Millions are demanded from the theater for a performance with a quote from the suicide note of the poet Red

The heirs of the poet Boris Ryzhy directed the Theater to Taganka filed a pre-trial claim demanding to pay 3.5 million rubles for past screenings of the play "Red. I loved everyone. No fooling around." Also, the heirs intend to receive 12% of the gross proceeds of all subsequent performances, the director of the theater, Honored Artist of Russia Irina Apeksimova told TASS.

Premiere of "Red. I loved everyone. Without fools" took place on February 7, 2025. The director of the play is Edgar Zakaryan, the author of the play, written especially for the Theater on Taganka, — Vladimir Antipov. The title of the play contains a direct quote from the suicide note of the poet, who committed suicide in 2001.

"Recently, we received a pre-trial claim with a huge amount that the poet's heirs demand to pay: 12% for each subsequent performance and 3.5 million rubles for all those that have already taken place combined. It is not clear what this amount is based on. If we continue to play the production without their permission, they want to recover 5 million rubles through the court," Apeksimova said.

According to director Zakaryan, about 5% of the text in the play belongs to the authorship of the Redhead — seven poems and a fragment of the Rotterdam Diary. The timing of the author's material is 5 minutes, the total duration of the production is 1 hour 40 minutes. Now the theater has excluded the writings of the Redhead from the performance — until all issues in the legal field are resolved.

"The artistic integrity of the play itself will not be affected by the decision in any way. It is worth noting that the play is original. It tells about a person, about the vicissitudes of his fate — the actual information is taken from open sources," Zakaryan shared.

Apeksimova noted that at the time of the production's preparation, the theater tried to contact the heirs of the Redhead, contacted the RAO (Russian Authors' Society), but there was no response. After the premiere had already taken place, the poet's sister called the theater, after negotiations it was decided to send 3% of the gross collection to the heirs.

"It suited her. She talked to our lawyers — and we announced to her the actual amount of deductions for the shows that took place, taking into account the agreed percentage," continued Apeksimova.

She clarified that the play "The Redhead" is also in the "Workshop of Peter Fomenko", from these shows the heirs receive 8%. However, the production of this theater consists almost entirely of poems by the Redhead.

In addition, among the demands of the poet's relatives is to stop using the alleged photos of Boris Ryzhy without the consent of the copyright holders for commercial purposes.

"But this is their absolute mistake. They did not see the performance and refer to the photo album on the performance page on our official website: the picture shows the actor Alexander Zaryadin as a writer. They just confused him with Boris Ryzhy," the director explained.

Another requirement of the heirs is to stop selling tickets and remove the play from the theater's repertoire. Apeksimova pointed out that there is no logic in this requirement at all, since they want to receive deductions from subsequent screenings of the play.

"We have never been hiding in our life and we are not going to hide this time. We pay interest to all authors we work with. But here it must be borne in mind that the number of poems used is not comparable to the amount requested by the heirs. With a photo, it's also stupid. Now we will send them our explanations on this matter. We hope they will help solve the problem. If the heirs still decide to sue, we will sue," concluded Apeksimova.

Boris Ryzhy was born in Chelyabinsk in 1974, then moved to Yekaterinburg. He worked as a junior researcher at the Institute of Geophysics. Ryzhy's poems have been published in many literary magazines. In 2001, when the poet was 26 years old, he committed suicide.

As reported by EADaily, in September 2024, Semyon Serzin's film about the poet "Red" was not released in Russia because it did not receive a rental certificate.