The theatre performance Liberté, which premiered in 2024 at the Royal District Theatre in Tbilisi, has been labelled blasphemous and its makers have come under attack. Nick Awde talks to the show’s director Data Tavadze and David Doiashvil, the recently sacked artistic director of the New Theatre, about the ongoing protests in Georgia and how theatre has become a focal point for resistance.
After eviscerating Georgia’s TV and news channels, infiltrating social media and corralling the students, Georgia’s government is now turning its sights on theatre – the backdrop being the citizens’ protests that have taken place every day since November 28, 2024 when the ruling Georgian Dream party, backed by oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili and Russia, announced it was sabotaging the nation’s accession to the European Union.
Even though most theatres are state, they have now become the last remaining formal space for protest – a reality that makes them targets for their government employer. In March, for example, the ethics commission of the Shota Rustaveli State University of Theatre and Film expelled ten students for their part in the 100 Days of Theatre sit-in – a decision reversed by the rector, but his university then shut down the Centre for the Development of Contemporary Theatrical Art, better known as the Temur Chkheidze Studio for Playwrights.
Waiting in the wings is proposed legislation to amend the Law on Professional Theatres to replace artistic directors in state theatres with government appointed administrative directors, while in June Ivanishvili’s ‘foreign agent’ law kicks in with its intentionally vague definition of criminality that can be applied to anyone engaged in public discussion.
As seen with the students’ attempted expulsion, things are getting personal. In director Data Tavadze’s case, in May there appeared overnight a fully-fledged campaign aimed at one of his plays. Liberté, which premiered in November 2024 at the Royal District Theatre and has played in Poland, is an exploration of sexuality through the Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom. Seen as controversial for Georgia, it responsibly comes with an over-18 warning, yet government social media accounts shared short excerpts to a coordinated litany of the Orthodox Church condemning it as ‘blasphemous’ and ‘promoting LGBT propaganda’, pro-Russian groups denouncing it as ‘liberal fascism’, pro-government TV channels decrying this ‘attack on values’.
“I never anticipated this level of provocation, certainly not the extent to which Liberté has been weaponised by propaganda,” says Tavadze, who works as director at the Royal District Theatre and managed the Temur Chkheidze Studio for Playwrights. “The regime has twisted and distorted the meaning of the performance, isolating a single moment from its context and using it to manipulate public sentiment. They didn’t show the full picture, only the detail that would provoke outrage.
“Liberté is everything a dictatorship fears, it’s a show about unity, solidarity and independent thinking. It inspires solidarity, and that’s exactly what authoritarian power tries to destroy. Because when people are united, they are strong – and the regime’s goal is to isolate, divide and weaken, to make every citizen feel alone and defenceless.
“I believe the government is targeting me and the theatre community because we have become one of the most consistent and vocal forces of resistance in Georgia. Georgian theatre, especially over the days of protests since November 2024, has been at the forefront of civil activism. We have succeeded in making our voices heard nationwide, so an attack on theatre today is an attack on the protest movement itself.”
The 100 Days of Theatre proved to be one of the longest strikes in theatre history and many theatres today continue to take strike action. “We organised demonstrations supporting Georgia’s pro-European path, protests against judicial injustice, and marches defending artists’ freedoms and the unlawfully detained. Our work onstage and in the streets became influential enough to make the establishment nervous. Eventually, Ivanishvili’s regime decided to crush it by the most repressive means possible – arresting artists, persecuting them, removing independent directors from leadership roles, shutting down organisations, using propaganda to defame and discredit us, even threatening our physical safety through pro-Russian ultra-right groups. The regime’s goal is clear: to silence us completely.”
Ending up as the last platform standing for the people’s voice reflects the choices that theatre has made to resist. “Absolutely. Georgian theatre has proven itself to be among the bravest in the world. It has stood up to tyranny, and this is not the first time. Our actors are real-life heroes. The world needs to know their names. Take Andro Chichinadze, a brilliant young actor who is doing more for justice and truth from behind prison bars than most actors ever do from the stage or screen. Or Vepkhia Kasradze, an actor and veteran of every Georgian war, a man who has given everything for this country. These artists are not just performers, they are catalysts of real change, embodying courage and conviction in a way few others can.”
Chichinadze is one of the actors at the Vaso Abashidze New Theatre, a state institution which, under director David Doiashvili, has also focused on protest. During the Covid years Doiashvili remodelled the New Theatre as a platform for political and social critique while creating a groundbreaking series of sold-out shows that tapped the public pulse. In April he found himself sacked by the Minister of Culture, who declared that reform is needed to remove ‘inefficiency and wokeness’.
Andro Chichinadze in front of the New Theatre
“Before everything happened,” says Doiashvili, “we had built up a huge audience. The moment the protests started on November 28, our audience went straight off to stand with the protesters and we followed them into the street because, up that point, theatre had meant more to them than anything else and now the protests had replaced that. We didn’t know when our shows would start up again, so we said we would refund everyone’s tickets. Instead our audience chose not to ask for their money back and showed their solidarity by donating it to us.”
