Sochi 2014: Drama

Most playwrights spend months, or even years, labouring over their work. But not Tess Berry-Hart, who was given just two and a half weeks to write a pioneering new play chronicling the lives of LGBT Russians living under the country's anti-gay laws.

The play, Sochi 2014, will be staged tonight and tomorrow at the King's Head Theatre in north London, but rehearsals are only due to start this morning. In a British theatrical first, the play will be based on 20 verbatim accounts from LGBT Russians...
The playwright told The Independent on Sunday she got involved because she supports "people's fight for equality." She said there is no single Russian "gay experience", but hopes that by looking at a "cross-section of stories," she will give a "true picture" of what is happening in Russia, where it is now a criminal offence to promote non-heterosexual relationships...

The play follows intense pressure from figures such as Stephen Fry to boycott the Winter Olympics, to be held in Sochi next year. But Berry-Hart said her own opinion on this issue changed after speaking to Russians, many of whom "want the Games to increase visibility and solidarity for them instead"...

Independent On Sunday.

Obviously, The Independent's coverage of Russia is not influenced by their billionaire owner, Alexander Lebedev, being a political foe of Putin. 
Or by the chair of Independent newspapers, his flamboyant and colourful etc etc son, Evgeny.

• Sochi 2014 at the King's Head Theatre. All profits admirably will go to Spectrum, the Russian LGBT human rights group.

Alternatively you could go to Cold War, a benefit party in London today raising money for... Peter Tatchell.
A club night in Brighton next Friday, No Crime No Punishment, will be showing solidarity with LGBT Russians by giving all their proceeds - again, not to any Russian group - but to All Out - the beyond pointless and hardly impoverished American passive activism clicktivist e-petition website.
You couldn't make it up etc etc...