the untouchables

Documentary theatre / social art project. St. Anne’s Church. Directed by Mikhail Patlasov. Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2017.

For this non-profit documentary theatre production, I developed the visual design.

Created in collaboration with the charitable organization Nochlezhka, the project investigated homelessness through documentary theatre, working with stereotypes and social invisibility surrounding people experiencing homelessness in Russia.

The production was based on extensive interviews with individuals living without permanent housing. Their testimonies were preserved with minimal adaptation, allowing personal narratives to shape the dramaturgy. Alongside professional actors, several participants performed on stage as themselves, creating an unusual performative situation in which lived experience and theatrical representation coexisted within the same space.

One of the central dramaturgical devices placed a professional actor beside the person whose story they were performing. As the actor recounted the testimony, its author remained present on stage, occasionally completing sentences or silently witnessing their own life being retold. This shifting relationship between representation, authorship, and presence dissolved the conventional boundary between performer and subject.