“There is an informer in every workplace in our vast motherland,” Sveta warned them back in drama school, “but Theater is always in the avant-garde of Soviet spying,” she insisted, “because plays have the power to influence so many people all at once. ‘Theater is a very dangerous weapon,’” she quoted the legendary director Meyerhold. Sasha wasn’t sure she believed Sveta back then, but in the few months working here, she has learned this much: trust is an exotic fruit that doesn’t grow in this semiarctic zone of freezing winters and rainy, mosquito-infested summers. Aside from their small
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