In the fall of 2017, the internationally acclaimed underground theatre troupe Belarus Free Theatre took New York by storm for a production of their harrowing anti-torture, anti-Putin play Burning Doors. Joined by Maria Alyokhina, a member of Russian punk group Pussy Riot, the play met with enthusiastic acclaim from critics. In Svetlana and Nadezhda, award-winning documentary photographer Misha Friedman and New Yorker reporter Masha Gessen take us backstage, giving us an intimate look at this fiercely creative drama troupe that cannot officially perform in its homeland.

About the Author

Misha Friedman is an award-winning documentary photographer whose photographs have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the New Yorker, among other publications. The author of Lyudmila and Natasha: Russian Lives, he lives in New York City.

Masha Gessen is the author of Surviving Autocracy, the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. A staff writer at the New Yorker and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship, Gessen teaches at Amherst College and lives in New York City.

Book Information
ISBN 9781620974056
Author Misha Friedman
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint The New Press
Publisher The New Press