Kirill Ganin describes his theater as the conceptual theater. To his friends and supporters, who include some prominent Russian theater directors, he is an erotic artist of some promise. The Russian government takes a dimmer view. Ganin, the federal prosecutor says, is a pornographer who belongs in prison. Sexual innuendo and even partial nudity in the Russian theater were virtually unknown until the late 1980s, when President Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms loosened the censor’s grip. Ganin was the first director, who staged a production featuring nudity, body painting and sexual acts at a popular Moscow nightclubs and theaters. The most famous scandal performance named as “Lenin in Sex” was devoted to intimate confessions of Lenin’s lovers. He is planning further productions and promises they will be as spicy as the others. “I am theatrical pervert”, Ganin told, “Even I have to stage ‘The Cherry Orchad’ by Anton Chekhov, I’d be able pervert even that.” “I do whatever I want and cannot do it any other way. After all, it may be pornography for other people, but not for me. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable during my productions, they shouldn’t come.”
