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Theatre director Evgenia Berkovich has said that she is now banned from staging performances at Correctional Colony No. 3 in Kostroma Region. This was reported by the Telegram channel run by her support group.

“Zhenya asked us to pass on that yesterday, she was officially and finally forbidden from taking part in any performances in the colony. She cannot direct, help, do anything in any way. So she asks that people don’t ask her in letters what she is staging there. Nothing. Only tailoring and cutting in the textile workshop. That’s the news,” the message said.

In March, Berkovich talked about taking part in a puppet theatre mini-production competition held in the colony, where her entry took third place. Afterwards, she began preparing a performance for 9 May, in the format of reading family stories. But in the end, she abandoned the idea. “To do it well, there’s no time left, and Zhenya doesn’t want to do it poorly; she’ll hold it over till next year,” her lawyers explained.

The director was transferred to Correctional Colony No. 3 in February 2025.

In July 2024, the 2nd Western District Military Court in Moscow sentenced Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk each to six years in a general-regime colony on charges of “justifying terrorism” (part 2 of Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code). On appeal, Berkovich’s sentence was reduced to five years and seven months in the colony, while Petriychuk’s was reduced to five years and nine months.

The alleged reason for their prosecution was the documentary play ‘Finist, the Brave Falcon,’ written by Petriychuk and directed by Berkovich. The play tells the story of women who married Islamists and went to join them in Syria. In 2022, the production won the Golden Mask award, and in 2019, there was a reading of the play at Youth Correctional Colony No. 2 in Tomsk, a city in Siberia.

The case against the director and the playwright was brought in part on the basis of a “destructological” expert analysis, in which the author claimed the play “heroises” Islamic State militants and promotes an “ideology of radical feminism.” Later, the Justice Ministry admitted that this expert analysis could not be considered evidence in court, as it has no scientific basis and “destructology is not a science.”