A QR Code at the Curtain Call: When a State Theatre Mistakes Tipping for Cultural Policy
There are theatrical scandals that are larger than the scandal itself. Moscow’s Pokrovka.Theatre, a city-funded repertory theatre, tested a system of cashless “gratitude” for actors. After a performance, spectators could scan a QR code and transfer money to a performer they liked. The initiative was presented gently: not quite “tips”, almost an alternative to flowers. Later, after criticism from the professional community, the theatre first announced that the test project had ended. Then it returned to the idea with new determination, promising to rethink the model and extend it not only to actors, but also to backstage workers: sound engineers, make-up artists, costume staff and others.
At first glance, this may sound modern. But the problem begins exactly where the theatre tries to make the idea sound harmless. Gratitude is not the same as tipping. Theatre has its own rituals of recognition: applause, flowers, standing ovations, reviews, letters, sold-out performances, a spectator returning again and again. A QR code after the curtain call belongs to another language entirely. It is the language of restaurants, taxis, delivery apps and customer-service screens asking whether we would like to add 15, 20 or 25 percent. Theatre should not go to the curtain call with an outstretched QR code.
The issue becomes even more delicate because Pokrovka.Theatre is not a private entertainment venue experimenting with any business model it likes. It is a state budgetary cultural institution of the city of Moscow. In other words, it is part of a public cultural system. This matters. A private theatre may decide to live by ticket sales, sponsorship, bar revenue, membership clubs or even questionable forms of audience monetisation. A city-funded repertory theatre is different. It receives public support not in order to place the unresolved question of labour pay back into the spectator’s hand at the end of the evening, but in order to protect theatre as an institution, a troupe, a repertoire and a public good.
Outside Russia, this distinction may not be immediately obvious.
Russian repertory theatre, like much of the publicly funded theatre tradition in Europe, is historically based on the idea of an ensemble. A permanent troupe, a repertoire, a theatre building, salaried artists, long-term artistic development and institutional responsibility – this is not the same ecosystem as American community theatre or independent gig-based performance.
In the United States, one can already find a close analogue: Tiplify, a platform that allows audiences to scan a code and send money directly to performers. But this logic grew out of community theatres, independent groups, semi-voluntary labour and constant fundraising. In that context, a digital tip jar is at least honest about what it is: a survival tool. But to import that logic into a Russian state repertory theatre is to change the genre. A repertory actor is not a gig worker waiting to be individually monetised after the show. He or she is part of an ensemble and an institution.
Supporters of the Pokrovka initiative have also invoked the British experience: the National Lottery, whose revenues help fund cultural projects. The British lottery model is a public funding mechanism, distributed through grant programmes with criteria and accountability. It is not a system in which a spectator, moved by a particular actor after a particular performance, scans a QR code and sends that person money.
A national lottery is not a hat passed around the auditorium. This is the central confusion in the Pokrovka case: patronage, donations, grants, sponsorship, public funding and tips are being mixed into one convenient rhetorical soup. But they are ethically and structurally different things. If a spectator supports a theatre foundation, that is patronage. If a business funds an educational programme, that is sponsorship. If a public body distributes lottery money to cultural organisations, that is cultural policy. If a spectator transfers money to a favourite performer after the show, that is tipping. It says: the institution did not pay enough; perhaps the audience will add something. Theatre salaries are indeed a serious problem. But the answer to this problem cannot be to turn the spectator into a miniature Ministry of Culture with a smartphone.
The spectator has already paid: for the ticket, for time, for attention, for the emotional labour of being present. To ask that same spectator to compensate for the economic weakness of the institution after the curtain call is to shift responsibility in the most convenient direction – downward, toward the audience. This is why the initiative is not merely awkward. It is dangerous.
Theatre is an ensemble art.
Every production already contains enough internal hierarchies: who gets the main role, who appears on the poster, who receives interviews, who is remembered by the audience, who stands closer to the centre during the bow. Add to this an economy of personal transfers, and one creates not solidarity, but a market of affection. Tips would not provide a meaningful measure of artistic contribution. They would mostly reflect visibility: the size of the role, an actor’s public profile and whether the audience remembers their name after the performance. A leading actor would have an obvious advantage over a performer whose work is less conspicuous but no less important to the production. Of course a performance is created by dozens of people whom the audience never sees. But that is exactly why their labour must be protected by contracts, salaries and institutional responsibility – not by the chance that someone in the foyer suddenly remembers the lighting designer. Invisible labour does not become respected because it is made available for micro-donations. It becomes respected when it is paid properly.
There is also an almost theatrical irony in the way the initiative has been defended. Pokrovka.Theatre, under its new artistic leadership, has tried to position itself as an energetic renewed institution. Its slogan, “First by the Classics”, suggests continuity, taste, dignity and a relationship with tradition. But precisely for that reason the tipping initiative creates such a strange stylistic crack. Classics and cashless tips do not sit comfortably together. A theatre that invokes the classics should understand rituals. Applause, flowers and the curtain call belong to the theatre’s established rituals of gratitude. A QR code in the foyer is not a ritual, it is a service solution.
Theatre can and must search for financial sustainability.
It can build donor circles, transparent funds, membership programmes, educational projects, partnerships, endowments, targeted grants, accessible ticket schemes and public campaigns. It can speak honestly about money. It can ask society to support culture. But it should not confuse support with tipping. Support strengthens the institution, but tipping privatizes its poverty.
No artist should be moved, symbolically or economically, from ovation to alms. This is the real issue behind the Pokrovka.Theatre debate. The question is whether a city-funded repertory theatre should respond to the underpayment of its people by institutionalising a digital form of alms. If the answer is yes, then the problem is much larger than one QR code in one Moscow theatre. It means the theatre has begun to describe its own crisis as innovation.
Main Image: Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash
She is Regional Managing Editor of The Theatre Times and a member of the International Association of Theatre Critics. Her essays, reviews and interviews have appeared in Critical Stages, European Stages, The Hollywood Reporter, Teatro, Novaya Gazeta and other cultural publications. She is the author of more than 500 publications on theatre and cinema, and her professional work combines criticism, editorial practice, public lectures and creative writing.
Dementsova-Rasulova has received several literary and journalism awards, including the Golden Pen Award, the Yousmi Web-Journalism Award for Best Professional Review, the International Tyutchev Prize and the “Challenge – XXI Century” diploma of the International Press Club. Her current interests include contemporary European theatre, intercultural artistic dialogue, performance as public memory and the critic’s responsibility in times of crisis.
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