Bolshoi behind bars? Imprisoned Russian drunk-driving actor Efremov pitches idea for theater inside Moscow jail

His reckless, drunken, high-profile car crash, which killed an innocent man, shocked Russian society earlier this year. Now, stage and screen legend Mikhail Efremov wants to set up a theater for inmates in one of Moscow’s prisons.

Efremov, a former Channel One TV presenter and star of a number of famed Russian feature films, was sentenced to seven and a half years in June after a head-on collision that left van driver Sergey Zakharov dead. Efremov was under the influence of alcohol, and his slurred comments after the incident went viral.

Moscow news agency TASS reported that, according to Efremov, “there is a wonderful club in the pre-trial detention facility, which has all the conditions for the creation of the Russian prison theater, for performances that will be entertaining, but also educational.”

Efremov has wasted no time in trying to share his love of the dramatic arts with fellow prisoners, having begun a reading of a modern play with cellmates, titled ‘The Accident’. He has reportedly said he hopes friends and former colleagues from the arts world will agree to take part in events at the jail.

At the same time, the actor is pushing to stay in a pre-trial detention center, where he works as a handyman, despite having already been convicted and sentenced. Prisoners there are not kept in cells, but in rooms. Authorities are yet to rule on his request.

Efremov’s acting career stretches back to 1979, and has seen him appear in a number of Russian comedies including ‘Election Day’, ‘The Irony of Fate 2’ and as Leo Tolstoy in ‘Rzhevsky Versus Napoleon’.

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