{"id":40961,"date":"2025-01-09T08:40:53","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T08:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/?p=40961"},"modified":"2025-02-05T18:48:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T18:48:37","slug":"yelena-kostyuchenko-love-does-not-demand-submission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/yelena-kostyuchenko-love-does-not-demand-submission\/","title":{"rendered":"Yelena Kostyuchenko: “Love Does Not Demand Submission”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I think it\u2019s very important to stage performances like <\/strong>Unseen<\/em><\/strong> today.<\/strong>
<\/strong>Before flying to London, I read everything I could find about it. And, of course, it\u2019s a conversation about political prisoners. Because their situation is not improving\u2014it\u2019s deteriorating progressively every second. I am corresponding with several of them, and some have been imprisoned for ten years already. That is, these are people who were jailed back during the Bolotnaya case. Among those I correspond with, there are doctors, workers, and a young female artist who had just turned 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the characters in <\/strong>Unseen<\/em><\/strong> is a doctor!<\/strong>
<\/strong>And in this context, of course, I can\u2019t help but think about Nadezhda Buyanova and how she will endure imprisonment. She is my mother\u2019s age and type, and when she gave her last word\u2014when she said she had simply wanted to heal people and nothing more\u2014I couldn\u2019t stop crying. Naturally, I imagine my mom in her place. My mother is still in Russia, as is my younger sister, and of course, they both face enormous risks every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do you think? Today, does art, including theater, have the right to talk about anything other than this pain?<\/strong>
<\/strong>I don\u2019t know. It seems to me that art and rights exist in different dimensions. We talk about pain not because we have the right, but because it\u2019s impossible to remain silent about it. At some point, you just break open, and then art comes to the rescue, giving us language.
I studied under Mikhail Ugarov and Yelena Gremina when they were alive. And they believed that art neither had the right nor should talk about anything other than repression and war, as long as repression and war exist. Precisely because the greatest amount of pain, trauma, horror, and instability is concentrated in that place. That\u2019s what their Teatr.DOC<\/em> was all about. Mikhail Yuryevich Ugarov used to say he didn\u2019t see the point in staging The Three Sisters<\/em> right now. Teatr.DOC<\/em>still adheres to this principle while remaining in Russia. Many have left, but many stay and work underground. And this is absolutely incredible.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Naturally, I immediately think of your play <\/strong>New Antigone<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong>
<\/strong>It was very painful to watch\u2014and you invited the women from the Beslan case to the performance. Do you remember how you felt?
Well, of course, when I performed\u2014or rather, no, it wasn\u2019t a performance but a documentary play about the trial of six Beslan women, whose children, husbands, and other loved ones died during the school siege. They had come out onto the street wearing T-shirts that said, \u201cPutin is Beslan\u2019s executioner,\u201d and were condemned for it.
When they were in the hall, I felt an enormous responsibility before them. I understood that when you speak about someone else\u2019s pain, it\u2019s very easy to make mistakes, even in tone. And tonal mistakes, for some reason, are the most unbearable in such circumstances. The audience will never forgive them, and neither will those who have experienced it themselves. You can\u2019t pile on pathos where a person has a raw wound, for instance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they stepped onto the stage, I saw that the audience was deeply hurt, and some found no better way to deal with their pain than to lash out at these women.<\/strong>
<\/strong>I remember one man\u2014his inner fire was visible\u2014stood in the middle of the hall and said, \u201cWhere were your men when the cops dragged you, beat you?\u201d And Emma Tagaeva replied, \u201cMy men are dead. My husband and two sons were killed. I have no one; I\u2019m alone.\u201d
Without a doubt, theater is an important medium. I didn\u2019t understand theater\u2019s power until I started working on New Antigone<\/em>. When I was in the courtroom, what troubled me most was the thought that no one would believe me\u2014because it\u2019s impossible to grasp that these women were being judged. I had a recorder with me, which a bailiff constantly tried to confiscate. He sat behind me and, whenever I relaxed my grip, tried to snatch it. To prevent the city from gathering and rescuing these women, all the doors were locked within ten minutes of everyone entering the courtroom. Throughout the session, people stood outside, banging on these locked doors.
When Yelena Gremina suggested creating a play about it, I didn\u2019t immediately understand or accept the idea. Why a play? What\u2019s the point? Only when we began reading the script did I suddenly feel like I was back in that courtroom\u2014feeling the bailiff behind me, the hard wooden bench, the women breaking bread to eat, as no one fed them, of course. I saw the bruises on their hands.
Only then did I understand how theater works\u2014it makes everyone in the audience a witness. You can no longer deny this piece of reality, nor say it didn\u2019t happen.
Yes, they can lock every door on Earth, but if theater manages to bring truth, pain, life, and death to the stage, then these people will no longer be alone. The audience becomes witnesses\u2014linked by an invisible but very strong bond. If art and journalism have any higher purpose, it is precisely this.
