You first began collaborating with WithinTheatre in 2024 during the development of our production of 1984. What attracted you to the company and its artistic vision?

 

I already had experience working with 1984 in Saint Petersburg, where the production was directed by someone who had once been my teacher and had given me my first leading role, in a play called Dulcinea of Toboso based on Volodin. He later moved on to staging Orwell’s 1984 and invited me to join as a consultant. So by the time I encountered WithinTheatre’s version, I already had one relationship with this material which made me deeply curious to see the same story from a completely different angle.

I’ve always believed that theatre must first and foremost speak to its audience that the place we live in inevitably shapes the productions we make and the performances we give. The audience is our compass. So I came to this collaboration wanting to discover something new within a work I already knew intimately. And I did. Before I was finally able to emigrate because I do not support the war I had worked primarily in large state theatres. Encountering WithinTheatre’s young, energetic, passionately curious ensemble brought me back, in the best possible way, to that feeling of being seventeen or eighteen, when every rehearsal feels like the most important thing in the world.

And then there is the material itself. Russia today is Orwell’s 1984 that is not a metaphor, it is a reality I lived inside. Being able to see those same patterns reflected through another culture, through different eyes, felt genuinely precious to me. That is what drew me in.

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What makes the creative process at WithinTheatre different from other theatre environments you’ve worked in?

 

I touched on this in my previous answer, but let me go deeper.

I have worked with large, well-funded theatres some state-owned, some not where every department runs like clockwork, the staffing is enormous, and each actor is treated with great care. But those environments often demand something that began to trouble me: an almost devotional deference to the principal director. Not respect, worship. And in the context of what Russia has become, I started noticing how certain theatres mirror that same logic of small-scale dictatorship. That was never something I could reconcile with my fundamentally liberal values.

The most defining experience of my career was working at the Maly Drama Theatre — Theatre of Europe, under Lev Dodin. He is, without question, a great director, and I learned an enormous amount from him. But at a certain point I began to hunger for plurality, different directors, different visions, different worlds. That longing is exactly where WithinTheatre met me.

The level of creative depth is not lesser, it is simply different, shaped by a different culture, a different generation, a different set of stories they feel urgency to tell. And that difference is precisely what I needed. Working with completely different people, a completely different director, a completely different artistic concept, it helped me grow both as an actress and as an acting coach. Because for me, my own development as an actress always comes first. I try to connect every project, every collaboration, back to that growth. And WithinTheatre gave me exactly that.

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This autumn you will also be joining the cast of Boogie on the Bones. How does it feel to move from supporting the development process into performing within the production itself?

 

This is a question that genuinely makes me happy because, as far as I know, the company has been waiting for me to join this production for a long time. That conversation began many months ago. And knowing that people truly want you there, that they have been looking forward to working with you that means an enormous amount. The acting world is so often built on a logic of constant self-justification, the idea that you are never quite enough, that you must always be proving yourself, clawing for a place. What I see at WithinTheatre is something entirely different. I see people who make art because they love making art. For them, it is not an act of violence against the self or against others, it is a process of pure pleasure.

And I am, at my core, a theatre actress. Completely, unreservedly. If someone told me I could only choose one thing: coaching, film, business, if anything,  I would choose theatre. Every time. Without hesitation. Because nothing charges me the way theatre does. Nothing opens me the way theatre does.

And then on top of that I already love so many of these people. That creates a particular kind of depth and connection that you simply cannot manufacture.

So yes. I am waiting for this with genuine anticipation, with excitement, with joy. I cannot wait.

 

 

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In 2026 you were accepted onto the MA Acting for Screen programme at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. What excites you most about this next chapter of your career?

 

My answer may sound simple perhaps even obvious. But sometimes the most obvious things are also the most true. So I will say it plainly, because that is exactly how it is: I have dreamed of this for most of my life. My first real encounter with British culture was through British cinema. Among all the Hollywood and European films I grew up watching, British film always burned the brightest for me like a ball of fire. The actors who had trained in the British tradition simply held me. They glued me to the screen in a way nothing else did. Then, when I was still a student, I visited England for the first time and spent three weeks immersing myself completely. I saw as much theatre as I could. The most defining moment came at Shakespeare’s Globe, where I watched A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play I was beginning to work on myself at the time, preparing the roles of Helena and Hippolyta. Watching those actors, I felt something I had never felt before: that I, too, might have the right to reach for this kind of art. The energy in that space was a revelation.

