Editor’s note: Pussy Riot’s November 27 event at Barrett Barrera Projects has sold out.
Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist performance art collective, comes to St. Louis next week. The group first stops at Barrett Barrera Projects on Monday, November 27, with a larger performance at Delmar Hall on Tuesday, November 28.
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The group will be in St. Louis as part of their current North American tour, Riot Days, a multimedia performance based on the memoir of the same name by group member Maria “Masha” Alyokhina. The book details Alyokhina’s activism and her two-year prison sentence for “hooliganism.”
“It’s a live book on the stage,” says Alyokhina by phone from a van somewhere outside Phoenix, about halfway through the tour. “It’s a combination of different genres. It’s not just a story, it’s more like a manifesto and a guide. It’s definitely a call to fight, and it’s definitely a guide to activism.”
Every country, she says, needs the messages and information in the performance—especially the U.S. on the eve of an election year. Alyokhina compares Russian president Vladimir Putin to the 45th U.S. president—the only U.S. president, she says, who wasn’t demonized in Russian media—and says Americans must remain vigilant.
“It’s something universal because it’s not something special with Russia—Russia is just a country which received a dictatorship,” she says. “It can happen anywhere if good people just don’t do anything and think that democracy and freedoms are constant issues and stop fighting for them. They will disappear. Dictators will take the power.”
The performance includes music, videos of Pussy Riot actions and the preparations leading up to them, and footage from inside a Russian penal colony. “We want people to hear our story and we use all the instruments which we have to make it real,” she says.
Known for their punk ethos, provocative guerilla-style performances, and neon balaclavas, Pussy Riot formed in 2011 and rose to international prominence in 2012 after their “Punk Prayer” performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior in opposition to Putin and the church’s complicity in Putin’s military actions. That action resulted in Alyokhina’s first incarceration, though it wouldn’t be her last.
After her 2013 release, Alyokhina and fellow Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova founded Mediazona, an independent Russian media outlet. She also did a variety of 15-day prison stints for crimes related to her social media posts and protesting. She was under house arrest in spring of 2022 when the current Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and the government threatened to convert her sentence into time in a penal colony, which led her to leave Russia disguised as a food delivery person in a daring escape. She’s obtained Icelandic citizenship, which allows her to travel freely and take Riot Days on the road.
Her ultimate goals are straightforward.
“I want Vladimir Putin to be stopped, and ideally imprisoned, in international court in The Hague. I want Pussy Riot to perform. I want all the victims from Ukraine to speak and the world to listen,” she says. “I didn’t choose where to be born. I was born in Russia. I feel responsible and I want him to be stopped.”
The intimate event at Barrett Barerra Projects on Monday at 6 p.m. includes a short film, a Q&A session, and musical performances from Pussy Riot members Diana Burkot and Alina Petrova, whose music projects are distinct from Pussy Riot. It’s free and open to the public, but space is limited. Tuesday at Delmar Hall, group members will perform Riot Days. Tickets are $25 in advance, $28 at the door. Doors at 7 p.m. show at 8 p.m. The tour also benefits a children’s hospital in Ukraine.
