Three sisters in Moscow
based on Cekhov and a true crime from today's Russia
Staatstheater Augsburg, Augsburg, Deutschland
„We must be free, be free. The reason we are depressed is that we know nothing of freedom. We come of people who didn't know freedom...“
including the artistic intervention Voices of Ukraine – testimonies of an unconquered country
In 2021, Alice Bota’s article in Die Zeit about the Khachaturyan sisters was published, inspiring the idea to bring these events to the stage. The trials of the father and the daughters were originally scheduled to begin the following autumn. In conversations with the director, the idea emerged to intertwine this real-life case with Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. The connection lies not only in the shared central figures but also in the thematic parallels between the two stories: the effects of a patriarchal and militaristic society, the mechanisms of oppression, and the longing for a different, better life—not to mention the dead father, a motif common to both narratives.
During the concrete stages of preparation and research, it became increasingly clear that the two narratives could not be merged into a single storyline but should instead be interwoven. The Khachaturyan story was to gradually infiltrate Three Sisters over the course of the production, inserted into Chekhov’s acts. Through this formal separation—each Chekhov act interrupted by a Khachaturyan sequence—both stories can coexist side by side. This structure is essential to avoid replicating the role of the Russian media in the Khachaturyan case: a populist spectacle centered on the three young women.
Yet, as the production unfolds, the real-life story begins to penetrate Chekhov’s play. Symbolic of this is the black cube placed at the heart of the bright stage design—a thorn in an ostensibly beautiful and orderly world. With the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an additional narrative layer emerged. The war, as the ultimate and most devastating manifestation of patriarchal power structures, extends the production’s thematic lines into the year 2023 - a time when there is still no end in sight to the crimes committed in Ukraine.
Sabeth Braun
starring: Natalie Hünig, Katja Sieder, Christina Jung, Julius Kuhn, Sarah Maria Grünig, Thomas Prazak, Klaus Müller, Sebastian Müller-Stahl, Kai Windhövel, Stefanie von Mende
director: Andreas Merz Raykov
set- and costume design: Galya Solodovnikova
co-director: Ekaterina Raykova-Merz
muisc: Stefan Leibold
dramaturgy: Sabeth Braun
photos: Jan-Pieter Fuhr