Assignment: The Life, Death and Rebirth of a Russian Theatre
Tatiana Frolova wasn\u2019t born to be a theatre director. She grew up in the 1960s and \u201870s in a cut-off part of a closed country, the Soviet Far East. She was a shy, nervous girl brought up by a silent mother in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, the bleak \u201cCity of the Dawn\u201d built on Stalin\u2019s orders in the early 1930s and celebrated officially as a Communist \u201chero-project.\u201d But in 1985, aged 24, as the first glimmerings of glasnost appeared, Tatyana founded the Soviet Union\u2019s first independent theatre since 1927 \u2013 known as KnAM - in Komsomolsk. It was tiny \u2013 with only 26 seats. But it tried to push back the boundaries of what could be discussed, building new plays around the memories and experiences of local people. They dealt with fear and violence transmitted from generation to generation. The theatre survived for 37 years despite the narrowing of possibilities for free speech under Vladimir Putin. But when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began last year, Tatiana realised she and her actors had to leave. Now, they\u2019re touring Europe with a new play, "We are no longer.." It\u2019s about who they were, and what they\u2019ve lost. But what\u2019s the future for Tatiana and her troupe - just a handful of the hundreds of thousands of Russians now in exile? And what image of Russia are they presenting to Western audiences? For Assignment, Tim Whewell goes to meet them.
Image: A scene from \u201cWe Are No Longer\u201d by KnAM Theatre \n(Picture copyright Julie Cherki)