ECHO PARK — Onstage at the Echo, Maria “Masha” Alyokhina stands with her back to the audience. Images of a Russian penal colony flash on a large screen as she holds a plastic water bottle over her head, then pours the bottle’s contents onto herself — then another bottle, then another.
Alongside Alyokhina, a co-founder of the Russian art and activist collective Pussy Riot, are three other members of the group: Diana Burkot, Olga Borisova, and Alina Petrova. As electronic music plays alongside a live violin and drums, the women pace back and forth at the edge of the stage, raise their fists and kick and punch the air, a protest in action. At various moments during the performance (which took place in back in mid-November), they don Pussy Riot’s signature brightly colored ski masks.
The show, Riot Days, is based on Alyokhina’s memoir of the same name. Written by Alyokhina and several other members of the collective, it tells the story of Pussy Riot’s 2011 formation around an anti-Putin agenda, the action that brought the group international fame, and the fallout from that action, including Alyokhina’s 18-month stint in prison. The lyrics are spoken and sung in Russian (English subtitles are shown onscreen), and while delivering them, Alyokhina adopts a wide stance, her right hand gripping the microphone and her right elbow jutting out at a low 45-degree angle, as if she is constantly bracing to be shoved.
Riot Days is in the middle of its North American tour, and with Russia’s war on Ukraine nearing the two-year mark and American presidential elections on the horizon, the show’s dispatch to U.S. audiences is urgent.
“Message is very simple,” Alyokhina says in the hours leading up to the Echo Park performance. “We have a story. This story happened in Russia, but this story can happen anywhere, if people stop fighting.”
Beginnings
Maria “Masha” Alyokhina was born in Moscow in 1988. Raised by her mother and grandmother, politics and activism were not part of her family of origin.
“There were no political talks in the kitchen,” she says, adding with a laugh, “I’m the only riot person in this family.”
Alykhina’s activism began in earnest around 2010 when she learned that the Russian government planned to destroy Utrish Forest on the coast of the Black Sea. Already concerned with ecological issues, the news galvanized her.
“I started to protest, I started to collect signatures, I start to organize small rallies in the center of Moscow,” she says. “I think that’s just classical story of activists.”
When Vladimir Putin announced his third run for president in 2011, Alyokhina’s focus turned to politics. Pussy Riot was formed the same year, at first a collective of female artists, musicians, independent filmmakers, and activists staging small protests in the streets of Moscow. But soon, the collective became a household name.
In August of 2012, five members of the group stormed the pulpit of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior to protest Putin’s ties to the Russian Orthodox Church in an action called “Punk Prayer.” Over a raging electric guitar, the women belted lyrics including, “Virgin Mary, mother of God, put Putin away,” and “shit, shit, the Lord’s shit!”
The action lasted less than two minutes, but three of the activists — Alyokhina, Nadezhda “Nadya” Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich — were tracked down, arrested, and sentenced to two years in prison.
The incarceration did not silence Pussy Riot. They continued staging protests, and a few months after her release, Alyokhina took part in an action in Sochi, where the winter Olympics were being held. The collective continued to release videos such as “Putin will teach you how to love,” and “I Can’t Breathe,” a tribute to Eric Garner.
In 2016, Alyokhina met the Belarus Free Theater, a nonprofit organization devoted to political resistance through the arts. After collaborating with them on a show called Burning Doors at around the same time her book, Riot Days, was published, she realized she was now equipped with a new tool to get her message across.
“I decided to put the book to the stage,” she says, “because this is a cool way to make people feel it.”
‘One of my main fears’
It’s a busy moment for Alyokhina. She’s been on tour with Riot Days on and off for over a year. In addition to the tour, last November, she premiered Velvet Terrorism, a ten-year retrospective of Pussy Riot’s actions, at Iceland’s Kling & Bang Gallery. The exhibit showcases footage of the collective’s protests in Russia and provides political context for each, painting a picture of the buildup to the war in Ukraine that many Westerners did not see. The show is now up at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum and Montreal’s Musée d’art Contemporain, where it received several rare six-star reviews from critics (the Canadian review system allows for up to six stars).
Artists Ragnar Kjartansson and Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir, co-creators and collaborators on Velvet Terrorism, believe the show has done so well in part because of Alyokhina’s unusual combination of artistic talent and political drive.
“She’s a brilliant artist,” Sigurjónsdóttir says. “Her activist heart is always, of course, completely mashed up with the artist heart. She really cares about all the people [Pussy Riot is] fighting for, and she always wants to express that with integrity.”
When the show opened in Iceland, it included the premiere of another new project: Pussy Riot’s latest music video, “Swan Lake.” The song takes aim at Russian state propaganda, which, Alyokhina says, includes new textbooks for schoolchildren that liken Ukraine to Nazi Germany. As the mother of a teenage son, the possibility of her child receiving propagandistic messages was “one of my main fears,” she says.
At the Echo
Following the show at The Echo, Los Angeles’s attendees mulled about. Most were elated to see young Russian women take such a strong stand
“They are doing an amazing thing,” said Tatiana, 53, who immigrated from Russia and has been supporting Pussy Riot for years. “It’s really hard for Russians who are opposed to the war. This performance speaks for us.”
Others were focused on different issues.
“I’ve been following Pussy Riot for many years,” said Anders, 25, who had come from aprotest of the Israel-Hamas war. “It’s of great concern, the rights of LGBTQ people, which is very different than what we have in Denmark. These days, we are protesting a whole lot.”
As if to drive that point home, the day of the performance, the Russian LGBTQ+ rights and antiwar activist Sasha Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years in prison for replacing price tags in a grocery store with messages decrying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At Riot Day’s conclusion, the performers encouraged all in attendance to share what had happened to her.
But the crowd had already been brought into the story. As Alyokhina poured water over herself, demonstrating what she had withstood, what she could withstand, night after night, Borisova threw water from the same bottles onto the audience. What was happening onstage suddenly affected everyone; no one was left untouched, whether active participant or silent observer.