Rospotrebnadzor sealed the building of the Maly Drama Theater (MDT) by Lev Dodin, the Theater of Europe, in St. Petersburg. This is reported by Fontanka, and a photo of the sealed theater building is also published by the Sota Telegram channel.
According to the publication, MDT will be closed until May 12. Interlocutors close to the institution said that some kind of check was being carried out in the theater. MDT did not comment on the situation.
What exactly was the reason for the check is not yet known. On April 22, the St. Petersburg Maly Drama Theater postponed for a month two performances based on the play "Deceit and Love" with the participation of actor Danila Kozlovsky. Previously, two performances of Hamlet with Kozlovsky in the title role were postponed.
In early April, Vitaly Borodin, head of the Federal Project for Security and Combating Corruption, asked the Prosecutor General's Office to check Kozlovsky for "discrediting" the army due to the fact that after the start of the war, he left for the United States. The actor also published an anti-war post on Instagram in February 2022, and in an interview with Irina Shikhman allegedly “urged citizens to go to rallies.” On April 17, the prosecutor's office began checking Kozlovsky under the article on "discrediting" the army. Kozlovsky himself explained that he traveled to the United States to visit the child. He filed a lawsuit for the protection of honor and dignity against Borodin and TASS. However, the Presnensky Court did not accept the claim on formal grounds – the application did not contain comprehensive information about the defendant.
Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the names of cultural figures who opposed the war have been removed from the playbills of performances. This happened, for example, with Dmitry Krymov, Boris Akunin and Kirill Serebrennikov. Also, Serebrennikov's ballet "Nureyev" was removed from the poster of the Bolshoi Theater.
Russian theater workers opposed to the war in Ukraine have faced layoffs. In January, Maria Revyakina, director of the State Theater of Nations, laureate of the State Prize of Russia, general director of the Golden Mask national theater award, left the post. She has directed the theater since 2012. Two days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Revyakina posted an anti-war appeal by theatrical figures on her Facebook page calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops. Some actors were fired for taking a public anti-war stance. So, the head of the Moscow Art Theater (MKhT) named after Chekhov, Konstantin Khabensky, fired actor Dmitry Nazarov and his wife, Honored Artist of Russia Olga Vasilyeva. The reason was "statements about the NWO and anti-Russian sentiments."