Pussy Riot on their raucous Fringe return: ‘In times of crisis, silence becomes complicity’
The world has become even more volatile since Pussy Riot first performed at the Fringe in 2018. But the Russian activist collective are still determined to make their protests heard with a raucous updated show. By Fiona Shepherd
At a time when the right to protest peacefully feels more crucial than ever and yet also increasingly imperilled, who you gonna call? Russian activist and artist collective Pussy Riot are the superheroes of the moment, a notorious, confrontational and inspirational outfit who testify to firsthand experience of life under totalitarian rule, some of whose members have been repeatedly charged and detained for their flagrant inability to put up and shut up about the reality of day-to-day living in Putin’s Russia.
They made worldwide headlines in 2011 with an audacious act of protest, performing their Punk Prayer in multi-coloured balaclavas on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Three members of the group were subsequently arrested and imprisoned, including Maria “Masha” Vladimirovna Alyokhina, who used her spotlight during the Pussy Riot trial to deliver a defiant and universal defence of freedom of expression.
Since 2017, she and fellow Pussy Rioters have been touring their show Riot Days, a strident multi-media celebration of DIY music, striking visuals and uncomfortable truths based on her memoir of the same name, which shook up Summerhall during the 2018 Fringe. Much has changed for Masha, Russia and global geopolitics since then, developments which Pussy Riot intend to address on their return to the Fringe with a reworked and updated Riot Days based on her new book, Political Girl, which will recount her subsequent arrests and flight from Russia against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
For Alyokhina, 2025 is such a different world that she almost looks back on the early days of Pussy Riot with nostalgia. “It was a different political climate, a different group,” she says via Zoom. “Everything was different so there was a lot of hope and joy and brightness which we also bring to the protest. Now we have something that we didn’t expect to witness ever at any age. We have the war going on for the fourth year, mass repressions, military censorship, news about bombings and deaths every day.”
Criticising the war and the Russian army is a criminal offence in Russia. As Alyokhina notes, Pussy Riot do this on a daily basis so it is no longer possible for most of the core members to operate in their homeland. Following a number of arrests, she finally fled in spring 2022. “I was a person who thought that I will never leave the country,” she says, choking up at the memory, “but I decided to go to help Ukraine in this war because it’s not just a Russian issue now. That was a heartbreaking hard decision.” She has since been offered citizenship by Iceland and there are no shortage of territories keen to host Riot Days.
Alyokhina may be the lightning rod but she is supported by a tight collective of fellow activists and performers, most of whom join her on the call from different locations. Producer Alexander Cheparukhin has been an advocate from the start. “What happened to Pussy Riot shocked me because I had never encountered a situation where artists have been sent to prison for their artistic action,” he says. He visited them in prison as a representative of a human rights organisation and used his connections as a festival promoter to garner high-profile support from Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel.
Alyokhina is joined onstage by co-vocalists Taso Pletner and Olga Borisova. “I think it’s fair to say we lost our lives we had before to tell this story to other people," says Borisova. "A year ago they opened a new criminal case against all of us and we cannot go back to Russia. We paid our price to tell this story - it gives you strength but that’s all we’ve got.”
Composer Alina Petrova won’t even name her chief musical collaborator, the one member of the Riot Days company who remains in Moscow. Together, they worked up the soundtrack to complement the latest visuals. “It’s much more brutal,” she says, “and we have some moments we show on the screen that are very uncomfortable for people to see but it’s important to show. It doesn’t mean that we should make slogans. Art doesn’t need to shout to be political, art could whisper, it could ask questions or simply reveal what is often hidden.”
Drummer Eric Breitenbach is new to the group, having previously collaborated with legendary dub artist Lee “Scratch” Perry as a member of Vancouver metal band New Age Doom. “The live performance is a call to action to the audience, urging them not to be indifferent and to pay attention to what is happening in the world,” he says.
Petrova is even more blunt. “In times of crisis, silence becomes complicity and art becomes one of the last places where complexity can still breathe,” she says. “Political art is not just about protest, it’s about attention and care and also about making meaning where meaning has been erased.”
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The group are interested to hear that for the duration of the Fringe and beyond, the Steve McQueen-curated Resistance exhibition at the National Gallery’s Modern Two will be celebrating a century of protest in Britain as documented by its photojournalists. Everywhere Pussy Riot go, they tap into local concerns and movements, ignite conversations and strengthen cross-border bonds. Alyokhina has been particularly struck by the reaction to Trump’s disruptive second term.
“The new wave of protest is still under formation,” she says. “This term is more brutal than the first one and a lot of people decided to leave the country immediately. They have migration, brutal conditions and deportation prisons but they don’t have war and pure censorship and they already started to run.”
As for Edinburgh, alliances can be struck in an altogether safer environment. “I think it’s great that there is a place for political art in a festival known more for comedy,” says Borisova. “I hope to see lots of people that just got lost and are having fun.”
Pussy Riot: Riot Days, Summerhall, 12-23 August
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