In Belarus, Theater Goes Underground («Chicago Tribune»)
Top-flight artists fed up with government censorship step out of the spotlight to perform furtively in cafes, bars and even apartments
Yana Rusekevich has performed Shakespeare at Minsk's Yanka Kupala National Theater, the top rung of state-sanctioned drama in Belarus. But on this opening night, she finds herself inside a dingy cafe far from the capital's luminous downtown avenues, not on stage but on a tile floor just a few feet away from the audience.
Rusekevich and the rest of the Belarus Free Theater troupe will perform Pavel Pryazhko's "Bellywood" in an area roughly the size of a living room, wedged between bubble-gum pink walls adorned with plastic roses and a faded Marlboro bar light. They won't get paid and they won't get reviewed.
They will, however, perform an evocative glimpse into Belarusian society that doesn't surrender to government edicts about what can and cannot be said on the stage. It won't be polished with backdrops and spotlights, but it also won't be censored.
"What's important is what you have to say to the audience, even if it's in a basement with bad lighting and only three people watching," said Rusekevich, 29. "The main thing is having something to say."
The Belarus Free Theater has plenty to say to its nation of 10 million and finds itself forever scouring for places to say it. As with virtually everything else in Belarus, theater is carefully filtered by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president. On state-sanctioned stages, productions of dated classics are deemed safe enough to allow; plays that probe contemporary Belarusian life almost always are banned. Consequently, what does not appear on state-sanctioned stages must go underground.
Since it began a year ago, Free Theater has endured cat-and-mouse antics with Belarusian authorities, shuttling among friends' apartments and small, hidden cafes and bars for rehearsal space and performance venues. In the two weeks before the "Bellywood" premiere March 12, the cast used five apartments for rehearsals, said Natalya Kolyada, who co-founded Free Theater with her husband, Nikolai Khalezin. Each time, the apartment owner feared retribution from authorities and asked the troupe to move on. Threats move the stage.
A December production of Natalya Moshina's play, "Techniques of Breathing in a Vacuum," had to be moved from a Minsk club to an apartment the day of the performance after the club's owner had received a call from Lukashenko's administration, Kolyada said. A friend of Khalezin's and Kolyada's agreed to allow the performance at his apartment.
"Then he got a call and was told he would have problems with his publishing business if he continued to help Free Theater," Kolyada says.
The troupe relies on announcements on sympathetic Web sites and on word of mouth to advertise upcoming performances. Audience members' names are checked on a list at the door to help keep government scrutiny out.
"It's the price we pay for what we do – we live in a dictatorship," said Khalezin, 41.
Khalezin knows firsthand just how far Belarusian authorities will go to muffle free speech. Police threw him in jail for 15 days in 2002 for organizing a rally. Three newspapers he once ran were shut down in the late 1990s after their circulation began making steady gains.
He and Kolyada founded Free Theater in March 2005, using the honorarium that a Moscow theater paid Khalezin for one of his plays. Actors working in state theater joined, eager to perform in productions free from state-imposed constraints. Two months later they staged their first production, "4.48 Psychosis," a work by British playwright Sarah Kane about suicidal depression.
The play's director, Vladimir Shcherban, and two actresses, Rusekevich and Olga Shantsina, were working in state theater, where their involvement in Free Theater did not go unnoticed. Shcherban's bosses at the Kupala theater cut his wages twice, and while they keep him on the payroll they have effectively stopped giving him work. A play Rusekevich wrote had been performed at Kupala for two years, but when Kupala officials learned of her involvement in "4.48 Psychosis," they dropped its production. One night when Rusekevich walked into a women's restroom inside Kupala, she saw that the scenery from her play had been cut up and used as floor covering.
"In spite of all this, I still work at Kupala and still work here at Free Theater," Rusekevich said during a break in an afternoon rehearsal of "Bellywood." "They used to call me into their office every day – now it's less often. There've been times that the [Belarusian] KGB has called me to ask why I work at Free Theater."The answer, Rusekevich says, is simple: "At Kupala, I'm constrained compared to what I can do here."
`Our guardian angel'Free Theater toiled in near-obscurity until British playwright Tom Stoppard appeared in Minsk in August to watch the troupe perform. In October, Stoppard wrote a 3,800-word article in London's Guardian newspaper, praising Free Theater's courage in the face of Lukashenko's repressive regime. Stoppard and former Czech president and playwright Vaclav Havel joined the theater's board of trustees.
"Tom Stoppard coming to Minsk changed the situation dramatically," Khalezin said. "He became our guardian angel. In many ways, Stoppard and Havel's involvement shielded us from harsher steps from the government."
As more than 100 Belarusians file into the cafe to watch the "Bellywood" premiere, Khalezin and Kolyada are beaming, in part because the building's owners did not carry out plans to shut off electricity to the building on opening night. With everyone seated, Shcherban and Khalezin introduce Pryazhko and apologize for the bad acoustics. Seated in the first row, Yulia Shevchuk says no apologies are needed.
"Lighting and stages don't matter," said Shevchuk, 21, a regular at Free Theater performances. "What's important is what they perform. In state theaters, we're not exposed to modern playwrights. They show us fairy tales."
