A reading of the play by the arrested Svetlana Petriychuk was held in Tashkent

The reading of the play “Finist Yasnyi Sokol” by the Russian playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, who was arrested on charges of justifying terrorism, was held at the Ilkhom Theater in Tashkent. It was staged by director Maksym Fadeev as a sign of solidarity with Svetlana Petriychuk and director Evgenia Berkovich, who were arrested in the same case, reports Radio Ozodlyk (the Uzbek service of Radio Liberty).

“We made a reading, because we are people; in order for as many people as possible to find out about this, since the only thing we can help is to make everything that happens to Zhenya and Sveta more public,” – the Fadeev publication quotes “Fergana”.

Petriychuk and Berkovich were detained and subsequently sent to a detention center in Moscow in early May. The reason for initiating a criminal case against them was the play “Finist Yasnyi Sokol”. The play, staged by Berkovych based on Petrychuk’s play, is based on real stories and court sentences of Russian women who married radical Islamists and were involved in terrorism by their husbands. At the time of the arrest of the theater workers, the play had been on the Moscow stage for three years and was twice awarded the main Russian theater prize “Golden Mask”.

Dozens of Russian scientists have signed an open petition demanding a review of the expertise in the case of Berkovich and Petrychuk, which revealed signs of a crime. According to scientists, the expert involved in the case, Roman Silantiev, who calls himself a destructologist, is a representative of pseudoscience, and his expertise is unauthorized. The Russian Jewish Congress and the Spiritual Administration of Muslims criticized the examination.

The clear play was performed only once in the “Ilkhom” theater. The ARTySHOK Theater in the Kazakh city of Almaty announced that they will hold readings of Svetlana Petriychuk’s plays once a month until her release.