Creative Team
About Belarus Free Theatre
Belarus Free Theatre is the only theatre company in Europe banned by its government on political grounds. Founded in Minsk in 2005, BFT emerged as a direct challenge to the absolute censorship of freedom of artistic expression in “Europe’s Last Dictatorship”. The company was quickly forced underground, faced with harassment and persecution for its role in challenging the status quo and demanding recognition for those hidden on the margins of an oppressive society. In 2011, the company’s three artistic leaders, Natalia Kaliada, Nicolai Khalezin and Vladimir Shcherban, were forced into exile. Becoming political refugees in the UK, BFT was given a home in The Young Vic in London. Since then Belarus Free Theatre has worked across borders to create, campaign and educate – building a movement for democratisation, human rights and artistic freedom.
In Minsk, where the company is outlawed, BFT’s permanent ensemble continues to perform over 100 times each year and carries out daily teaching and education projects for young artists and activists through its academy Studio Fortinbras. Rehearsing between the UK and Belarus by Skype, the company performs in temporary, underground spaces, constantly on the run. BFT’s audience, “the bravest audiences in the world”, face potential arrest and detention simply for turning up to a performance attending a performance.
Internationally, Belarus Free Theatre tour, perform and campaign extensively for social justice and the protection of people stigmatised and ostracised by their societies. Belarus Free Theatre believes that although dictatorship and restrictions to free expression exist in their absolute form in Belarus, we must continue to challenge and resist the limits to artistic freedom and barriers to mutual understanding wherever they occur.
DEVISED AND PERFORMED BY
Belarus Free Theatre
DIRECTED BY
Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin
PERFORMERS
Maria Akyokhina
Pavel Haradnitski
Siarhei Kvachonak
Kiryl Masheka
Maryia Sazonava
Stanislava Shablinskaya
Andrei Urazau
Yuliya Shauchuk
Dig Deeper
Volcano Artistic Director Ross Manson in conversation with Natalia Kaliada and Maria Alyokhina
June 21 (post-performance of Burning Doors)
Ross Manson is an award-winning director, an actor, a translator, and the founding artistic director of Volcano, an internationally acclaimed theatre company based in Toronto. Volcano is an independent, concept-driven company characterized by formal experimentation, risk-taking and multi-disciplinarity. Volcano hosted an extended workshop with Belarus Free Theatre in 2014. Ross has directed over twenty shows for the company, which have toured to three continents, and won or been nominated for over seventy local, national and international awards. He has directed for companies across Canada and around the world, including the Canadian Stage Company the Tarragon theatre, and the National Svenska Theatre, Helsinki. As an actor, Ross has appeared in film, television, radio, and in leading roles at over 20 theatres across Canada and the USA.