Some people say that the source of their inspiration is nature, travel, children or books. All that is hugely important, but contact with other people is what really pushes me forward. Not having the chance to mix, travel and get to know what’s going on around you is a really uncomfortable restriction.

Ideas grow out of communication. This doesn’t necessarily have to involve any kind of joint work. It’s just that you need to be able to experience dialogue, because new ideas are born from conversations, including informal ones. You watch what other people are doing, you speak to them and you understand what motivates and drives them. That’s how new projects are born. Competition, your own inspiration or thoughts you’ve had while wondering what other people do can sometimes play a part too. That’s why interesting, creative and unusual people with an inner energy are important to me.

I’m interested in how the past can sometimes reveal itself unexpectedly. For instance, I felt this in the spring when the COVID restrictions began and we moved out of Moscow to our house in the country — we don’t usually go there in the winter or early spring. There was a point when I found myself outside the city: I could see snow outside the window, the stove was lit, our things were spread out, and I suddenly sensed some sort of archetypal model. I felt as if my grandmother, my great-grandmother or some other relative was there and I knew how I had to behave and what I needed to do — as though I had done it all before. I knew that I needed to light the stove and think about food; I knew that we had to hold out there. Of course, the situation wasn’t as terrible as it might have seemed at the time, but a template of family behaviour like this is probably somewhere within all of us simply by dint of the fact that we live in Russia with its history and its past.

Everything’s been very odd and different from the way we usually live our lives; it’s been interesting to observe. One of the main conclusions I’ve come to is that I really love my work and my projects, because when they started to be threatened or postponed, I fought for each of them to the last. I was very sad that anything might not go ahead. I thought about how everything I do, from performances and festivals to city events, is genuinely important to me and that I love all of it in its own particular way.

I think that the period during the COVID restrictions earlier this year when the theatres and cinemas were closed was sobering for creative people. I saw in people’s correspondence and from posts on social media that people who work in culture and the creative industries were starting to think about how they live and what the future held for them, especially in terms of their finances. These reflections inspired me to set up an online course with my colleagues which is called “Personal Finance for Creative People.” Because people were asking where they were going to be in five years’ time and how they were going to pay their mortgages. They worried about what would happen if they didn’t wait for their big role, or the series they were in was cancelled. You want to tell creative people that managing your personal finances is not something that only dull and uncreative people are capable of. It’s a very basic thing that’s not really that complicated and can answer questions about things like what form of self-employment status you should choose, how to pay your taxes, and how to invest your money.

Teams are an important concept, but a team doesn’t have to be the people you work with. Your family is also a team. For those five months of the pandemic when we were outside the city, our family worked as a team. Your friends are a team. And the people you work with on a project are a team. Even your role changes when you become a member of a team. You stop being that super-effective manager who takes responsibility for everything and says, “I know everything, I came up with the idea and now I’ll implement it my way.” Instead, you sit down with other people — it could be your family, your friends, your colleagues or in the country it’s our little community — and you say, “let’s see what we can think up, and how we can do this together.” You’ve got such-and-such a problem or on the other hand you could have some massively exciting task and you ask each other how to deal with the challenge. This new approach of seeing the people close to you as your team is actually really great.

If I were asked what I see as my main strength I would say that I’m someone who can help an idea start to shine. It could be an idea or thought of my own that I’ve noticed or one that someone’s shared with me. It could be Oleg Nesterov’s latest project. I’ll fall in love with an idea, then see what I need to do to make it really appeal to people, to show it in its best light and make it really effective.

Initially, I see a promising start in an idea. There’s also a large element of trust when it comes to Oleg and his work: I believe in his ideas. I know that even if there’s something I don’t understand or don’t quite get, I need to trust him and in a while I’ll see how it develops and what comes out of it.

In general, it’s about the skill a producer develops when they work with creative people a lot but don’t try to rationalize everything or understand it all completely — because of course there’s creative magic and you can’t explain everything. You don’t know how it will work, but you trust the people who are responsible for it. And if you trust artists and demonstrate to them in every way that you’re listening to them, you’re helping them, and you’re finding the finance, and you give them positive feedback, then that magic flourishes.

Why am I interested in independent theatre? I think that despite all the financial restrictions, it’s a theatre of opportunities and of bold individuals who couldn’t imagine living any other way and really want to be doing what they do. If I were to define independent theatres, I would say they are self-created structures that are independent of the state, which put on productions including their own and take part in festivals.

In the theatre, it’s really important for me to see the audience’s emotions. It’s important to do things in a way that creates feedback. And there’s a sort of new pattern of behaviour that goes beyond this, when people arrive feeling one way and leave feeling renewed and a little better than they did before.

I absolutely love our New Year’s Eve performances at the Meyerhold Centre in Moscow. It’s a special type of experience of course. At the beginning I was worried; it seemed odd to be going somewhere and doing something instead of sitting with down to the traditional New Year’s Eve meal with your family. But then I realized that it was amazing to have 350 guests instead of ten! And it’s an incredible pleasure to see the whole audience arriving dressed up and looking wonderful, bringing their presents for each other with them.

When the performance finished, we thought that everyone would rush to the cloakroom for their coats so they could catch the metro or trolleybus home. Then we suddenly saw that people weren’t leaving and the foyer was full, with everyone talking, drinking sparkling wine, exchanging gifts and hugging. Well, this went on for about an hour and a half. It was absolute magic.

But now I think of it, our mothers also used to love to finish their chores early on New Year’s Eve and go to the theatre at six or seven o’clock — so it is a tradition after all.

Five or six years ago I started to put time aside in December to be by myself, compose myself, get myself into the right frame of mind and reflect on what I’ve done and experienced over the last twelve months. I think about all the amazing events of the year that I want to remember, the people I’ve been around, all the good things they’ve done for me and what I can thank them for. Then I think about what I can take from all the good things of this year into the year ahead and do even better. When you take this level of responsibility for your life and appreciate what’s happening for you, every year becomes special and transformative.

Everyone’s probably going to be wishing each other good health — that’s very important. We’re also going to be hoping that we can all be together again. With the way things turned out this year, many families, friends and relatives have been separated. We’ve all missed each other so much and I think what we’ll be wishing for most of all is to be near each other, see each other more often, hug and kiss, and just meet up. That’s what we’ve really missed, and God willing, that’s what we’ll be able to do next year.