Drama is a fact of life in Mariam Dolidze’s life - and not only on stage.

The 30-year-old Georgian actress is an activist in the social movement “Russia Is An Occupier” which protests Russian support for Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In the early 1990s, conflicts between newly independent Georgia and the two regions led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Georgians, who were driven out of their homes and still live in displacement. Those who managed to return to South Ossetia lost their homes a second time after the renewed conflict in August 2008.

Over the past decade, the people living along the administrative border line, as the de-facto border is called, are engaged in a daily struggle to make a living.

During the day Dolidze and her fellow activists organize demonstrations, visit the communities, especially the elderly, and bring donations and emotional support. In the evening, she wears her acting hat and performs on stage. Her latest work is a character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Gambler.” The novel matches her life fully as one of the movement’s initiatives is to disseminate material, often at night, denouncing Russia as occupier of a part of their country.