Russia - Benefit Concert

By Lawrence Sheets

Published November 10, 2002 at 11:00 PM CST

NPR's Lawrence Sheets reports from Moscow that the cast of the Russian musical Nord-Ost performed this past weekend for the first time since last month's attack on their theater by Chechen gunmen. They staged a special benefit concert including songs from the musical. The mood was somber, but defiant, as performers honored 17 cast members who died, along with more than 100 other hostages -- the vast majority from the effects of gas Russian security forces pumped into the theater.

Lawrence Sheets

Lawrence Scott Sheets concentrates on covering the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union from his base in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. From 2001 to 2005, Sheets was NPR’s Moscow Bureau Chief, and covered the countries of former USSR, including Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia. Among major stories Sheets has covered for NPR have been the tragic siege of a school by a pro-Chechen separatist terror group in 2004 in which 330 mostly children were killed, the 6-week long "Orange Revolution" that brought down Ukraine’s old government in 2004, and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia in 2003. Sheets has also reported for NPR from Iran and Afghanistan. He covered the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan during 2001 and 2002, including the bloody Taliban uprising at a fortress in Mazar e Sharif in which hundreds of people died.Sheets’ reports can be heard on NPR's , All Things Considered, Day to Day, and Weekend Edition.