Exiled Russian theatre director: Is America becoming like Russia?

This week, my friend — the renowned Russian director Sasha Molochnikov — is premiering his new play Seagull: True Story at La MaMa Theater https://www.lamama.org/seagull-true-story/

Before the opening, journalist Simon Shuster from Time and I sat down with Sasha to talk about what’s happening to American culture under Trump — and how an artist who fled Putin’s censorship feels in today’s America.

Alexander Molochnikov is a theater director, writer, and filmmaker. For over a decade, he worked in Moscow, where he directed stage productions, a ballet, an opera, two feature films, and a TV show. In 2022, after publicly speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Molochnikov left the country to study in the United States. He never returned. Most of his projects in Russia were shut down, and today, he creates new work in Manhattan.