Belarus Free Theatre: Minsk 2011

This is not entertainment. This is a hard-slap to the face; an SOS signal wrapped up in a play. These are not actors. They are dissidents in exile, raging against the world’s indifferent gaze. This is theatre teetering on the edge.

Belarus Free Theatre has not returned to its home country since the rigged elections last December returned president, and Europe’s last dictator, Alexander Lukashenko to power. The theatre members and their family members have been beaten, imprisoned, and tortured for questioning the regime. Minsk 2011 is their first piece of work since fleeing.

The months of exile and the injustices visited upon the company have generated one of the angriest shows in the Fringe. Anger not just against Lukashenko, although his oppressive regime is satisfyingly dismembered, but mainly against the West.

“What do you want?” they ask, looking the audience straight in the eye at the climax. “Do we need to start massacring each other before you take interest?” The rage on stage is matched only by shuffling sound of the uncomfortable truth sinking into the audience.

As a piece of theatre, Minsk 2011 is a work in progress. Its disjointed format betrays this. Wordless sections about the fate of protesters segue into anecdotal movement pieces about the local cheap tipple.

It is a response to Kathy Acker’s short story, New York City in 1979. Like Acker’s New York, a polyphony of sexualities lies beneath the surface of Minsk. The idea of something uncontainable lurking in the underground is peppered throughout.

It adds a glimmer of hope amidst the rage. And then comes the final slap. The actors sit on the stage and recount the all too human futures that lie ahead for them if they return to Minsk. Yes, family and love, but also homelessness and prison. This is not entertainment. It is much, much more.