Poems of detained Russian theatre director became instant hits as soon as she pressed ‘post’

Theatre director and poet Yevgenia (Zhenya) Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk were detained in Russia on May 5th, for “justification of terrorism” and promoting an “ideology of radical feminism” in their play, Finist, the Brave Falcon.

Centred on the fate of young women recruited online to marry Islamic State fighters, the show was staged in 2021 and went on to receive two national Golden Mask theatre awards.

The play, which I have watched a recording of, is a classic example of the cautionary tale. Arresting its authors, especially after all the awards, is a little bit like arresting Dostoevsky for justification of murder in Crime and Punishment.

Alexander Vartanov, a filmmaker who helped select the play for a drama festival in Russia, told me the play was “about how Russian society pushes some women into crime and then fails to rehabilitate them afterwards”.

“Berkovich included in the cast several nonprofessional actors – women who had survived abuse at home or at work. Their personal stories were masterfully woven into the stories of the characters they played, also based on real women and their court documents,” Vartanov said.

The pair are due to remain in custody until July 4th, with the charges against them carrying a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.

Since Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, countless writers, journalists and artists have left the country. Many have not, however, for various reasons. Some remained at home either publicly expressing support for the regime and, by extension, its war or tried to lay low and not attract any attention.

Berkovich, however, could do neither. She stayed in Moscow with her children – she has two adopted daughters with disabilities – and regularly posted her views and poignant poems on social media up until her arrest.

There are many who would argue that Russian artists should not be heard from these days. They make a fair point. If it weren’t, however, for the anti-war poetry of another theatre director, Bertolt Brecht, who fled Germany in late 1930s and wrote while living in Finland and America, how would we know that Germans who felt that way even existed?

Berkovich’s talent is strikingly obvious in her poetry, written over 2022 and 2023 in Moscow. Her poems became instant hits as soon as she pressed “post”.

[ ‘They drop lovely memories into a world filled with destruction and death’: Ukrainian women on the war, leaving home and moving to Ireland ]

There is one about the ghost of a grandfather who fought in the second World War and came to his grandchild to express horror and shame when Moscow attacked Kyiv.

She wrote about Russian mothers whose sons are drafted into the army and about Ukrainian children who are killed by those sons. She wrote about the broken lives of people fleeing the war (”Clothes needed for a boy/Who’s just come to exist/In the city that doesn’t”). Berkovich processed the killings and destruction, articulating the grief, guilt and despair that very few Russians even dare to admit to themselves, never mind put into words.

Commenting on one of Berkovich’s most affecting poems, Oh, How Mary Cried, journalist and literary critic Anna Narinskaya said it is “about the fate of women during the war and the attempt to find faith at a time when it is nearly impossible to believe. Berkovich sees God in a human being and vice versa”.

On July 19th, 2022, the Russian authorities made an official statement about the strong smell inside the ruins of Mariupol theatre. It was not to do with the remaining bodies of the hundreds of victims, they said, but, rather, it came from the “fish storage in the theatre basement”.

This poem was Berkovich’s immediate response. She approved of this translation I sent to her.

Do you claim to love theatre like the fish claim?

Every theatre has plenty of

Giant manta rays,

River perches, medium sized carps,

And plaice, as flat as a deck of cards,

Colourful giggling tropical fish,

And the tiny ones that’d make a cat squeamish

All of them are one of a kind:

There are fish-extras and fish-leading parts,

Fish-assistant director, sharp teeth and kind heart,

Fish-stage manager, cunning, greedy and smart

And every theatre has a fire security person routinely emerging -

Peter, the sturgeon.

The costume room has a fish-belt

The theatre bar has a fish-flow

They are usually all swimming out here after the show

They are coming in packs from the various halls

When it’s time and as always the conch shell calls

When the corridors slowly become dimly lit

They are looking at two legged creatures leaving this ship

Watching the huge shining opening womb

And flocks of people pouring out of the cloak room.

And if to stay in the basement some of them wished

They did not perish, they were summoned by fish

Together now they are diving among the corals

Much more alive than some decorated generals

From all coral reefs fish are smiling at them,

Shrimp deftly serving delicious seaweed stems,

And walking on top the distinguished ones bristle.

They are cold. They are silent.

Completely abyssal.

Olga Taranova is a journalist and translator