BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

15/04/2008

Belarus Free Theatre will not be silenced

Michael Billington

This celebrated company's devastating new work presents the reality of life in Europe's last dictatorship

I have just returned from the European Theatre Prize in Thessaloniki. Last year the closing ceremony was marred by protests, partly triggered by the withholding of the main prize from joint-winner, Peter Zadek, because of his inability to attend. This year all went smoothly and there was universal acclaim for the chief prize-winner, Patrice Chereau, who is a formidable director of plays, films and opera. In Thessaloniki we discovered, from dramatised readings of works by Marguerite Duras and Pierre Guyotat, that Chereau is also a powerful performer. The good news is that the much sought-after Chereau hopes to come and work at the Young Vic in 2010.

But what most excited me in Thessaloniki was seeing a brand-new three-part project by the Belarus Free Theatre. Their productions of Being Harold Pinter and Generation Jeans have been acclaimed in Leeds and London; and the company's long history of harassment and persecution in their native land is well-known. It was because of that they were awarded, at the instigation of Vaclav Havel and Harold Pinter, a special prize in Thessaloniki. It was deeply moving to see the entire company, complete with their children, on stage to receive their award. And at the end they raised their hands in a victory sign as a gesture of solidarity with people imprisoned in Belarus.

"We come from a zone of silence," said their dynamic co-founder, Natalia Koliada. And that was the title of the three-part work they premiered in Greece. The first section, Childhood Legends, was movingly based on the actors' own formative experiences. The second part, Diverse, was an enactment of testimony from marginalised figures in Belarus: a black homosexual, a homeless street-dancer, an abused alcoholic. But it was the third part, Numbers, that struck me as a masterpiece of theatrical irony. On a screen above the stage we saw surtitled statistics about the reality of life in Europe's last dictatorship: below that the actors displayed their own habitual inventiveness, providing a physical counterpoint to the bleak facts.

It was a technique Joan Littlewood pioneered in Oh! What a Lovely War. But here it was put to devastating new use. The flow of information was ceaseless: 1200 people "disappear" annually in Belarus; only 2% of babies are born totally healthy; every fourth Belarusian suffers a mental disorder. But the actors, even when illustrating the facts, displayed a contradictory resilience: gender inequality, for instance, was wittily demonstrated through a transvestite mating-dance. And the show ended with a long litany of famous Belarusians ranging from artists like Chagall and Soutine to politicians like Peres and Begin to entertainers like Kirk Douglas and Irving Berlin.

The paradox is that one emerged from the show with a strange hope for Belarus driven by the ability of its artists to confront the truths about an oppressive society. And, from a forum I chaired the next day, two particular remarks stuck with me. "It is the dictators who are the sick people," said the company's director, Vladimir Scherban. And, when asked if they were not running a great risk by presenting Zones of Silence, Natalia Koliada quoted a remark made to her by Vaclav Havel: "You need to talk loudly and openly if you are to keep safe." I just pray that Havel is right and that the company does not suffer further for so brilliantly spreading information and light.

Source:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2008/04/belarus_free_theatre_will_not.html

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