Teatr.doc (RUS) 1 hour 18 minutes Documentary production

43% theatre 57% documents

Sergey Magnitskiy died in police custody after a year of torture and abuse in November 2009. His death took one hour and eighteen minutes; he died with his hands and feet tied and lying on the floor, without receiving any medical help. He was not a hero, his death is not an example, not a metaphor and yet he represents hundreds of others. It is the story of confrontation with a system that seems impossible to resist.
The Moscow documentary theatre Teatr.doc – a joint project of numerous authors, theatre-makers and volunteers – brings on to the stage what Russian politics and society try to conceal. Their plays are based on authentic texts, interviews and the lives of actual people, between art and concrete social analysis.
“1 hour 18 minutes” is a trial that never took place. The theatre becomes a venue for the process denied to the victim. All those responsible for Sergey Magnitskiy’s death – the judges Alexey Krivoruchko and Helen Stashina, the doctor Alexandra Gauss, the public prosecutor, the medics, nurses and prison guards – appear on the unadorned stage under their real names, speaking their own words and trite justifications. The court, which Teatr.doc brings them before, is the public.