La Fura dels Baus Stages the Dubrovka Tragedy

Boris Godunov is crowned Tsar, but the remorse for Prince Dimitri’s murder plagues him. Lost in bad omens, he doesn’t notice the spectres in ski-mask that come brandishing menacing weapons. In a few minutes, they fill the place with explosive and..

Welcome to the new show of La Fura dels Baus, one of the world’s most important performance companies. On 6 March, the Catalan theatrical group previewed “Boris Godunov”, a piece based on Alexandr Pushkin’s play. Pushkin’s plot fuses with reality, taking inspiration from the terrorist attack happened in the Moscow’s Dubrovka Theatre in October 2002. The Chechen terrorists took the audience hostage threatening to blast the building and exacting the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. After three days of negotiations, Putin chose the hard-line: the special forces raid ended with the death of 129 hostages and 33 terrorists. Now, La Fura dels Baus retrieves that terrible event in this sort of docu-drama, where the audience is involved in a whirl of sensations, including  fear too. The company chose a little theatre in the small town of Molina De Segura, giving an even more claustrophobic touch to the show. Spectators and critics were very fascinated by this tragic parable about the quandary between means and purposes.