{"id":555,"date":"2025-05-28T16:57:57","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T16:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/?p=555"},"modified":"2025-06-04T17:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T17:19:10","slug":"voices-performing-intersections-of-war-memory-and-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/voices-performing-intersections-of-war-memory-and-migration\/","title":{"rendered":"VOICES<\/em>:\u00a0Performing Intersections of War, Memory and Migration"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yana Meerzon<\/strong>*<\/a>, Alexey Munipov<\/strong>**<\/a>, Natalia Skorokhod<\/strong>***<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

V<\/em>OICES <\/em>Performing Arts Festival: Music. Dance. Theatre. Berlin (Germany). 2nd edition, 2-29 November, 2024. Curators: Marina Davydova and Sergey Nevsky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VOICES <\/em>Performing Arts Festival was launched in Berlin in 2023 as a cultural response to Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which triggered widespread displacement and exile, including many Russian-speaking artists. The festival offers a vital platform for artists at risk, in exile and from marginalized backgrounds. Its 2024 edition, curated by Marina Davydova and Sergey Nevsky, focused on migration from former post-Soviet states, showcasing emerging and underrepresented voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davydova, a prominent figure in post-2022 Russophone exile theatre, views the festival as a space to reflect on cultural and political shifts, particularly the role war and exile play in reshaping artistic expression. Nevsky, a composer of experimental music, highlights the urgent need to address the sense of dislocation and transformation that technological change and global migration impose on contemporary art. The festival adopts a broad understanding of exile\u2014encompassing nomadic, cosmopolitan and hybrid experiences\u2014and frames migration not only as a political reality, but also as fertile ground for artistic exploration. It promotes the concept of the “other” as a universal lens for grappling with today\u2019s fractured world. This way it seeks responses to such questions as: How do exiled artists reflect on their past and imagine the future? How do they navigate shifting identities? And how do they contribute to the evolving global artistic and political landscape?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2024 VOICES<\/em> featured experimental music, theatrical performances (including staged readings of new plays) and dance labs, gathering diverse artists. It presented five major projects, panels on theatre in exile and performances in original languages with German and English translations. The festival opened with Nachspiel<\/em>, a concert-promenade uniting various artistic disciplines. Featuring Klangforum Wien and butoh dancers, the production was directed by Philippe Grigoryan, a prominent Russian director in exile, with choreography by Valentine Tszin and butoh performers. Grigoryan applied classical dramaturgy to weave contemporary music and butoh as parallel modes of self-exploration. The musicians\u2019 movement through unfamiliar spaces and the audience\u2019s search for vantage points metaphorically echoed the elusive clarity and uncertainty of exile. The unresolved ending reinforced the open-ended nature of exile as one of the leading human conditions, though some spectators found this ambiguity distancing rather than illuminating.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Valentine Tszin (right) and butoh performers. Episode from Nachspiel.<\/em> Director: Philippe Grigoryan. Dramaturg: Olga Fedyanina. Set designer: Vania Bowden. Performed 14 Nov. 2024 in the K\u00fchlhaus (Berlin). Photo: Victoria Nasarova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Staged Readings of New Plays<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The festival showcased new plays by Russian-speaking female playwrights in exile, weaving intimate personal stories with broader political upheavals. Esther Bol\u2019s Crime #alwaysarmukraine<\/em> (2022) is a modern tragedy depicting a Russian woman anxiously awaiting news of her Ukrainian lover in Kyiv\u2019s defense forces. Marina Davydova’s play The Land of No Return<\/em> (2023) follows the journey of a woman\u2014Davydova\u2019s alter ego\u2014from Baku through Moscow to Berlin, blending personal memories and the emotional experience of a modern Russian emigrant with historical context. The play reflects on interethnic tensions during the collapse of the USSR, which the protagonist witnessed as a child, and on the rise of Russia\u2019s totalitarian regime, which ultimately forced her into exile as an adult. Polina Borodina\u2019s Berlin Syndrome<\/em> (2024) evolves into a sharp comedy that portrays a young widow\u2019s exile in Berlin, using humor and irony to explore the shared sense of disconnection and alienation experienced by both migrants and locals in an increasingly fragmented urban landscape of a multicultural Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While all three plays center on female experiences of war, exile and loss, their tones diverge\u2014Bol\u2019s raw emotional immediacy contrasts with Davydova\u2019s analytical distance and Borodina\u2019s sardonic absurdity. Together, these female voices offer a layered exploration of identity and resilience in the face of global dislocation. They mobilize trauma narratives to expand the aesthetic and narrative frameworks used to represent war and exile.