As Russia’s war against Ukraine grinds into its third year, a deep fissure runs through the country’s cultural life — especially in the performing arts. Theaters, once spaces of ambiguity and coded dissent, now stand in a paralyzing standoff between silence and complicity. For many artists, especially those in theater and dance, the choice between staying, speaking out, or leaving has become an agonizing ethical calculation with no simple answer.

The Stage as a Space of Subtle Dissent

Historically, Russian theater has never been a neutral space. From the Stalin era through the perestroika years, it has served as a platform for coded critique, where metaphor, irony, and abstraction carried messages that could not be openly spoken. The tradition continued well into the 2000s. Even as the Kremlin tightened its ideological grip, institutions like Teatr.doc, the Gogol Center, and independent dance troupes maintained a sliver of creative freedom — balancing on the edge of state tolerance and international acclaim.

That fragile tolerance ended with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. What had been a space for ambiguous critique became untenable under new legislation criminalizing the “discrediting” of the armed forces. Directors, playwrights, and actors faced a stark choice: adapt, fall silent, or go into exile.

From Protest to Silence: The Internal Landscape

In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, some within Russia’s performing arts community voiced opposition. Open letters were signed. Institutional resignations made headlines. But the price of dissent rose quickly. Cultural institutions dependent on state funding withdrew support from politically active artists. Informal blacklists circulated. The environment of fear and preemptive self-censorship intensified.
One of the clearest examples of this internal transformation is the case of Teatr.doc, once a symbol of politically engaged documentary theater. Its founders, Yelena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov, had long faced state harassment. After 2022, their successors reported intensified scrutiny and difficulty finding venues. Many artists shifted to staging “neutral” content — Chekhov, family dramas, experimental dance pieces devoid of text.

This retreat is not merely institutional; it’s deeply psychological. As one Moscow-based dramaturg described in a private conversation: “You don’t mention the war. You just keep rehearsing. That’s the deal now.”

For some, this silence is a form of survival — a means of keeping theater alive in hostile conditions. For others, it is a moral compromise that saps the integrity of the work itself.

The Diaspora Stage: Resistance from Abroad

While silence reigns at home, a different kind of theater is flourishing abroad. Since 2022, dozens of Russian directors, actors, and producers have relocated to Europe and North America. In exile, they are staging the war, displacement, and political repression head-on — often with more freedom than they ever had before.

Among the most high-profile is Kirill Serebrennikov, long a symbol of artistic resistance in Russia. After facing house arrest and a politically motivated embezzlement trial, Serebrennikov left Russia and has since based his work in Europe. His 2022 film Tchaikovsky’s Wife premiered at Cannes, and his forthcoming project Limonov—a biopic of the controversial writer Eduard Limonov—is produced by Russian and Latvian studios (Hype Films and Forma Pro Films) and shot in Latvia. Another international project, The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, is slated for the 78th Cannes Film Festival. His relocation has allowed him to work at scale — but also at a distance from the audience that once sustained him.

Another émigré figure is Dmitry Krymov, a leading director known for his poetic, visually arresting productions. Since relocating to New York, Krymov has staged new work for local audiences and collaborated with diasporic ensembles. He is one of several notable artists — including director Alexander Molochnikov and actor Andrey Burkovsky — now working in the U.S. Molochnikov’s Seagull. True Story, based loosely on Chekhov but imbued with autobiographical reflections on exile and censorship, was performed at Seagull Studio in New York. Burkovsky has also launched new initiatives there, contributing to a growing Russian-speaking artistic community in exile.

In Riga, Latvia — a new hub for displaced Russian artists — Sergei Golomazov, former artistic director of Moscow’s Theatre on Malaya Bronnaya, has staged productions such as Tartuffe and I, Edmond Dantès for Russian-speaking audiences. The Russian Drama Theater in Riga continues to operate in Russian and has become a home for some émigré productions, balancing between cultural continuity and political transition.
Touring has also become a form of cultural diplomacy. Russian-language productions have toured Europe and North America since 2022, often with a focus on exile and memory. Notably, actress Olga Khokhlova’s performance in The Lonely Mockingbird — a one-woman show based on the life of Faina Ranevskaya — has toured across the U.S. and Canada, drawing large diaspora audiences and offering a form of mourning-through-performance.

Between Preservation and Complicity

This flourishing of émigré theater contrasts sharply with the stillness inside Russia. But it also raises complicated questions. Can theater outside the country influence cultural politics at home? Does it risk becoming an echo chamber for the already-convinced? And what of those who stayed behind — the thousands of artists who chose to continue working in Russia, navigating the minefield of indirect expression and silent compromise?

To some, their continued presence within the system marks cowardice or submission. To others, it is a necessary form of preservation. As one Russian director still working in Moscow put it: “We are not building propaganda. We are preserving ritual, form, rehearsal, presence. That matters, even now.”

But critics argue that silence is not neutral. In a context where the state is actively mobilizing culture as part of its ideological infrastructure — funding patriotic plays, rewriting historical narratives, and demanding public loyalty — silence becomes a tacit form of consent.

This complicity is not always obvious. It manifests in repertory decisions, casting choices, and unspoken taboos. It appears in the absence of conflict on stage, the emotional flattening of performances, and the retreat into aestheticism. A well-executed Three Sisters or Hamlet today may offer comfort — but it also risks anesthetizing the moral pain of war.

Art as Refuge — and as Witness

Audiences, too, participate in this dilemma. Many seek out the theater as a sanctuary — a space where war is not mentioned, where the language is familiar, where beauty still exists. This is not unique to Russia; throughout history, art has served as a psychological refuge in times of trauma. But when refuge becomes denial, the ethical terrain shifts.

Still, resistance lives on — often in ephemeral or marginal forms. Small collectives stage underground performances. Digital art projects circulate online, using abstraction or absurdism to bypass censorship. Some draw on the language of trauma and exile; others reappropriate Soviet cultural forms to satirize the present.

These acts may not reach wide audiences. But they matter — not only as art, but as evidence that an alternative cultural memory is still being written, one performance at a time.

Conclusion: Between Exile and Absence

The Russian stage today is fractured across borders, languages, and realities. Inside Russia, silence has become both shield and prison. Abroad, speech is freer, but the link to home — to relevance — is fragile. Neither space offers an easy solution.
The real tragedy may be this: not that theater in Russia has become propaganda, but that it survives by pretending nothing is happening. That survival requires silence, and silence, in the current climate, speaks volumes.

And yet — culture endures. It resists in gestures, in subtext, in exile, in memory. It is scattered, wounded, uneven — but not gone.

In the years to come, these fragmentary performances — inside Russia and far beyond it — will become part of the cultural record of the war. They may not offer resolution. But they will offer witness.