Elina Kulikova (born in St. Petersburg) is a director, writer and performer. She participates in international theatre festivals and workshops and has been nominated for national theatre awards in her native country. Over the past five years, she has worked in Russia, the United States, Europe and Latin America. She studied at Bard College of Liberal Arts (New York) and later at La Manufacture (Lausanne), specialising in direction. Long before fleeing Russia in February 2022, Elina was already engaged in Russian queer writing and ecofeminist epistemologies. She became the target of cyberbullying by far-right activists after her name was publicly cited as an example of a “traitor” on a prime-time propaganda television program. S ince 2022, she has been living and working in Switzerland and France. The central themes of her theatre and writing are the war in Ukraine, gender-based violence, and memory.

Dima Efremov is a sound artist, performer and interdisciplinary creator. He’s a political activist too. Until 2022, he worked in Russia with theatres and institutions as the Meyerhold Centre, the Voznesensky centre, the Garage Museum and the international artistic festival Point. He’s engaged with the queer theatre, as well as exploring themes of repression and torture perpetrated by the Russian state. He is also actively involved in defending human rights, helping artists in danger to leave Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. In addition, he is the co-founder of a project that helps people suffering political repression in Russia.