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ilya Khodyrev used subtle acting techniques to bring to life several very different characters during the reading. Also, Alisa Dmitreva, Janina Akhmetova, Maria Bolshova, Igor Titov and Alexey Kokhanov participated in the staged reading of Berlin Syndrome<\/em> by Polina Borodina. Director: Marfa Gorvits. Performed 15 Nov. 2024 in the Villa Elisabeth (Berlin). Photo: Daria Kreuzberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Dramatic Theatre<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The festival\u2019s theatrical offerings, led by Russian directors in exile, stood out for their diverse artistic styles and their shared antiwar stance\u2014a position that many of these artists had already begun articulating before their emigration. Whether through Ivan Vyrypaev\u2019s philosophical dramaturgy and minimalist staging, Jan Kalnberzin and Evgeny Afonin\u2019s provocative multimedia work, or the politically charged performances of Dmitry Melkin and Igor Shishko, each artist brought a distinct aesthetic shaped by a refusal to remain silent in the face of authoritarianism and militarism. Their creative resistance, rooted in their experiences within Russia\u2019s shrinking public sphere, found renewed urgency and freedom on the international stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two productions stood out for their contrast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cremulator <\/em>(2024), starring Maxim Sukhanov and based on Sasha Filipenko\u2019s 2022 novel, reconstructs the NKVD interrogation of the first director of the Soviet crematorium in Moscow in 1941, staging it as a surreal, nightmarish dance with death. Director Maxim Didenko fuses montage-driven Soviet avant-garde aesthetics with the emotional intensity of Stanislavsky-trained acting, creating a dissonant, highly stylized performance that oscillates between the grotesque and the tragic. Sukhanov\u2019s restrained yet deeply expressive performance anchors this visually arresting, if at times deliberately opaque, meditation on the individual’s complicity in and resistance to state violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than issuing direct political slogans, Cremulator<\/em> critiques authoritarianism through formal experimentation and its chilling portrayal of individuals caught in the machinery of terror. While the production includes participatory moments\u2014particularly engaging members of the Russian-speaking diaspora by inviting them to see their own displacement through the eyes of first-wave \u00e9migr\u00e9s\u2014its broader exploration is existential, presenting wandering not only as physical exile but as the human journey toward death.<\/p>\n\n\n

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With Maxim Sukhanov as Petr Nesterenko, Cremulator <\/em>was designed around the phrase from the novel by Sasha Filipenko, “Funerals are the last celebration before eternity”. Yand Ge as Vera and Igor Titov as NKVD investigator. Director: Maxim Didenko. Set and costume designer: Alexander Barmenkov. Performed 16 Nov. 2024 in the St. Elisabeth-Kirche (Berlin). Photo: Daria Kreuzberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Moranal<\/em> (2023), <\/em>whose title translates as “to forget” from Armenian, was directed by Ilya Moshitsky, who had relocated to Armenia in 2022. The production evoked the legacy of the great Soviet-Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov through a poetic, collage-like theatrical language rich in metaphor and post-irony. For Moshitsky, Parajanov had been a pivotal figure whose work helped the young director reshape his artistic voice within a new cultural context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Moranal <\/em>resisted easy comprehension: it lacked a clear plot or central character, focusing instead on the figure of the visionary director whose centennial the cinematic world would celebrate in 2024. Performed in Armenian and conceived as a tribute to Parajanov\u2019s cinematic masterpiece The Color of Pomegranate<\/em> <\/em>(1968), Moranal <\/em>used improvisational energy and evocative scenography to probe memory, creativity and loss.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The actors did not inhabit roles (a-la Stanislavsky style); they moved among stacks of paper books, which formed the set. By the performance\u2019s end, the actors seemed to transform into characters from this unknown book: they became part of the Earth\u2019s cultural fabric. St. Petersburg artist Sergei Kretenchuk designed costumes that enhanced this visual metamorphosis. These costumes gradually merged with the actors\u2019 bodies, so this seamless fusion of costume and performer deepened the play\u2019s exploration of identity, memory and transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, Moranal<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>experimental style challenged traditional storytelling in dramatic theatre, and so it may have alienated audiences seeking straightforward tales of exile. Yet its philosophical, poetic form stood as a subtle but powerful act of antiwar protest: it was a meditation on the persistence of memory and creativity amid loss and erasure, a quiet resistance against forgetting.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In Moranal<\/em>, the stage was covered with books, rustling with, as it sounded in the play, “passions, numbers, poetry, questions, meanings, thoughts, torments, myths…”. Directing, set design, and text composition by Ilya Moshichisky. Performers: Andranik Mikaelyan, Zhanna Vekitsyan, and Katya Kramarenko. Performed 19-10 Nov. 2024 in Theater im Delphi (Berlin). Photo: Victoria Nasarova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Music<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Unlike its theatre section, which mostly featured well-known theatre artists and collectives, the musical program was full of surprises. Many concerts went beyond simple auditory experiences; they were fully staged performative events shaped by professional theatre directors and choreographers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A highlight was Tower of Babel<\/em>, a Klangforum Wien concert featuring post-Soviet composers from Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Russia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. The \u201cpost-Soviet\u201d label often feels insufficient for such diversity, but the concert tested whether a shared imagery or sensibility exists among these displaced artists. For Berlin audiences, largely unfamiliar with this music, it revealed a fresh, urgent voice blending European avant-garde with outsider perspectives. The event prompted critical questions: Does origin define the artist? Or does individual voice trump geography, especially when \u201cborn\u201d and \u201cbased\u201d are increasingly decoupled? The concert emerged as a meditation on exile, belonging and self-definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All Planes Fly to Minsk<\/em> was another key event, which focused on Belarusian music and the role of exile in artistic survival. The first half featured Belarusian Songs,<\/em> a cantata by Russian composer Vladimir Rannev, based on poems by Minsk-based Belarusian poet Konstantin Steshik. Written after the failed 2020 uprising against Lukashenka, the cantata narrates resistance and loss in an accessible style similar in spirit to Kurt Weill\u2019s collaborations with Brecht. The second half presented contemporary Belarusian composers\u2014Marina Lukashevich, Kazimir Vik and Oksana Omelchuk\u2014in world premieres performed by Neue Vocalsolisten. The following discussion, Belarusian Art in Exile: Who Cares?