I don\u2019t believe we\u2019re the fourth estate or that art serves the people. Art serves only itself. But if we speak of a higher purpose, I believe it lies in creating these invisible connections between people, which are the strongest things in the world, holding it together against chaos\u2014not politics, the UN, or borders. I\u2019ve become convinced of this over the past three years. I\u2019d like these connections to grow stronger and more numerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this love?<\/strong>
<\/strong>I think so. Love in its purest sense. The kind that is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, and is not proud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your book <\/strong>My Beloved Country<\/em><\/strong> is filled with love. With all your life and professional experience, how have you managed to preserve love?<\/strong>
<\/strong>I don\u2019t think love is something you can preserve or beg for. I am a believer, and I truly think that love is simply a gift from God. There\u2019s no other way to explain why we have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can it be lost?<\/strong>
<\/strong>I think so. You can reject it, especially because sometimes loving is very painful. My love for my country is a very, very painful feeling right now. It brings a great deal of pain into my life. But I\u2019m not ready to abandon it precisely because I understand the nature of this feeling.
Love doesn\u2019t demand submission, killings, lies, silence, or fear. Love demands a very close look at what you love and care for the fate of what you love. That\u2019s love.
And my life experience has indeed been, let\u2019s say, varied. But I have seen how love can triumph over death: for example, in Zaporizhzhia in the spring of 2022, when I was preparing to go to Mariupol. There were very active battles, and no humanitarian corridors existed. But people got into cars, tied them with white rags, believing that no one would shoot at civilians, and formed columns, heading to Mariupol in the hope of finding and saving their loved ones. There were thousands of these people\u2014the column had no end. They believed their love would save those left in the city. I witnessed this and will never forget it. That\u2019s why I will never betray my love, no matter how much pain it brings me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophocles\u2019 <\/strong>Antigone<\/em><\/strong> is an ancient play, written centuries before Christianity. But <\/strong>New Antigone<\/em><\/strong> is an entirely Christian play. Not coincidentally, you quote the New Testament. What can you say about hatred?<\/strong>
<\/strong>I don\u2019t think love and hatred are opposites. It seems to me that the opposite of love is indifference. Hatred, probably, is a very strong, destructive process that sometimes begins within and then seeks an object. First, you feel this emotion inside, and then you look for someone or something to direct it at. And then you\u2019re told where to aim it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you deal with it?<\/strong>
<\/strong>Poet Lev Rubinstein once said something profound: hatred is more fundamental than its object. Approach someone who hates another and start asking them questions, and you\u2019ll find out that they don\u2019t hate just one specific group of people but many. I think hatred is like an autoimmune disease of the soul. I\u2019ve seen how hatred consumes a person alive, leaving only an empty shell. That\u2019s why I try very hard not to cultivate it in myself.
I often notice that when I begin to feel angry at someone, it\u2019s connected to my own inner dishonesty. For example, it hurts, but I don\u2019t want to admit it. Or I\u2019ve made a mistake, but I can\u2019t accept that\u2014I\u2019m supposed to be perfect!
I mentioned earlier that I correspond with political prisoners. What struck me in their letters is the complete absence of hatred\u2014it simply doesn\u2019t exist as a dimension. It\u2019s assumed that we, on the outside, should support political prisoners. But in reality, it often turns out that they support me in their letters. A friend of mine is currently in solitary confinement, where there\u2019s nothing but a wooden bench, a barred dirty window letting in cold air but no view, and a hole in the floor for a toilet. She writes: How can I find joy in today?<\/em>
<\/em>In solitary confinement, you\u2019re not allowed anything\u2014not a pen, not a notebook. You\u2019re supposed to sit and reflect on your behavior. And then, she writes, I remembered how I used to compose poetry in my head during school lessons. It\u2019s such great practice!<\/em> And when the guards come to taunt her, saying, How are you? What\u2019s new?<\/em> she smiles and says, I\u2019m fine. Everything is great!<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How would you describe your current state?<\/strong>
<\/strong>I haven\u2019t found the right word in Russian to describe it yet. In English, there\u2019s the word exile<\/em>, but in Russian, \u0438\u0437\u0433\u043d\u0430\u043d\u0438\u0435<\/em>(exile<\/em>) sounds overly dramatic.
Ah, standing on a little pedestal, \u201cI\u2019m in exile.\u201d And it\u2019s not refugee<\/em> either because that immediately makes me think of Ukrainian refugees who literally fled under bombs. I ran under bombs for work and was paid for it. It\u2019s not emigration<\/em>either\u2014emigration is voluntary, and I never wanted to live abroad.
Sometimes I feel helpless: I\u2019m 37 years old, and what now\u2014rebuild my life from scratch? But when I correspond with political prisoners, and they share how, in a two-meter solitary cell, they manage to feel free, creative, productive, and engaged, I realize I can do so much. I\u2019ve even started writing my second book.
If I may, I would like to tell your readers: please write to political prisoners. There are many of them, and their numbers grow every day. These are people who most need your attention, sympathy, and warmth. But you also need their survival strategies, which they practice every day. That invisible connection is the strongest bond in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yelena Kostyuchenko is a Russian journalist, writer, LGBTQ+ activist, author of the book My Beloved Country, and playwright. We met with Yelena before the performance of Unseen by Ia Patarkatsishvili, which Kostyuchenko flew in to see\u2014and to discuss afterward. Yelena is not only a fantastically courageous journalist but also a person deeply connected to theater. She is the author of the verbatim play New Antigone, staged by Yelena Gremina in 2018. We talked about theater\u2014and how art can help during the most challenging times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":40955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"type_post":[],"column":[],"class_list":["post-40961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40961"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=40961"},{"taxonomy":"column","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/column?post=40961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}