Back home in Russia, the training is steeped in Stanislavski and the great traditions of Russian theatre which I love and respect deeply. But I was hungry for other worlds. The Globe led me to Peter Brook, and Peter Brook lit something in me that never went out. Then last year, almost by accident, everything became clear. I was walking the Camino de Santiago, seven hundred kilometres on foot from Portugal to Spain  when a friend of mine, who is not even an actress, said: I want to apply to drama school. Something in me recognised that she could actually do it, because she is fierce and determined. And then I thought: I am no less fierce. And I am an actress.

I had emigrated. I had left behind everything: my career, my life as I knew it because I don’t support the war. All my plans had been shattered by that decision. But I began to wonder if that same rupture might also be opening a door. I decided to apply. I was accepted on my first attempt. And I find myself now on the edge of a chapter full of changes, every one of which fills me with something I can only describe as childlike, playful wonder. This is one hundred percent one of them.

 

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How do you see your future developing between theatre and screen work?

 

I am, by nature, greedy for work. I sometimes catch myself thinking I would do this for free just to be doing it, and then I have to remind myself: Marina, you also want to live well. Please charge for your time. But the impulse remains. The more work, the better. If I had to choose, as I said before, I would be a theatre actress and nothing else. But thankfully we live in a world where I don’t have to choose.

British theatre is where my ambitions are pointed right now, I intend to move forward in that world with real momentum. I hope British audiences will accept me and come to feel at home with me. I work constantly on my accent, so that nothing stands between them and what I am trying to give them. I intend to get very good at it.

As for screen, beyond the ambition to act in film and television, I have a deep desire to create. I discovered in myself an inclination toward writing that genuinely ignites me. I have always been a literary person, someone drawn to poetic language, but when I chose the path of acting I quietly suppressed that side of myself. Then, early in my time at the Maly Drama Theatre, Lev Dodin invited anyone who wished to write their own stage adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, the novel the company was rehearsing at the time. I thought: I love Dostoevsky, and what an extraordinary challenge. I wrote my first adaptation. And something in me caught fire.

That was when I first felt a powerful pull toward writing, not books, necessarily, but specifically adaptations, plays, and screenplays. Here is something I have never told anyone: the story that first made me want to write a screenplay came from a work of popular science I was reading around that time. It was the story of a British doctor -  an amateur palaeontologist who discovered what turned out to be the first recognised dinosaur remains. He was not a professional scientist, he was a gynaecologist with a passion for fossils. He understood what he had found something immense, a creature unlike anything known. But because he was an outsider, he was pushed aside by the established scientific community, and the credit for his discovery went to others. He lost a great deal. That story moved me profoundly. I could see every frame. I knew exactly how to tell it. That impulse never left me but I always felt I needed to understand British culture from the inside before I could do it justice. I did not want to write about people I did not truly know. Now, finally, I am going there. Since then I have written several screenplays, some of which are already in early development discussions. I have written stage adaptations as well including a full-length play based on Dovlatov and other Russian emigrant writers, which we have performed in Portugal and across Europe to strong responses. New projects are underway.

Theatre remains my first passion and always will. But if I can one day act in a film written by my own hand that would be something close to complete.

 

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Many people know you not only as an actress, but also as a teacher and creator of one of the largest Russian-speaking educational communities focused on self-expression and personal development. How did your online project begin, and what have you learned from working with more than 2,600 students and an audience of over 160,000 followers?

 

Thank you for this question because my school, Instructions for Yourself, and everything connected to my work as a blogger and educator, represent an enormous part of my life. They give me energy, they give me the love of an audience, and yes, they give me financial independence. And it all began completely by accident. I didn't start a blog to become famous or to make money. Neither of those things was on my mind. At the time, I had just joined the Maly Drama Theatre, but the theatre desperately wanted me while having no roles ready for me yet. So I attended rehearsals, observed, waited. And in that strange in-between time, I felt lonely and restless. I stumbled across a course on blogging, took it almost on a whim, and thought: well, why not, maybe something will come of it a theatre offer, a film enquiry, something.

