Masakr Elsinor: Your Silence Will Not Protect You

A staged concert presents courtroom speeches of contemporary Russian political prisoners, those convicted for YouTube, "TikTok terrorists," as well as dissidents and often reluctantly engaged artists. At the heart of the production are Czech translations of closing statements from two dozen cases of recent years, texts from the book "(Not) Last Words."

Journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, activists, professors, students, children. In Russia they are all perpetrators and criminals, and their voices in court are given only the slightest breath. In a transparent cage, yet somehow without pretense, they can say what they truly think. A glass cage, the outline of the accused, prosecutors' files, paragraphs, the harsh language of a venerable court. Fear of the barrier greater than what lies beyond it. Tikkun olam is the repair of the world. Vladimir Kara-Murza cannot stand, Olga Misik clutches a whistle, Ingush elder Malsag Uzhakhov sees a monster thick, predatory, enormous and many-headed, some official leaned too far out a window, and Alexei Navalny quotes the Bible: "This is your hour, the power of darkness."

The performance features excerpts from the final statements of Russian political prisoners who, despite persecution, imprisonment, torture, and threats of death, refused to submit to Russia's perverted politics and stood against it. Some are already free (mostly abroad), some remain in prison, and some are no longer alive. They are: Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Malsag Uzhakhov, Armen Aramyan, Dmitry Ivanov, Maria Ponomarenko, Viktor Filinkov, Vasily Kuksov, Alla Gutnikova, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Metyolkin, Maria Dubovik, Andrei Novashov, Nikita Uvarov, Yulia Galyaminova, Olga Misik, Andrei Pivovarov, and Yegor Zhukov.

The performance also includes an excerpt from a letter regarding the restoration of citizenship for Olga Kirienko, information about the electrocution torture of Ilya Shakursky and Dmitry Pchelintsev, and the case of minor Anya Zhuravlyova, Yegor Starshinov, Kirill Smirnov, and Pavel Kushnir. The original texts are, in accordance with the artistic intent of the script, variously reworked, supplemented, and stylistically adapted.