The first performance of theatre series Trilogie de la guerre (The War Trilogy) created by Elina Kulikova and dima efremov.

With the first chapter of the Trilogy Elina Kulikova and dima efremov present a concert-manifesto on the issue of the Russian imperialistic complex that made possible to happen the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Elina is a theater director, who was working with feminist and queer dramaturgy before the start of war and then left the county after experiencing a political prosecution by Russian propaganda in March 2022. dima is a multidisciplinary artist and activist, who’s major work today is to help political prisoners and victims of Putin's regime. During the show artists are performing Russian classical romances, which can be considered as one of the major symbols of the country’s culture. At the same time they are telling about the systematic violence that this culture is based on and that has appeared in their life since childhood but today became visible to the whole world.

Esther Bol’s [formerly Asya Voloshina’s] play 'Crime' is composed of the protagonist’s documentary-based correspondence from the outbreak of the war and the news feeds – mainly Ukrainian Telegram feeds – that she reads. She is safe, or almost safe, but totally immersed in the war through the screen of her phone. She is Russian and her lover is Ukrainian, and he has volunteered for the front, he is an Ukrainian soldier. He is captured at the very beginning of the war while she is under arrest for an anti-war rally. No one knows anything about his fate, and she writes him letters to the void. This war is absolutely open to scrutiny like no war before. And the most monstrous of all: Russians can see on their phones what their country is doing in Ukraine. But most prefer to close their eyes and listen to the propagandists. (And some do not close their eyes and enjoy what they see) All this is a special dimension of documentary, and the author tries to overcome the numbness of dumbness through it.

'Risk Lab' is a series of performances about risk in art and artists at risk that theatre director Ada Mukhina (based in Berlin) started in 2018 in London. For each performance of the series, Ada invites a new risk-taking artist from a different context to join her online in a theatre.

Elina joined her and the audience in Washington DC online from Tbilisi, Georgia when she left Moscow in March 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Together two artists took the audience on the journey dedicated to reflection on the war in Ukraine from:

— protest methods of Feminist Antiwar Resistance, an arrest of a peaceful artist & activist Sasha Skochilenko in St. Petersburg, current political emigration from Russia whose numbers vary from 300 000 to 3 Mio.

— to the US-Mexican border where hundreds of Ukrainian, as well as Russian citizens, are waiting to apply for asylum.

— and asked the audience what they are ready to risk to change their position from consumers of online suffering to active allies.

The performance was part of The Gathering, organized byThe Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.

'Modern Nature' is musical media performance based on Derek Jarman's diaries, touching not only on the artist's biography, but also on topics such as AIDS, melting glaciers, vaccines of a new generation and all the disturbing chaos of today's world. The only true form of relationship that a person is able to build with the global chaos and uncertainty of our time is tenderness. Tenderness today can become one of the most extreme ways of knowing the world, which humanity has not been able to disenchant with other rational methods.