Royal Court Pussy Riot

PRESS RELEASE

ROYAL COURT PUSSY RIOT

SATURDAY 3 NOVEMBER

The Royal Court Theatre will host its own Pussy Riot on Saturday 3rd November from 2pm inspired by Russia’s feminist punk band who were jailed in August for hooliganism after being arrested for an impromptu anti-Putin protest in Moscow’s main cathedral.

Writers, artists and performers will come together to bring the punk political spirit of the Pussy Riot to the Royal Court’s Wilson Studio for an afternoon of anarchic artistic expression, inspired by Pussy Riot’s iconic protest.

The day will include new short plays by young British and Russian playwrights, including responses from E.V. Crowe, Yaroslava Pulinovich, Penelope Skinner, Hayley Squires and Yulia Yakovleva as well as performances of material from the Pussy Riot courtroom trial.

The afternoon will culminate in a debate on feminism in the arts, with playwright E.V. Crowe and journalist Vadim Nikitin in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, with more names to be announced.

Audiences will be encouraged to enter into the riotous spirit of Pussy Riot by becoming active participants in the day, responding in person and live on social media.

Playwright E.V. Crowe, whose play Hero opens at the Royal Court on 23 November, first proposed the idea of creating an event dedicated to Pussy Riot after hearing of the arrest of three of their members. She said:

“Pussy Riot’s political art woke up sleeping feminists all over the world. They forced me to ask myself, am I a bit less ‘Pussy Riot’ and a bit more just pussy? It feels imperative to learn from their defiance, to respond actively, and above all else to not go back to sleep.”

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In August, the Royal Court joined supporters across the world in a global day of protest in solidarity with Pussy Riot ahead of the final verdict, when the three arrested members of the collective Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich (who has now been released on a suspended sentence) were found guilty of hooliganism and sentenced to two years in prison. Actors Pippa Bennett-Warner, Lyndsey Marshal and Lydia Wilson performed the girls’ testimonies in front of a packed audience in the Royal Court café bar.

Tickets are £15 for a full afternoon pass and £8 for the panel discussion only. Tickets available online www.royalcourttheatre.com or 0207 565 5000.

ROYAL COURT PUSSY RIOT
Saturday 3 November 2012 2pm-4.30pm
The Wilson Studio, Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square SW1W 8AS
Tickets: Pussy Riot pass (access to all events, including panel debate) £15

PANEL DEBATE
Saturday 3 November 2012 4.45pm-6.15pm
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square SW1W 8AS
Tickets: £8 (free with Pussy Riot pass) (Concs £6)

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(16/12/12)

For further information, please contact Anna Evans on 020 7565 5063 annaevans@royalcourttheatre.com

Notes to Editors:

The playwrights taking part in Royal Court Pussy Riot are:

E.V. Crowe’s next play Hero opens in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs on 23 November. She made her Royal Court debut in 2010 with Kin, directed by Jeremy Herrin, and was shortlisted for the Most Promising Playwright at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. Credits elsewhere include Young Pretender, produced by nabokov at the Edinburgh Fringe and on tour. A graduate of the Young Writer’s Programme, she is currently under commission to the National Theatre, Watford Palace Theatre and the Unicorn Theatre.

Penelope Skinner’s play The Village Bike played in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs to full houses and critical acclaim in the summer of 2011. The play won the 2011 George Devine Award, the Charles Wintour Most Promising Playwright at the 2011 Evening Standard Theatre Awards and was nominated at the 2012 Olivier Awards for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. It also had a rehearsed reading at the Manhattan Theatre Club as part of their 7@7 series of readings and received its regional premiere at the Sheffield Crucible Studio in September 2012. A graduate from the Royal Court’s writing programmes, her credits elsewhere includes The Sound Of Heavy Rain, which played at the Sheffield Crucible, in a co-production with Paines Plough and transferred to Shoreditch Town Hall as part of their Roundabout season, Fred’s Diner at Chichester Festival Theatre in the Theatre on the Fly performance space (created especially for their 50th Anniversary celebrations), Eigengrau at the Bush Theatre, Scarlet’s Circus for Hampstead Theatre’s Heat & Light Group and Fucked, at the Old Red Lion in 2008 and at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival.

Hayley Squires is a writer and an actress. Her first play Vera Vera Vera was produced this year by the Royal Court as part of the Young Writers Festival 2012. Playing to sell-out houses in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, it then transferred to Theatre Local in Peckham. Hayley is currently working on her next play and is also filming a role in Southcliffe a new Channel 4 drama written by Tony Grisoni.

Yaroslava Pulinovich was born in Omsk, Russia in 1987, into a family of journalists. In 2009 she graduated from the Yekaterinburg Theatre Institute, where she trained under Nikolai Koliada. Her plays have been performed in England, the USA, Poland, Estonia, Ukraine and in over forty theatres across Russia: in Moscow, St Petersburg, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk and many other cities. Awards include the Voice of a Generation Prize, the Debut Prize, the Eurasia Prize, the Best New Play award at the Golden Mask Festival, and the Harlequin Prize. She wrote the screenplay for the film How To Catch A Shoplifter (with Pavel Kazantsev), which won the Bronze Taiga prize at the Spirit of Fire international film festival. She lives in Yekaterinburg. Yaroslava attended the Royal Court International Residency in 2009 and 2012.

Yulia Yakovleva is a writer based in St Petersburg, Russia. Her play 1937 written during Royal Court International Residency was performed as a staged reading in Theater. doc (Moscow), her play The Terminal was performed as a staged reading in Bolshoi Drama Theater named after Tovstonogov (Peterburg), her play Melodrama Rules was performed at the Lubimovka festival 2012. Yulia attended the Royal Court International Residency in 2009 and 2012.