Live Report - Riot Days by Pussy Riot Theatre

It’s Thursday night in The Button Factory and a diverse crowd is beginning to assemble inside. There’s the fluoro club kids, the art school scenesters, old punks in patched up biker jackets, and a peculiar looking man standing alone wearing a USSR military style visor cap with a fluffy pink feather boa adorning his shoulders.

The producer of ‘Riot Days by Pussy Riot Theatre’ , Alexander Cheparukhin steps onto the stage to introduce tonight's show and the horde is temporarily united in silence, until an explosion of unintelligible whooping breaks the sound barrier as Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina stomps out.

It’s been two years since Maria Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokno were freed from a Siberian high security prison after being arrested for performing their 40 second ‘punk prayer’ in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The prayer, which went something like “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Chase Putin Out” earned Pussy Riot worldwide acclaim and a media storm ensured their anti Putin, anti Church message stayed firmly in the headlines.

Alyokhina is here to present a political spoken word interpretation of her newly released book ‘Riot Days’ and is flanked by original Pussy Riot member Nastya on saxophone, Russian thespian Kyril Masheka on backup vocals (of sorts) and Max from the music duo AWOTT (Asian Women On The Telephone) on the keyboard.

What follows is a melange of broken hypnotic saxophone noises which appears to serve the function of making the audience feel uneasy, coupled with drone like electronic keyboard sounds as Alyokhina introduces her film about the revolution.

Her recounting of her time in prison is spasmodic and frenetic, imbued with revolutionary rhetoric that hinges on the hypnotic hallucinatory chants of the Catholic Church. Instead of “Glory to God in the Highest” we are treated to “Putin Peed His Pants” and “Learn How To Burn It”.

All the while, a screen in the background is playing documentary footage of Pussy Riot, images from the French Revolution, photoshopped pictures of President Vladamir Putin with a condom on his lapel and English subtitles for those who can’t speak fluent Russian.

There’s a sense of immediacy to the whole night. As the audience gets to witness someone who has taken on the Russian Government and survived to tell the tale. For Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina this is not simply a story of survival, it’s the story of an avid human rights advocate, who has endured the worst kind of physical and psychological abuse all because of a non violent protest.

The parallels between Pussy Riot’s fight against the Orthodox Catholic Church in Russia and indeed Ireland’s own fight against the systematic shaming and maiming of women in Catholic Ireland ensures a massive response of solidarity from the Irish crowd.

“In Russia there are no women Priests. In Russia there is Pussy Riot.” - shouts Alyokhina, and our view is temporarily obscured by a sea of arms with clenched fists to the sky. When Kyril disappears off stage, only to return wearing a REPEAL jumper, the crowd has all but lost it’s mind. The message of the night is clear - ‘Anyone Can Be Pussy Riot’ and at the time this certainly feels possible.