Gogol Center


The Gogol Center, Russia’s leading avant-garde theater is a multi-use arts complex in Moscow, featuring movies, music concerts, a discussion club, and performances by Russian and foreign directors on several stages. The Center is noted for its stagings of contemporary Russian Dramas and a lobby featuring neon-lit mirrors shaped like famous directors. and as part of recent news related to Russian State censorship of the arts.
The Center's has recently hosted dance companies including SounDrama and Studio Seven as part of an experimental artist in residence program specifically committed to art that "does not limit itself with any genre boundaries and constantly strives to reflect Modern Art in the most relevant way."
The Center's writer and dramaturge, Valeriy Pecheykin, is a regular contributor to the Russian LGBT magazine Kvir, author of the plays My Moscow, Net, Lucifer, Russia, Forward!, A Little Hero, screenplay co-author for Pavel Lungin's The Conductor.
Kirill Serebrennikov, the artistic director of the Gogol Center, is professor at the Moscow Art Theatre School. His productions were presented at the Wiener Festwochen and the Avignon Theatre Festival. His films have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Rome Film Festival, and the Warsaw International Film Festival, where his film Yuri's Day received the Grand Prix.

History

In February 2014, Moscow’s Gogol Theatre reopened as the Gogol Center with a season that included performances of Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol and Hamlet by William Shakespeare
In May 2017, Russia’s Investigative Committee ordered police to raid the Center. The Center's Directory, Kirill Serebrennikov was detained for questioning. On 23 May, police attributed the cause of the raid and detention of its Director to an investigation of embezzlement of budget funds.