BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

16/01/2009

Belarus Free Theatre - Being Harold Pinter

By Nick Dent

Belarus Free Theatre risk persecution to alert the world to the excesses of their totalitarian government.

In 2004 a referendum was held in Belarus on the question of whether to abolish presidential term limits. The vote was overwhelmingly in favour, clearing the way for President Alexander Lukashenko to stand for a third term in 2006, resulting in his re-election with an unlikely 84.2 per cent of the vote. The UN branded the elections undemocratic, citing "a pattern of intimidation and the suppression of independent voices."

"More than 1,000 people got arrested in our country during those elections," says Natalia Koliada, producer and co-founder of Belarus Free Theatre. "We received many letters from people in jails and we decided to use a few to show the violence that exists in Belarus today."

Those letters form the latter part of Being Harold Pinter, the Minsk company's tribute to the late UK playwright (1930-2008) whose most famous plays depict the use of language to bully and control. The 80-minute show was inspired by a visit to Minsk by another UK playwright, Tom Stoppard, who recommended the dissident company stage Pinter's works.

Pinter's 1988 Mountain Language, in particular, resonated with the company. In that short play, a family is detained and tortured for using a forbidden language. "This is exactly what's happening in Belarus," Koliada says. "Most people speak Russian - if you speak Belarussian is means you are opposition. People go to jail if they say the slogan 'Long live Belarus' in Belarussian."

As well as Mountain Language, Being Harold Pinter includes excerpts from five other Pinter plays: the menacing domestic dramas The Homecoming (1964), Old Times (1971) and Ashes to Ashes (1996), and the torture scenarios One for the Road (1984) and The New World Order (1991). The sequences are linked by an actor portraying Pinter and quoting from his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. In that speech Pinter condemned the US-led invasion of Iraq and argued that the world's people are in a struggle against lies. "The majority of politicians... are not interested in truth but in power," Pinter said.

Belarus Free Theatre perform in secret in their home country under the pretext of weddings or parties. Audiences are notified by text message - the company stopped using the internet when 50 people were arrested at one performance and held overnight in a crowded cell. (They were released after Tom Stoppard broke the news to the international press.) "It's better to come to our shows with your ID," Koliada says, "because we never know how the performance will end."

Being Harold Pinter plays at Q Theatre, Penrith, 14-17 January and Belvoir St Theatre, 28 Jan-1 Feb as aprt of the Sydney Festival.

Source:

http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/theatre/belarus-free-theatre--being-harold-pinter.aspx

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