As part of the laboratory “On Courts and Judges”, organized by theater scholar and director Sonya Dymschitz, I created and presented a sketch of the performance “Angry Snowflakes”. Later, the play was performed several more times in Saint Petersburg.

The performance imitates a board game and a court trial: the audience is divided into two teams and becomes jury members. They participate in the investigation and compete for the right to choose the judge. Each spectator determines their own level of involvement.

To create the performance, I attended open court hearings, adapted the rules of a board game and the protocol of court procedures, conducted extensive research using open sources, and compiled materials from a real criminal case. I then transformed all this into the dramaturgical structure of a play.

Each turn in the game revealed new case materials to the players, gradually drawing them into the process. Eventually, they realized the case was real, which created a maximum level of engagement and encouraged the audience to form a personal relationship with the situation and an emotional investment in the outcome of the performance-trial.

That year, a Russian woman was added to the official list of terrorists for posting two memes on Facebook that were deemed offensive to religious believers. Later, legislative amendments were introduced which defined the actual ending of the performance.

The audience experienced personal frustration because their efforts, arguments, and the entire struggle they engaged in had no impact on the final result of the game-performance.

For me, this performance was a form of activism. I wanted the audience to confront their own feelings about whether or not it is possible to influence the political life of their country, to feel the impossibility of staying apolitical, and to sit with the emotions and thoughts evoked by that experience.

Since a large part of the performance consisted of live discussion, where participants expressed their opinions, it became unsafe to perform due to new laws. Criminal cases initiated over social media posts or spoken words no longer caused controversy or surprise in society, and so the relevance and lifespan of the performance lasted only a couple of years.

Based on a real event, the performance incorporated materials from Russian news outlets.
2019