Petersburg festival changed its name due to the law on LGBT propaganda

The St. Petersburg “Rainbow” theater festival changed its name due to the law on the complete ban of the so-called LGBT propaganda in Russia. Now it is called “International Theater Festival of the Theater of Young Spectators named after AA Bryantsev”. It was under this name that the Festival announced the start of accepting applications. The magazine “Teatr” writes about it.

The head of the Festival, Svetlana Lavretsova, said that the final decision regarding the renaming of the festival has not yet been made. “When the law on the prohibition of LGBT propaganda came out, we immediately thought about it. We do not want to appear as a topic that promotes LGBT, so we got together with our team and decided to change the name in advance or temporarily remove it. On the one hand, we see how crazy this is comes in the surrounding reality. Secondly, it is our brand. The state allocates money to us for “Raduga”, and theaters communicate with us, too, as with “Raduga”. In general, we think and we will consult,” Lavretsova is quoted as saying by the magazine.

The “Raduga” festival was held for the first time in February 2000. The main goal of the festival is to search for modern drama for young people, as well as directors working with new theatrical forms.

In different years, theaters from the USA, Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium and many other countries, which the Russian authorities now call “unfriendly”, reported Sever.Realii.

• On December 5, Vladimir Putin signed a package of laws on the complete prohibition of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” and transgender transition in the Internet, mass media, books, cinema and advertising. Fines are provided for violating the law: for citizens from 50 to 800 thousand rubles, for legal entities – up to 10 million rubles. Several administrative cases have already been initiated, and no court decisions have been reported yet. Human rights activists criticize the law as discriminatory against LGBT people.
• The rainbow flag is one of the world-famous symbols of the LGBT community and the struggle for its rights.
• After the start of the war with Ukraine, works and productions of opposition-minded authors, directors, and actors began to be canceled in Russia. The names of directors Kirill Serebrennikov and Dmitry Krymov, as well as writer Boris Akunin, who spoke out against Russian military aggression against Ukraine, disappeared from theater posters.
• The Ministry of Culture stated that cultural figures who had left Russia allegedly asked to remove their names from the posters of Russian theaters. At the same time, the head of the Ministry of Culture, Olga Lyubimova, admitted that removing the names from the posters could be a compromise in order for the theaters to continue their work.