PUSSY RIOT: RIOT DAYS

Punk and electronic music are interwoven with personal testimonies. At its heart lies resistance against a dictatorship – and the question of what it means to continue this resistance.

The show was developed by producer Alexander Cheparukhin in collaboration with Maria Alyokhina and has been touring internationally since 2016. Conceived as a work in perpetual evolution, it has now been performed in more than 40 countries.

*Riot Days* evolves in line with political developments in Russia and Ukraine. Each performance responds to current events, names political prisoners and documents Putin’s political repression and war crimes.

The story is told from Alyokhina’s perspective. In 2012, she was sentenced to two years in a penal colony for her involvement in ‘Punk Prayer’, Pussy Riot’s protest against Putin in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. She initially remained in Russia and only fled the country in 2022, following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On stage

Maria (Masha) Alyokhina

Voice. Author. Member of Pussy Riot.

In 2012, Alyokhina was sentenced to two years in a penal colony for the ‘Punk Prayer’ performance. Whilst in prison, she sued the prison authorities over the treatment of inmates – and won the case.

In *Riot Days* she wrote about those years; in *Political Girl* she wrote about life afterwards. She also curated *Velvet Terrorism*, the first retrospective exhibition on the work of Pussy Riot, which travelled from Reykjavik to museums across Europe and North America. In 2025, she was sentenced in absentia to 13 years’ imprisonment in a Moscow court case.

Alexander Cheparukhin

Producer. Initiator of *Riot Days*.

Cheparukhin is the founder of GreenWave Music. When members of Pussy Riot were imprisoned in 2012, he mobilised Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Patti Smith, Sting and hundreds of other supporters. He is one of the driving forces behind the book *Riot Days* and developed the show based on it.

Alina Petrova (Rov)

Composer. Multi-instrumentalist. Member of Pussy Riot.

Petrova opens the show alone on stage with a violin. Her work combines violin and viola with modular synthesisers and live programming. She founded the KYMATIC ensemble and completed a Master’s degree in Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. In 2025, she was sentenced in absentia by a Moscow court to eight years’ imprisonment.

Taso Pletner

Actor. Theatre and documentary theatre director. Member of Pussy Riot.

Pletner studied at the Moscow Art Theatre School under Dmitry Brusnikin. His collaboration with the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson marked the start of the exhibition *Velvet Terrorism* in Reykjavik. The show was subsequently staged in Montreal, Vancouver and Munich, amongst other places. In 2025, Pletner was sentenced in absentia by a Moscow court to eleven years’ imprisonment.

Eric Breitenbach

Drums and samples. Member of Pussy Riot. Co-founder of New Age Doom.

Breitenbach shapes the live sound of *Riot Days* with drums and samples and has been touring with the production since June 2025. He also provides the live music for Alyokhina’s literary performances of *Political Girl* in Europe and the UK.