<\/em>, starkly revealed the marginalization of Belarusian art abroad. Lukashevich\u2019s Unbeachtet<\/em> (Unnoticed<\/em>) poignantly confronted the silence surrounding Belarusian political prisoners, making visible the erasure endured by those caught between exile and repression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The festival\u2019s closing concert, Being Adam<\/em>, featured an ensemble mosaic of experimental music from Central Asia, with composers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Bashkortostan and Baku-born Petros Hovsepiyan. Many now reside in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, highlighting the marginal status of experimental music in their homelands and the migratory dynamics shaping their art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concert opened with Duo Falak, an unusual collaboration between St. Petersburg guitarist Denis Sorokin and Tajik percussionist Shohin Qurbon. Sorokin, who relocated to Tajikistan to avoid military mobilization, became fascinated by falak, a complex traditional Tajik genre, comparing it to avant-garde works by Giacinto Scelsi. Together, they reinvented falak into a dynamic, rhythmic performance, so engaging it could belong in a techno club, a rare energy at contemporary festivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The highlight was Bosaga <\/em>by Kazakh composer Sanzhar Baiterekov, a nearly 30-minute meditation centered on Tibetan singing bowls, remarkable for its precision and subtlety. Even the usually staid roundtable discussion with Central Asian composers became a unique performance, moderated by an AI avatar whose smooth control contrasted with the participants\u2019 playful, failed attempts to disrupt it, adding an ironic commentary on control and agency in exile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most striking was how these composers embraced their cultural identities and histories to craft music that felt radical and contemporary: their work powerfully illustrates how post-Soviet migration can enrich contemporary music and cultural discourse in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ensemble mosaic performing experimental music of Central Asia. Episode from the festival closing concert Being Adam.<\/em> Dramaturg: Mira Tulenova. Performed 24 Nov. 2024 in the Silent Green, Betonhalle (Berlin).Photo: Daria Kreuzberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, VOICES<\/em> Performing Arts Festival revolved around familiar themes of war, displacement and exile; thus, it reflects a wider contemporary tendency to channel political turmoil into personal narratives. While timely and urgent, this thematic focus sometimes risks repetition, with several works covering similar emotional and aesthetic ground. In addition, although the festival sought to amplify underrepresented voices, it frequently leaned on established artists, raising questions about its inclusivity and forward-looking potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The curators’ thoughtful emphasis on exile as both a thematic focus and an identity marker offered a sense of hope and therapeutic reflection for both the artists and the audiences. Their careful work created space for healing and recognition. At the same time, there were moments when this framing risked reducing the complexities of political trauma to a recurring curatorial motif, somewhat softening the festival\u2019s potential for disruption and critical engagement with the ongoing war conflict in Ukraine. Moving forward, the festival faces the challenge of balancing visibility with innovation: its curatorial agenda\u2014and each selected work\u2014should do more than echo prevailing discourses on war and exile. It must actively push artistic and political boundaries, challenging and expanding the frameworks through which these narratives can be shaped and understood. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Yana Meerzon<\/strong> is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of four books, including Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism <\/em>(Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and most recently Performing Nationalism in Russia <\/em>(Cambridge UPress, 2024). <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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**<\/a>Alexey Munipov<\/strong> is a Berlin-based independent researcher, music critic and curator. Writing for media since 1996, he has also curated music festivals, recitals, theatre performances and exhibitions in London, Tel Aviv and Moscow. He is the author of the book Fermata. Conversations with Composers <\/em>(2019) and founder of \u201cThe School of Attentive Listening\u201d where he teaches critical listening and music appreciation. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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***<\/a>Natalia Skorokhod<\/strong> is an invited Professor of the Free University in exile, Latvia. She holds a PhD and a postdoctoral degree in art studies, and currently resides in Berlin with the “scholar at risk” status. Her books include How to Adapt Prose<\/em> (2010) and Leonid Andreev: A Biography <\/em>(2013), as well as Postdrama Analysis<\/em> (2015), along with numerous book chapters and articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2025 Yana Meerzon, Alexey Munipov, Natalia Skorokhod
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>, #31, June 2025
e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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