Ras(Putin) reexamines Putin’s rise to power through queer lens

Though he’s yet to officially deny it, Russian President Vladimir Putin almost certainly did not have a forbidden love affair with pre-revolutionary mystic Grigori Rasputin.

Nonetheless, that is the premise behind Ras(Putin): The Highly Improbable aka Fictional Story of Putin’s Rise to Power, a queer, satirical, darkly funny one-act play by Sunset Park actor Arielle Zaytsev, marking her playwriting and directorial debut. The play was selected to premiere this January as part of the New York Theatre Festival.

In Zaytsev’s version of events, Rasputin is immortal, his 1916 assassination is faked, and he is imprisoned in a bunker by Soviet leaders hoping to capitalize on his mysterious powers. More than 60 years later, Putin, a young KGB agent, is tasked with getting the mystic to reveal his latest prophecy, and the stage for romantic comedy is set.

“It’s my take on who people are before they make the decision that makes them into who we know them as,” said Zaytsev during an afternoon interview at Yafa Cafe. “Putin, he’s a horrible, evil person, and I thought how ironic it would be if the reason he hates gay people and things like that so much is because he was jilted in his youth by Rasputin.”

Zaytsev said she first started writing with the hope of creating a part for herself, but the idea that arrived was a play where the cast would all need to be played by men. The premise came to her first as a title and a concept, and she said she sat with it for months before a clear catalyst arrived: acting in a benefit for Ukraine called Uncovered Scenes from Ukraine, featuring short plays based on interviews with Ukrainians.

“We performed all these different plays over the night, and being surrounded by all of these playwrights and all these people who were directly impacted by what’s going on, I just felt very motivated and creatively inspired to do it,” said Zaytsev. “Once I started writing, I had it down in like three days.”

The daughter of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Zaytsev said she feels deeply connected to the subject matter. She said her father, now an outspoken critic of Putin, immigrated from Ukraine in 1989, just before the Soviet Union collapsed, and her mother immigrated from Belarus.

Zaytsev said she wanted her mother to read the script early on for practical reasons.

“My mom was one of the first people that I sent it to,” she said. “I wanted her to fact check all the Soviet stuff, because she grew up there.”

Zaytsev said her mother’s notes helped her sharpen cultural details, like making sure to include a portrait of Lenin on the bunker wall and vodka in smuggled flasks.

“My mom was like, ‘They all have to be drunk, there has to be alcohol involved,’” Zaytsev said, given how taboo homosexuality was and remains in Russia. “There’s no way a sober man is gonna kiss another man in the Soviet Union.”

Her father has not read the script, she added, but she described him as strongly supportive.

“He’s very pro-Ukraine, very anti-Putin,” she said. “So he’s pleased with what I’m doing, whether he really knows the plot or not.”

The team includes assistant director Henri Brusasco and intimacy coordinator Leslie Renee Spitznagel. The cast includes Carl Schack as Putin, Josh Bloom as Rasputin, and Eric Berger in multiple roles.

Ras(Putin) plays at Teatro LATEA (107 Suffolk St., 2nd floor) on Monday, Jan. 12 at 9 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 9 p.m., and Saturday, Jan. 17 at 6:45 p.m. Tickets are available here.