Performances resumed after this impromptu suspension, but then Chichinadze was arrested on December 4 in the street and put in prison. He was performing that evening and the theatre cancelled the show – but then the audience showed up at the theatre at 7pm to applaud the actor. “It was amazing to see applause for not performing. If you have an idea and stay true to it, everything will stand strong and you will gain support, but this is an understanding that so many people are lacking here. If all the other institutions had fought the same way as we did and stood tall and brave, then we wouldn’t be in this situation today.”
After Chichinadze’s arrest – along with other prisoners he faces nine years in prison on charges related to the protests – Doiashvili called on the government to release him by January 20. “They did nothing, so the next day I announced the theatre itself would protest and invited all our audience, friends, supporters and fellow citizens to join us on January 23 at 6pm in front of the theatre. We built a stage over the steps, the audience came, we performed and we all called for the release of all the prisoners. Because we are based on a repertory of shows and Andro is involved in half of them, the theatre expressed its solidarity with him and we went on strike – but we also announced our new protest touring show Manifesto. So we went from passive to active protest.”
The culture minister’s pretext is that there has been no activity at the theatre and that it has failed to fulfil its ‘founding objectives’. “In reality this is a reaction to the fact of our solidarity towards one of our own. Obviously solidarity has consequences for Georgians today. Andro was removed from his position and the fact that they have now fired me shows how they fear solidarity among the people. They say ’no activity’ because we stopped public performances for four months at a state theatre.”
So the oligarchs aren’t getting a return on their investment? “Of course they’re not. But theatre is not just about performing plays in a building, and taking a show to different regions as we are now doing with Manifesto is an equally valid activity. When the protests turned violent and unpredictable, it was logical that our theatre needed to change its repertoire. What we were doing no longer felt relevant to what was happening in the world. So everything had to change.”
Although he first found out via the Facebook feed of one of the government-controlled TV channels, Doiashvili’s firing came as no surprise, and the New Theatre staff refused to take this as a cue to escalate resistance but simply to keep the strike going.
“Who’s afraid of this theatre?”
“We are on strike in terms of public performances because the public is protesting too, but we continue to work because we have created the Manifesto show and perform it by taking out to the people. We stand on temporary stages and say that innocent people should not be in prison, we open the discussion about issues and create a platform for dialogue. So far we have visited eight regions in Georgia and there are more to come.
“So it doesn’t actually matter whether I officially work in this theatre or not. But what bothers me the most – and what I find so sad – is that people don’t understand the difference between government and party. A state theatre should be doing exactly what we are doing, standing up for what’s important, what’s right. A state theatre is obliged to represent the voices of the people. That’s what we’re doing. As for the other theatres that are quiet, those are party theatres. And that’s the difference.”
The relevance of theatre at the moment within Georgia’s society, he says, is that it’s obviously about being a mirror, because theatre needs to represent and reflect what’s going on. Theatre shouldn’t provide ready-made answers, it should raise questions and identify issues that everyone can talk about.
“Theatre isn’t a building or walls, theatre is people and vision. As soon as we took Manifesto to the regions, that’s when I really understood that theatre is not the building, it’s the people. We’ve gone back to the core of what theatre is – through all the events, we have returned to the point where theatre really is for people and with people. It’s one thing when you’re standing on a stage talking to an audience, it’s a completely different thing when you’re out in the field, without walls, without fancy lights or sound, talking about issues that people are afraid to face yet they’re still so interested that they turn up, they watch the shows, they participate.”
The state system is a legacy from the Communist period and so are the splits in society. “What has happened over the last 30 years in Georgia is not just a Georgian problem but a problem of the post-Communist space,” explains Levan Khetaguri, director of the Arts Research Institute of Georgia. “In the Soviet Union we developed generations of the ‘red intelligentsia’ who are rewarded for doing anything creative so long as they say nice things about how beautiful life is thanks to the government.
“Now we have a new generation who create but they are also active citizens who have grown up in an independent country with an understanding of independent values and what freedom means. So of course they don’t want to give it all back to Russia. The politicians don’t know what to do because they have always nurtured the red intelligentsia right up to today, people who are conformist and afraid of everything, perpetuating the experience of growing up when everything around us was the KGB and the Soviet Union.
“People were sold the stereotype that the new generation is less educated and we are now discovering that this is a lie. They are smarter than the older generation because their actions connect with values which have been lost to the older generation.”
“We need to talk to people,” adds Doiashvili. “Not just as a theatre but at the same level as politicians – this is how we create dialogue, where people can talk about change. You can see that there is a huge amount of fear and the only way to overcome that fear is through establishing a space for talking about what matters – especially what matters for young people.”
It’s a direction that is now inspiring and uniting Georgians to create new ways of protests through the medium of theatre. “We don’t know what form they’re going to take because they’re still gathering writers, painters, artists and directors, but all the stories are coming together and their job is to bring these stories to life every single day, as new ones are constantly emerging. I have no idea what the final result will be, but what I do know is that theatre is alive, it’s happening right here and right now in Georgia, living in the moment.”
Further reading: The Metamorphosis of the New Theatre Tbilisi
Nick Awde is a journalist, playwright, editor, critic and producer. Based in the UK, he is co-director of Morecambe's Alhambra Theatre. Books include Equal Stages (diversity and inclusion in theatre), Mellotron, Women In Islam, and translations of plays by other writers. Much of his work focuses on ethnoconflict and language/cultural genocide.
