Pussy Riot: Riot Days

A story of resistance, oppression and revolution – a fusion of concert, protest, theatre and political performance. Riot Days is not a concert but a performance that combines theatre, personal testimony and live music. Based on Maria Alyokhina’s books Riot Days and Political Girl, the performance is accompanied throughout by documentary footage. Punk, electronic music and spoken word come together to tell a story of resistance against dictatorship.

The performance was created by producer Alexander Cheparukhin and Maria Alyokhina, and has been staged in more than forty countries since 2016. Riot Days has never been a fixed, unchanging production: it continually responds to current events in Russia and Ukraine, so no two performances are alike. Today, it also remembers the names of political prisoners and reports on Putin’s political and war crimes.

We experience the story from Maria Alyokhina’s perspective. The artist spent two years in a penal colony for Punk Prayer, performed in 2012 in Moscow’s most important Orthodox cathedral as a protest against Putin. Alyokhina remained in Russia afterwards, and was forced to leave her homeland only in 2022, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Maria (Masha) Alyokhina
singer, writer, member of Pussy Riot
In 2012, she was sentenced to two years in a penal colony for the performance Punk Prayer. During her imprisonment, she sued the prison administration over its treatment of inmates—and won. She wrote about her years in prison in Riot Days, and about her life afterwards in Political Girl. She curated the exhibition Velvet Terrorism, the first comprehensive overview of Pussy Riot’s work, which was shown in Reykjavík and later in numerous museums across Europe and North America. In 2025, a Moscow court sentenced her in absentia to 13 years in prison.

Alexander Cheparukhin 
producer, creator of the Riot Days performance
Founder of GreenWave Music. When Pussy Riot’s members were imprisoned in 2012, he mobilised Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Patti Smith and Sting, among hundreds of other artists, to support them. He came up with the idea for the performance and proposed it to Maria, found the director and publishers for her books, and then created the Riot Days production. He personally opens every performance.

Alina Petrova (Rov)
composer, multi-instrumentalist, member of Pussy Riot
She stands alone on stage for the opening of the performance, starting the show with her violin. Founder of the Kymatic ensemble, she plays violin, viola and modular synthesizers, and also works with live coding. She holds a master’s degree in sonology from the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. In 2025, a Moscow court sentenced her in absentia to 8 years in prison.

Taso Pletner
actor, theatre and documentary theatre director, member of Pussy Riot
She studied at the Moscow Art Theatre School under Dmitry Brusnikin. Her collaboration with Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson was part of the Reykjavík presentation of the exhibition Velvet Terrorism, and later travelled with the exhibition to Montreal, Vancouver, Munich and other cities. In 2025, a Moscow court sentenced her in absentia to 11 years in prison.

Eric Breitenbach
drums and samples, member of Pussy Riot, co-founder of New Age Doom
A musician whose dynamic drumming plays a defining role in Riot Days, he has been touring with the production since June 2025. He also provides live musical accompaniment for Maria Alyokhina’s literary performances of Political Girl across Europe and the United Kingdom.

Opening act: New Age Doom
Each evening, Eric Breitenbach’s solo performance opens Riot Days, evoking the dark, cinematic soundscape of New Age Doom. Barely contained chaos, drums pushed to the limit and electronic sounds set the stage for Riot Days. New Age Doom is a Vancouver experimental music duo whose work has been praised by Pitchfork and MOJO. They have previously recorded with legendary musicians such as Lee “Scratch” Perry and H.R., vocalist of Bad Brains.