Alex Rodriguez, «Chicago Tribune», march 19, 2006
Yana Rusekevich has performed Shakespeare at Minsk's Yanka Kupala National Theater, the top rung of state-sanctioned drama in Belarus. But on this opening night, she finds herself inside a dingy cafe far from the capital's luminous downtown avenues, not on stage but on a tile floor just a few feet away from the audience.
Rusekevich and the rest of the Belarus Free Theater troupe will perform Pavel Pryazhko's "Bellywood" in an area roughly the size of a living room, wedged between bubble-gum pink walls adorned with plastic roses and a faded Marlboro bar light. They won't get paid and they won't get reviewed.
They will, however, perform an evocative glimpse into Belarusian society that doesn't surrender to government edicts about what can and cannot be said on the stage. It won't be polished with backdrops and spotlights, but it also won't be censored.
"What's important is what you have to say to the audience, even if it's in a basement with bad lighting and only three people watching," said Rusekevich, 29. "The main thing is having something to say."
The Belarus Free Theater has plenty to say to its nation of 10 million and finds itself forever scouring for places to say it. As with virtually everything else in Belarus, theater is carefully filtered by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president. On state-sanctioned stages, productions of dated classics are deemed safe enough to allow; plays that probe contemporary Belarusian life almost always are banned. Consequently, what does not appear on state-sanctioned stages must go underground.
Since it began a year ago, Free Theater has endured cat-and-mouse antics with Belarusian authorities, shuttling among friends' apartments and small, hidden cafes and bars for rehearsal space and performance venues. In the two weeks before the "Bellywood" premiere March 12, the cast used five apartments for rehearsals, said Natalya Kolyada, who co-founded Free Theater with her husband, Nikolai Khalezin. Each time, the apartment owner feared retribution from authorities and asked the troupe to move on. Threats move the stage.
A December production of Natalya Moshina's play, "Techniques of Breathing in a Vacuum," had to be moved from a Minsk club to an apartment the day of the performance after the club's owner had received a call from Lukashenko's administration, Kolyada said. A friend of Khalezin's and Kolyada's agreed to allow the performance at his apartment.
"Then he got a call and was told he would have problems with his publishing business if he continued to help Free Theater," Kolyada says.
The troupe relies on announcements on sympathetic Web sites and on word of mouth to advertise upcoming performances. Audience members' names are checked on a list at the door to help keep government scrutiny out.
"It's the price we pay for what we do – we live in a dictatorship," said Khalezin, 41.
Khalezin knows firsthand just how far Belarusian authorities will go to muffle free speech. Police threw him in jail for 15 days in 2002 for organizing a rally. Three newspapers he once ran were shut down in the late 1990s after their circulation began making steady gains.
He and Kolyada founded Free Theater in March 2005, using the honorarium that a Moscow theater paid Khalezin for one of his plays. Actors working in state theater joined, eager to perform in productions free from state-imposed constraints. Two months later they staged their first production, "4.48 Psychosis," a work by British playwright Sarah Kane about suicidal depression.
The play's director, Vladimir Shcherban, and two actresses, Rusekevich and Olga Shantsina, were working in state theater, where their involvement in Free Theater did not go unnoticed. Shcherban's bosses at the Kupala theater cut his wages twice, and while they keep him on the payroll they have effectively stopped giving him work. A play Rusekevich wrote had been performed at Kupala for two years, but when Kupala officials learned of her involvement in "4.48 Psychosis," they dropped its production. One night when Rusekevich walked into a women's restroom inside Kupala, she saw that the scenery from her play had been cut up and used as floor covering.
"In spite of all this, I still work at Kupala and still work here at Free Theater," Rusekevich said during a break in an afternoon rehearsal of "Bellywood." "They used to call me into their office every day – now it's less often. There've been times that the [Belarusian] KGB has called me to ask why I work at Free Theater."The answer, Rusekevich says, is simple: "At Kupala, I'm constrained compared to what I can do here."
`Our guardian angel'Free Theater toiled in near-obscurity until British playwright Tom Stoppard appeared in Minsk in August to watch the troupe perform. In October, Stoppard wrote a 3,800-word article in London's Guardian newspaper, praising Free Theater's courage in the face of Lukashenko's repressive regime. Stoppard and former Czech president and playwright Vaclav Havel joined the theater's board of trustees.
"Tom Stoppard coming to Minsk changed the situation dramatically," Khalezin said. "He became our guardian angel. In many ways, Stoppard and Havel's involvement shielded us from harsher steps from the government."
As more than 100 Belarusians file into the cafe to watch the "Bellywood" premiere, Khalezin and Kolyada are beaming, in part because the building's owners did not carry out plans to shut off electricity to the building on opening night. With everyone seated, Shcherban and Khalezin introduce Pryazhko and apologize for the bad acoustics. Seated in the first row, Yulia Shevchuk says no apologies are needed.
"Lighting and stages don't matter," said Shevchuk, 21, a regular at Free Theater performances. "What's important is what they perform. In state theaters, we're not exposed to modern playwrights. They show us fairy tales."
Alex Rodriguez, «Chicago Tribune», march 19, 2006
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