasions spread out in time no less than space. In her performance, Anna Engelhardt explores the unique temporality of the Russian war machine.

Although the Russian military claims to use high-tech weaponry that ushers in a future of remotely controlled digital battles, these weapons often malfunction in the material world. These weapons are obsolete as soon as they are deployed – yet Russian colonial violence persists and these intergenerational wars subject their targets to repeated cycles of fear and violence. Engelhardt considers how to further the hardwired obsolescence of the Russian war machine.

Long Live, Queer Belarus! brings together the history and contemporaneity of queer communities in independent Belarus.

The opening lecture by Bahdan Khmialnitski is based on a case study of the capital of Belarus Minsk, introducing the stories, language, places and culture associated with its LGBTQ+ inhabitants. It focuses on the unique practices and vocabulary that the local queer people have developed despite and contrary to the current authoritarian regime.

Dr Margarita Kuleva and Pushkin House invite you to The Ball, an immersive party inspired by Plato’s Feast and aristocratic balls, Russian literature’s recurring mise-en-scène. Among the panellists will be artists and academics who explore Russian art or boundaries as social phenomena, and it will also focus on the interaction between The Guest (Margarita Kuleva) and The Host (Pohititel Aromatov, a queer UK-based artist and popular Russian video blogger).

Food and drink are included in the ticket price.

Tchaikovsky Music School presents the Young Pianists Concert. The pupils will perform works by Mozart, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and other composers.

Pushkin House and fetchish_net present act I — spectacle, an immersive experience retelling the story of the Russian ballet ‘Nutcracker’ focusing on the speculative reality of the Rat Kingdom.

The Ship is the second of three performative lectures developed by Dr Margarita Kuleva as part of her project The Arrival.

The lecture will be given at an aircraft hangar. The recording will be published on the Pushkin House YouTube channel, with the direct link available on this page.

The Border is the first of three performative lectures developed by Dr Margarita Kuleva as part of her project The Arrival.

The first lecture will be held while crossing the English Channel, at the France-UK border. The recording will be published on the Pushkin House YouTube channel, with the direct link available on this page.

Pushkin House and the producers of Chekhov Bows & Leaves invite you to the first public table reading of the script of a new film by director Sandy Strallen: a meditative reflection on death, dread and destiny.

Internationally acclaimed theatre company HUNCHtheatre, together with Pushkin House, proudly present the debut of English-language play 'One Day It Will Happen' by Russian playwright and journalist Tatyana Movshevich. This event will launch HUNCHtheatre’s new season championing new independent theatre voices. After the staged reading there will be a post-show discussion with award-winning BBC presenter Lucy Ash in conversation with Tatyana Movshevich and HUNCHtheatre's co-founding director Vladimir Shcherban.

Join legendary half-Russian conductor and composer José Serebrier and some other special guests for the launch of a new book about the maestro’s life and work. With more than 300 recordings to his name and multiple GRAMMY nominations, Serebrier is one of the busiest and most successful conductors around. Admired across the globe, he has proven for several decades that he is not only one of the most original composers, but that he is also a major conductor for our times.

English jazz singer Nette Robinson will lead a programme of imaginative and sensitive arrangements of traditional folk and popular songs from Russia. Nette will pair each Russian piece with a song from the British Isles or America and talk about the connections and the contrasts between them in terms of theme, narrative and atmosphere.

Bosnian pianist Damir Durmanovic presents 24 preludes by neglected Russian composer Felix Blumenfeld (1863-1931). Most famous as a Horowitz’s piano teacher, Blumenfeld was also a prominent conductor. As a composer he was close to the ‘Belyayev Circle’ and influenced by Chopin.

For World Theatre Day 2021 we speak to Fraser Grace, author of BLISS, forthcoming in publication from Methuen

Fraser Grace’s new play is based on The River Potudan, a short story by Andrey Platonov (1899-1951), and was rapturously received at the Platonov International Festival in Voronezh in 2019. The play’s publication this month marks the seventieth anniversary of Platonov’s death from tuberculosis, and almost 100 years since the events depicted in Platonov’s story.

A night of cutting-edge Russian contemporary literature, with the authors, translators and editors of a new issue of Words Without Borders.

Join the editors, translators and authors for an online roundtable on subjects such as the Russian literary scene in Western European cities, anti-war poetry by women and translating web-based literature, followed by a bilingual reading.

“Genius does not create. It reflects.”

Join Pushkin House for a preview staging of Anita Brokmeier and Anna Clart’s new play, about the forgotten female voices and lived experiences Leo Tolstoy co-opted to write Anna Karenina. Then, watch a Q&A with the creators and actors. Live in-person tickets and streaming available.

The Pushkin Club presents an illustrated Introduction in English, with a musical interlude and readings from Pushkin’s 'Mozart and Salieri' and his poem 'The Upas Tree'.

Dramatic-style readings from Pushkin’s works in English and Russian, with an illustrated introduction in English and a musical interlude

The Pushkin Club will devote an evening to the theme of people confronting statues – and vice-versa – in Pushkin’s work. This will be explored with reference to three of Pushkin's masterworks: The Stone Guest (1830), The Bronze Horseman (1833) and The Tale of the Golden Cockerel (1834).

On 9 June, the Pushkin Club gave us a glimpse of some of the masterpieces Pushkin wrote at the end of 1830 in three months of quarantine during a pandemic of Asiatic cholera, among them excerpts from the Little Tragedy A Feast during the Plague. Now, this event offers a rare chance to hear a rehearsed reading of this extraordinary piece by five actors, complete in a translation by Antony Wood.

English jazz singer Nette Robinson will lead a programme of imaginative and sensitive arrangements of traditional folk and popular songs from Russia. Nette will pair each Russian piece with a song from the British Isles or America and talk about the connections and the contrasts between them in terms of theme, narrative and atmosphere.

Join the IZBA club for a half-day special Shrovetide celebration – Maslenitsa – for grown-ups and kids alike!

At this festival of Russian traditions and folk music, guests will be welcomed with village songs and instrumental compositions, all from different regions of Russia and the Ukraine. There will be pancakes (‘blini’) aplenty – the symbol of the sun representing the shift from winter to spring. The arrival of Maslenitsa (Shrovetide) will be celebrated by making dolls under the guidance of a master doll-maker. There will also be traditional games and dancing.

A staged reading of a one-man play by prominent Russian writer and journalist Mikhail Zygar

Over 16 years ago, Zygar started his career as a war correspondent covering Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Central Asia. His play ‘War and Myth’ is based on personal experience that tells the story of a young man in his 20s who goes to war and tries his best to stay sane, only to return and find that war has crept into his home country. Mikhail does this with his characteristic charisma and sense of humour, creating a riveting narrative.

In English