BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
06/01/2009
Debut by a Belarusian company that does not exist
Louise Schwartzkoff
Alive and uncensored : players from the Belarusian Free Theatre in Being Harold Pinter at Belvoir St Theatre yesterday. The late playwright Harold Pinter was a supporter of the group.
WHEN Harold Pinter died on Christmas Eve Natalya Kolyada felt she had lost a close friend.
She had met the celebrated British playwright only twice, but since 2007 the members of her theatre group, Belarus Free Theatre, had been risking their freedom to perform Being Harold Pinter, a play that uses extracts from Pinter's plays to protest against the Belarusian dictatorship. The show's Australian premiere at the Belvoir St Theatre last night, the first event of this year's Sydney Festival, was dedicated to Pinter's memory.
"We have lost a real friend and our teacher," said Kolyada at a rehearsal yesterday. Kolyada and her husband, the playwright Nikolai Khalezin, founded the company in 2005 as an outlet for uncensored work.
Since then, Kolyada has been arrested three times and Khalezin's name has been added to the list of writers the Belarusian government has blacklisted. The director Vladimir Scherban lost his job with Belarus's national theatre as a result of his involvement with the underground group.
"When people start thinking another way [in Belarus] the government wants to punish them," Kolyada said.
The company has no theatre, and during rehearsals moves from one apartment to another for fear of getting caught.
Voices are kept low to avoid attracting the attention of police. Audiences are notified of performance venues minutes before shows begin.
On one occasion, when the ensemble and many in their audience were arrested mid-performance, Pinter sent them a letter of support. He saw Being Harold Pinter in Britain and said it captured "the essence and the true meaning of the theatre".
The play, performed in Russian with English surtitles, combines scenes from Pinter's plays, extracts from his Nobel Prize speech and fragments of the letters of Belarusian political prisoners. "We got the feeling he was writing about what was happening in our country," Kolyada said.
Being Harold Pinter is at Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills, until Sunday and January 28-31 and February 1, and at Q Theatre, Penrith, January 14-17.
Source:
Archive
Subscribe Daily Newsletter:
Belarus News and Analysis Donate:
