In new 'immersive' Russian play, actors wearing Ukrainian uniforms take audience 'hostage' and fire blanks
A new play that premiered in Russia’s Kaluga region on Tuesday purports to depict past stages of the war in Ukraine’s Donbas region. The title of the play is Polite People, a euphemism used to describe the unmarked Russian soldiers who appeared in Ukraine at the start of the war and seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
According to local news reports, as part of the “immersive” performance, actors wearing Ukrainian special forces uniforms took the audience “hostage” and fired blank ammunition into the air. One of the “hostages” was reportedly “shot” in the back.
According to the show’s creators, their goal is to show the audience "what Donbas residents experienced for eight years." The show is set to be performed in 12 cities throughout Russia.
According to the website of Russia’s Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, Polite People was funded by a presidential grant of 10 million rubles ($164,000), which its creators applied for in January 2022, before Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine.