What actually happened was that the moment I started the blog, things began to move. Within a couple of months the theatre started offering me role after role rehearsal after rehearsal, production after production. Suddenly I could not let go of either. So I learned to hold both at once. Beyond the financial independence and the connection with my audience, what blogging gave me above all else was the ability to work fast and work well simultaneously. That capacity to move fluidly between different spheres while keeping everything rooted in art and theatre I now consider one of my greatest strengths.

As for the school itself,  the name came from a simple observation that amused me: we have instructions for everything. For tables, for washing machines, for refrigerators. But for ourselves as human beings? Nothing. We stumble through life guessing, fearing, holding back. People began asking me through the blog: Marina, how did you become like this? I want to be more confident. I want that kind of presence. And I found myself genuinely puzzled because I did not think of myself as particularly confident or charismatic. But when I looked at it more carefully, I realised I had spent years unconsciously applying acting techniques to everyday life. When I needed to appear more assured than I felt, more open than I was I had simply been drawing on tools I had absorbed through training.

So I began trying to turn that into a methodology.

At first I worked exclusively with non-actors, I was too intimidated to work with actors. An IT specialist would come to me and say: I freeze in job interviews. I would give him a Strasberg technique. It worked beautifully. Then Grotowski. Even better. Then Brecht. I began testing method after method, first on myself, then on my family, then on students keeping the ones that consistently worked and building from there. As numbers grew and individual sessions became impossible to scale, I developed online and offline programmes, and even immersive travel experiences combining education and adventure, training groups, companies, teams in confidence and self-expression. Eventually I felt ready to work with actors too. And it turned out that even trained actors wanted what I had structured a clear, concrete, actionable system drawn from techniques they had encountered in more fragmented ways during their training. They came to me wanting to feel more grounded on stage, and in life. Later I began working directly with theatre productions, developing roles from the inside. And somewhere along the way I discovered I was actually rather good at teaching which had never been part of any plan. It all came together by accident. But I am genuinely glad it did. It is a fine thing to know that you affect not only your own life but the lives of people who come to you for help. I think it satisfies something deeply altruistic in me, some large and stubborn belief in other people.

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Finally, what advice would you give to young actors trying to build an international career today?

 

May I answer this with the words of one of the greatest singers in the history of Slavic culture, someone who also spoke out openly against the war and left Russia? I mean Alla Pugacheva. When she was asked what advice she would give to young people, she said: don’t listen to anyone’s advice. Especially not from people older than you, they think they know everything, but they don’t.

That line has stayed with me. Perhaps because I am still young myself. But here is what I genuinely think: do not listen to advice you did not ask for. There are extraordinary teachers, directors, artists, and mentors out there from whom you can learn enormously and you absolutely should, in the moment when you seek them out, when you arrive with a question, when you feel the need. In those moments, take everything in. Try it. Test it. And then filter it because we are all individuals, and even the most universal advice may simply not be right for you. That requires your own head on your own shoulders, and a constant willingness to search and experiment.

As Stanislavski said: to understand is to feel. Feel it first. Then decide whether it fits. But if you did not ask if the advice arrives uninvited then my main counsel is simply this: ignore it. There is a tendency, at least in the world I have moved through, for everyone to have an opinion about young artists. How to get projects. How to build a role. How your costume should look. Whatever the question, someone always knows better than you how to be you. If you did not ask, send them politely and with great elegance somewhere far away. No need to descend to gossip or conflict. A calm, neutral response is sufficient. But remember: real advice helps only when you have asked for it.

That is the advice I would offer if someone asked me for it.

 

I am deeply grateful for this conversation. Your questions were thoughtful, wide-ranging, and genuinely engaging I have a feeling I will be lying awake tonight thinking about them. So if you find yourself hiccupping this evening, know that somewhere out there, I am thinking about your questions.

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Interviewer: Sofia Barysevich

02.05.2026

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